04/11/2024
I felt a great disturbance in the Force the other day and I knew what was coming. I lost my good friend Kevin Hyde after many years of physical challenges which robbed him of his sight and his memory but never his spirit, kept alive by his beautiful angel-in-waiting Kathy. Selfishly I miss him terribly but I take comfort in knowing his suffering has finally come to an end.
A wildly creative, engaging, brilliant, funny, enthusiastic and opinionated character, Kevin was the creator of Cobalt Blue (the original Power Comics version) and Harlaken, Master of the Black Diamond. He was a trusted and valuable cog in the earliest days of the Questar machine, doing everything from feature articles to interviews to advertising and marketing to PR to you-name-it. And as talented as he was, he was equally as comfortable conducting interviews on a movie set as he was compiling technical documents for the likes of Westinghouse and General Electric; crafting ad copy at the Holman Company in Pittsburgh or creating animated specials like “Allison and the Magic Bubble” for HBO or award-winning documentaries on prominent figures like Art Rooney for PBS. He was, indeed, Buckaroo Banzai incarnate (I think he’d love, and perhaps even be a little embarrassed by, that comparison).
My heart has a hole the size of the Grand Canyon right now, but I’ll survive. I treasure the time I had w/K and the stories that only he and I know…now left to me to pass along to all who’ll listen. I’ll miss the phone calls up ’til the every end, when he continued to amaze and delight me by showing a propensity to be more up-to-date on all things comics, pop culture, movies, TV and politics than I was. And *I* could still *see*.
Here’s to you, ol’ buddy. Enjoy the cosmic trappings of a life well-lived and in service to others.
And here’s a taste of a brilliant mind and talented creative, ever the professional even at his lowest point, my small tribute to a true one-of-a-kind. Enjoy.