Carlos Pacheco, beloved comic book artist whose notable works include runs on Superman and The Avengers, has revelaed his final comic book cover, just days after he announced his retirement from the field. Pacheco is stepping away from the drawing board after being diagnosed with ALS, a neuromuscular disease colloquially known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease (after the baseball legend whose diagnosis called attention to the disease in 1939). Pacheco’s cover, for an issue of Damage Control, features Ant-Man and The Wasp running down the side of a burrito, as it’s being eaten by someone who seems oblivious to the costumed Avengers inches from his nose.
Pacheco, who is from Spain and started his career doing Spanish editions of Marvel comics, became a fixture in the American comics market in the mid-’90s.
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Per Johns Hopkins, “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neuromuscular disease. ALS is characterized by a progressive degeneration of motor nerve cells in the brain (upper motor neurons) and spinal cord (lower motor neurons). When the motor neurons can no longer send impulses to the muscles, the muscles begin to waste away (atrophy), causing increased muscle weakness. ALS does not impair a person’s intellectual reasoning, vision, hearing or sense of taste, smell and touch. In most cases, ALS does not affect a person’s sexual, bowel or bladder functions.”
In June, writer and frequent Pacheco collaborator Kurt Busiek revealed that Arrowsmith: Beyond Borders had been delayed due to health issues suffered by both men. It came out later that Pacheco had suffered paralysis in his right leg, and had undergone spinal surgery — but earlier this month, the artist revealed that he had been diagnosed with ALS, and expected the paralysis and other issues to get worse, not better.
Earlier this year, Pacheco riffed on one of his most famous covers, providing a fundraiser cover for La Borinqueña that homaged his own famous cover to Superman #654, in an issue that was sold to benefit victims of a hurricane in Puerto Rico.
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