The Hungarian artist Attila Futaki died on January 2, 2024.  The news was announced by his French publisher, Glenat, in a Tweet, which said that the artist died after a brief illness.  He was 39 years old.

Futaki had a robust career in both Europe and the U.S.  He was the artist for Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft’s Severed, Victor Gischler’s Conan: The Phantoms of the Black Coast, and three of Disney’s Percy Jackson graphic novels, The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, and The Titan’s Curse (see “Disney’s Fall Graphic Novels”).  In addition, he did editorial illustrations for The New York Times, GQ, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Intercept, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Born in Békéscaba, Hungary, on November 27, 1984, Futaki studied at the International School of Comics in Florence and was the art director of the Hungarian comics magazine Roham, to which he was also a contributor.  His first published graphic novel was Spiral, written by Gergely Nikolényi and published in Hungary in 2008; it was a nominee for the Alfabéta Prize and was later published in French under the title Carabas.

In 2017 The Public Endowment for the Research on Central and Eastern European History and Society commissioned Futaki and writer Gábor Tallai to create Angel of Budapest, a graphic novel telling the story of the 1956 revolution.  The two later collaborated on 10 – A Puskás, a graphic biography of soccer player Ferenc Puskás, which was published in 2021.

Outside of Hungary, Futaki collaborated with the writer Matz on Le Tatoueur (The Tattooist), with Stephen Desberg on Movie Ghosts, and with Laurent Galandon on Hypnos, all published in French.  He also teamed up with Stefan Vogel, Laura Pearce and Jean-David Morvan on The Illegalists, which was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2016 and was also published in French as La bande à Bonnot.

He collaborated with British writer Pat Mills on “The Nameless City,” which appeared in The Lovecraft Anthology 2, and he contributed a story to Dark Horse Comics’ Creepy #19.

Futaki’s story “The Passenger,” written by Mátyás Sárközi, was nominated for the Alfabéta Prize for Best Short Story, and in 2011 he received the Ernő Zórád Prize, bestowed on the 100th anniversary of the Hungarian comics artist’s birth.

On Facebook, French artist Olivier Jalabert wrote of Futaki, “He is a prince and a genuine person. He was kind and caring and I miss him like crazy already.”