Acclaimed comic book artist George Perez dies, aged 67

George Perez, a famous comic book artist and writer best known for his work on the Avengers, Wonder Woman, and the Teen Titans, has died, according to Marvel and DC Comics.

Perez was 67 years old when he died. Last year, he stated that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer.

“George Perez was an artist, a writer, a role model and a friend,” Marvel Entertainment said on Twitter. “His work paved seminal stories across comics, and his legacy of kindness and generosity will never be forgotten.”

DC Comics tweeted that Perez’s contributions “were pivotal in both driving and reinventing DC’s long and rich history.”

Perez and writer Marv Wolfman had created such characters as Cyborg, Raven and Starfire.

Their “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” a reboot, “saw several major characters killed off in a multiverse saga that still resonates in popular culture,” according to Deadline.com.

Perez was known for his clean, dynamic and realistic style.

“George Perez never went half way, in art or life. He pushed the limit of what a comic could do: his style was somehow, impossibly both overwhelmingly powerful and subtly graceful,” tweeted Tom King, a comic book writer who, like Perez, had won a coveted Eisner Award, an accolade akin to an Oscar in the industry.

Perez’s family had moved in the 1940s from Puerto Rico to New York, where his father found work in a factory.

Perez began working as an assistant at Marvel before the age of 20 and was soon working on series such as “Amazing Tales” and “The Avengers.”

Perez’s art style was “both vibrant and immensely expressive… the right storytelling canvas for some of the most critical moments in DC history,” according to DC publisher Jim Lee.