Matt Howarth, the independent cartoonist behind Those Annoying Post Bros. and Savage Henry, has died at the age of 72. His death was announced on Monday, October 5, by Eli Schwab of Cosmic Lion Productions, the publisher Howarth worked with most in recent years, as reported by Bleeding Cool.
British artist and writer Smuzz, who had been working with Howarth on a new comic called The Flip for Cosmic Lion, told downthetubes that Howarth died from complications following a triple bypass.
Howarth’s career stretched across five decades. He co-founded Howski Studios in 1969 and began self-publishing in the mid-1970s, starting with the graphic novel Afternoon in the Sun in 1976. His experimental serial Changes ran in Heavy Metal magazine in 1980, alongside artists he admired such as Moebius, Philippe Druillet, and Enki Bilal. He also wrote the first review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Heavy Metal and drew early pin-ups for the Turtles comics.
His best-known series, Those Annoying Post Bros., launched in 1985 from Vortex Comics and later moved to Rip Off Press and MU Press, following a pair of regenerating, dimension-hopping brothers from the chaotic city of Bugtown. Savage Henry followed in 1987, built around an alternate-reality guitarist and featuring authorized cameos from musicians including The Residents, Hawkwind, Moby, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler.
Music ran through all of Howarth’s work. He collaborated with electronic and alternative artists on comics packaged with their albums, where his strips came as PDFs and the band’s music served as a loose soundtrack. His other work includes Keif Llama: Xeno-Tech, Bugtown, Star Crossed, and Particle Dreams, plus contributions to DC, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, and Antarctic Press. In later years he kept creating at a steady clip, with more than a hundred digital and print publications and recent Cosmic Lion releases such as A Slice of Spy. Bleeding Cool reports more unpublished work was planned.
Howarth summed up his approach with a line he liked to use: “It may stop, but it never ends.” His early support for the Turtles is a small part of a legacy that still runs through comics today. The franchise is still going strong at IDW, as seen in IDW’s TMNT #25 and January 2027 solicits.
