Comic book letterer Dave 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.

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.