Last night Mel and I learned of the passing of another good friend, Ken “Arrow” Davis, who I first met back in the old alt.toy.gi-joe newsgroup (AKA “The Sandbox”) nearly thirty years ago.

Ken was an animator, a toy collector, a cartoonist and was one of the wittiest and funniest people I knew. And…we never got to meet in the real world. Ken lived in Canada and I don’t think he made it to the US more than a couple of times, and I have yet to cross our Northern border. Still, we clicked from day one, and stayed buddies for close to three decades.

We bonded over toys and fought in the Great Sandbox Troll Wars together, and when Ken’s passion for collecting GI Joe waned, and social media became a thing, we stayed in contact via Facebook. Ken was still collecting other toys, and it was always a treat when he’d swoop in and play off of one of my goofball posts with a hilarious and absurd retort of his own. Our comedic sensibilities were simpatico.

Mel thought his comments were hilarious, so I told her to send him a friend request a few years back, and they became fast friends. Ken filled Mel in on a lot of animation gossip (Ken worked on the pilot episode of Ren & Stimpy and worked with a lot of people we interviewed back in our animation columnist days, as well as some of Mel’s friends on the SpongeBob crew) and gave us a lot of inside info on the animation world that we’d missed back in our reporting days.

Ken and I shared a serious dislike of Canada Geese (you did not call them “Canadian Geese” around him without getting corrected immediately) and Mel has adopted his name for them, “Cobra Chickens” for her everyday use.  He was a funny and talented guy, and his friends, family and students are going to feel a huge void with him gone.

I found out last night from a mutual friend, Rob Marshall, who just found out about Ken’s passing yesterday. I have to say, I’m pretty numb at the moment. It was almost merciful that I didn’t know about Ken when it was happening. His partner, Tamara, had been posting updates about the stroke he suffered, but thanks to the Facebook algorithm shell game, even though he was tagged in her posts, nobody in the GI Joe collecting community got to see them.

Had I known at the time, it might have been too much. Ken suffered the same kind of stroke that ended the life of my friend Brian Young, and was in the hospital for his final days at the same time. Sometimes the fates team up with coincidence to just be a total dick. I feel like Ken deserves a more complete obituary than this, but I seem to be all obituaried out at the moment.

Ken was one of the good guys. We’re losing way too many of them these days. Our feature image is a self-portrait he drew. The rest of our images are lifted from his Facebook page.

So long, Ken. We’re going to miss you. PopCult sends our love and condolences to Tamara, her son, Alex and Mr. Sulu, Ken’s faithful canine companion.

One of Ken’s last pieces of art was his first attempt at drawing in the style of Chuck Jones. As with most things, he nailed it.