Henri Vernes was a Belgian author best known for creating the comics hero Bob Morane.
RIP Eddy Posthuma de Boer (1931 – 2021)
Eddy Posthuma de Boer was a Dutch photographer.
RIP Biz Markie (1964 – 2021)
Biz Markie was an American rapper best known for his composition “Just a Friend“, which is on the Pitchfork 500.
RIP Kurt Westergaard (1935 – 2021)
Kurt Westergaard was a Danish cartoonist famous for drawing the cartoons of Mohamed that were the object of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005.
These cartoons made him the target of multiple death threats and assassination attempts. As a result, Westergaard lived, for the rest of his life, under police protection and in hiding.
RIP William F. Nolan (1928 – 2021)
William F. Nolan was an American author best known for co-writing Logan’s Run, a dystopian novel which shows similarities to Blade Runner.
Logan (the protagonist from Logan’s Run) is Rick Deckard (the protagonist from Blade Runner). Both chase renegades, rebels from the system. Logan is a sandman (a cop chasing people who refuse to be euthanized) and Deckard is a blade runner (a cop who chases robots who refuse to be put out of circulation).
Both change sides during the story, becoming renegades and rebels themselves.
For interesting thoughts on these similarities, check Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005) and Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy: This Breaks the World (2019).
RIP Christian Boltanski (1944 – 2021)
Christian Boltanski was a French artist working in sculpture, photography, painting, and filmmaking, known for such works as Personnes (2010).
RIP Robert Downey Sr. (1936 – 2021)
Robert Downey Sr. was an American film director and film person, father of Robert Downey Jr. He is known for having written and directed underground films such as Chafed Elbows (1966), almost entirely consisting of film stills; Putney Swope (1969), a satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world; and Greaser’s Palace (1972), an acid Western based on the life of Jesus. The films are typical of 1960s counterculture.
RIP Rick Laird (1941 – 2021)
Rick Laird was an Irish bassist working in jazz and best-known for his work with Mahavishnu Orchestra.
He is featured on the oft-sampled “You Know You Know” (1971, above) by Mahavishnu Orchestra.
RIP Djivan Gasparyan (1928 – 2021)
Djivan Gasparyan was an Armenian composer and musician best known for his work on the duduk.
RIP Richard Lewontin (1929 – 2021)
Richard Lewontin was an American evolutionary biologist noted for many things, but also for opposing Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) by E. O. Wilson, co-writing Not in Our Genes (1984), in the preface of which is stated:
“We [Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin] share a commitment to the prospect of the creation of a more socially just—a socialist—society. And we recognize that a critical science is an integral part of the struggle to create that society, just as we also believe that the social function of much of today’s science is to hinder the creation of that society by acting to preserve the interests of the dominant class, gender, and race.”