Al Rio, Animator and Comic Book Artist, 1962 - 2012

Animator and comic book artist Al Rio has passed away on January 31, 2012, in an apparent suicide by hanging. Rio's artistic career began with illustrating books at a local English school in his native country of Brazil. After a stint with the same company as an animation director, Rio moved to a local Disney animation shop, where he worked on the Aladdin syndicated TV series and other properties. He moved back into comics working for DC, succeeding J. Scott Campbell on the Gen13 comic, and went on to draw multiple other comic books such as Captain America, Purgatori, Lady Death, and Spider-Man. He was nearing completion of Fever Moon, an original graphic novel by Karen Marie Moning and David Lawrence to be published by Random House, and had been serializing Exposure (co-created by Rio and writer David Campiti) with a Kickstarter campaign just launched to produce a first hardcover collection.

(via Mark Evanier's weblog)