Elena Steier – RIP
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Cartoonist Elena Steier has passed away.
Elena (née: Vira) Steier
February 14, 1958 – March 1, 2024
Elena Vira Steier passed away peacefully, surrounded by loving family, in the early hours of March 1, 2024 after a valiantly fought battle with cancer.
Back to the obituary:
An accomplished illustrator, author, and cartoonist, Steier created several comics and strips, such as The Ramp Rats (for the Detroit Metropolitan News), The Goth Scouts (for The South Shore Monthly Newspaper) and The Vampire Bed and Breakfast (a self-published comic book). Additional works have been published as locally as the West Hartford News and as far-reaching as ABC’s Monday Night Football.
That’s the beginning of a The Goth Scouts sequence above, more of those girls and a Queen of the Cosmos sequence by Elena are presented at Toons Up.
But those were later in her career. A career that began as an assistant to Guy Gilchrist on the Nancy comic strip and editorial cartoons for a local newspaper. From a Sequential Tart interview:
ST: You’ve worked as an assistant on some syndicated comic strips. Which ones and what, exactly, does an assistant do?
ES: I assisted on Nancy for Guy Gilchrist. I did most of the backgrounds. On Nancy, that’s fairly simple. Ernie Bushmiller was a clever guy. He developed the strip with an eye for simplicity so anybody with a straight edge could do the backgrounds.
ST: How did you begin to do editorial cartoons? What do you like best about producing single panel works?
ES: I’ve been doing editorials for about ten years locally. I never planned on sticking with it for so long. I went to the local paper and beat out another guy who was hankering to do the same simply because I came in with a cartoon every week and he did not. I was really an awful cartoonist at first because I don’t have an art background. But I improved. Single panels are really tough to do because you have to put a whole story in one picture.
ST: I know most independents have a day job – since it’s hard to break even let alone live off of your works – what do you do when you are not working on your comics?
ES: I have two strips and two weekly editorial cartoons that are syndicated by DBR Media. In addition, I do a feature called the Ramp Rats for The Airport News. Nine weekly papers in Connecticut carry my local cartoons. In addition, I freelance cartooning projects, such as web animations. I do javascripting and occasionally get web design work. It pays well, but I try to avoid it.
Suzy Q, The Dinosaur Circus, and The Block were all weekly comic strips distributed by DBR Media.
Allan Holtz describes these “well executed,” “funny stuff” 2000-2003 comic strips in a review of DBR Media.
Elena was a member of the National Cartoonists Society and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Here is the mini-AAEC profile:
Elena Steier, young whippersnapper that she is, has been drawing editorial cartoons for longer than she’s been alive. Her work has appeared locally in the nine Imprint papers of the Farmington Valley, nationally as part of DBR Media, and internationally as a guest cartoonist in the Vladivostok News. View Elena’s work on the The Center for American Blogress and The Steier Striporama. Her Goth Scouts and The Vampire Bed and Breakfast run online for your 24 hour entertainment. The Vampire Bed and Breakfast won a Xeric Grant in 2003. The Goth Scouts appears monthly in the Great South Bay Magazine.
Elena has continued drawing editorial cartoons until recently.
We send deepest sympathies to Elena’s family and friends.
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists remember Elena. As does Mike Rhode at Comics DC.
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