Everett Peck, the illustrator and cartoonist who created the irreverent animated series starring Jason Alexander duckman, has passed away. He was 71.
Peck died Tuesday, according to identical reports on his facebook and Instagram pages. “Mr. Peck has left the studio,” the reports read. No other details of his death were immediately available.
Peck made duckman for a 1990 one-off comic book published by Dark Horse Comics, while presenting the idea for an adult-only animated series. It finally aired on the USA Network in 1994 via Klasky-Csupo (the original production company behind The Simpsons†† ran for four seasons through 1997 and was nominated for three Emmys.
“Duckman represents the fate of the little man in an increasingly complex and demanding world,” Peck said in a 2009 interview. “Like many of us, he struggles to break even, but is eventually crushed by forces far beyond his control.”
Alexander portrayed Eric Tiberius Duckman, the self-hating “private cock/family man” who lives with his late wife, sister, two children and mother-in-law. †Seinfeld started just as Alexander signed up.)
“Jason was still fairly unknown at the time,” says Peck said in another chat from 2009. “He was able to do the prompt delivery as the show was written, had a great sense of comedic timing and good quality of his voice.”
Nancy Travis, Gregg Berger, Tim Curry and Dweezil Zappa (his father, Frank Zappa, composed the theme song) also voiced characters on the show.
Peck also created the 2006-07 Cartoon Network series squirrel boy† featuring an anthropomorphic character like Duckman and starring Richard Steven Horvitz and Pamela Adlon.
Born October 9, 1950 in Taos, New Mexico, Peck received a degree in illustration from Cal State Long Beach and took over the illustration program at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1984.
After that he did a few animation projects with Klasky-Csupo for Sesame Street and helped start up the animation division at Sony.
His resume also included work on backgrats† The real Ghostbusters† Extreme Ghostbusters† dragon stories† jumanjic† the critic and Sammy†
He lived in Oceanside, California. Survivors include his wife, Helen.
