Comic book letterer Dave Lanphear and comic writer and publisher Roger McKenzie passed away recently.

Lanphear died on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, from diabetes complications. Jan S. Utstein, Lanphear’s business partner, announced his passing on Facebook. He was 58 years old.

McKenzie, who was known for his work on Daredevil, died in hospice care on August 21, 2026. He passed from end-stage heart failure and kidney disease at the age of 75.

Dave Lanphear

Lanphear lettered and worked on nearly 1,400 comics for Marvel, DC, Valiant, CrossGen, and other publishers.

He was born on June 5, 1968, in Michigan, and studied commercial art and journalism at California State University. In the early 1990s, Lanphear worked at Malibu on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Strangers, Prime, Mantra, and several other titles.

During that time, he also lettered comics at Marvel, Valiant, Image, Chaos! Comics, and Dark Horse. His work appeared in Thunderbolts, Shadowman, Bloodshot, Evil Ernie, and Avengers.

Lamphear was CrossGen’s design director from 1999 to 2004, where he was a storyboard artist, illustrator, inker, and designer. He contributed to many of their titles like Mystic, The First, CrossGen Chronicles, Meridian, and Scion.

After that, Lamphear went to Artmonkeys Studios and lettered primarily for Marvel on The Immortal Iron Fist, The Mighty Avengers, Secret Warriors, and Secret Avengers.

Then he worked mostly with Valiant on X-O Manowar, Archer & Armstrong, Shadowman, and Quantum and Woody. He lettered Superman ’78 at DC, and the Harley Quinn x Elvira crossover between DC and Dynamite.

Lamphear received two Eisner Awards and was nominated for three Harvey Awards during his long career.

Roger McKenzie

McKenzie was known for giving Daredevil comics a more grounded, grittier style. His work on the book helped to save it from cancellation.

He was born on November 8, 1950, and started working in comics in 1976 with a short story in Vampirella #50. McKenzie was a regular writer at Warren Publishing on Vampirella and other horror magazines like Creepy and Eerie. Around that time, McKenzie started writing for DC on western titles like Weird Western Tales, where he created Cinnamon. He also wrote for their horror anthologies like House of Mystery and House of Secrets.

McKenzie took over writing Daredevil with issue 151, and the darker tone he employed was adopted by creators who followed him. He created Ben Urich and began collaborating with Frank Miller to produce a successful run of the title.

When he was writing Daredevil, McKenzie also wrote Captain America. He originated the idea of having Captain American run for president, but Marvel rejected the idea. Later, they approved it when John Byrne and Roger Stern were on the title, and McKenzie was given credit for the idea.

He wrote the comic adaptation of Battlestar Galactica from ’79 to ’80, and wrote a handful of Ghost Rider issues. McKenzie wrote stories in Marvel Fanfare, which included an Iron Man vs. Doctor Octopus story. He wrote the Star Hawks newspaper comic strip.

McKenzie wrote for independent publishers including Next Man at Comico and Sun Runners at Pacific. In 1986, he and Mark L. Hamlin co-founded Pied Piper Comics, where McKenzie was co-publisher and managing editor.

He spent a long time working outside of comics, then returned to be executive editor of the Charlton Neo line in the mid-2010s. He wrote The Charlton Arrow and co-created and wrote the Spookman weekly webcomic.