1943–2024 · American comedian, musician, actor and painter
Martin Mull (born 18 August 1943 in Chicago; died 27 June 2024) was an American comedian, singer-songwriter, actor and painter who built a career out of deadpan absurdity — the mock soap Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, the fake talk show Fernwood 2 Night, Colonel Mustard in Clue, and decades of television work through Roseanne, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Arrested Development. He was also a serious visual artist, showing paintings that mixed photorealism, pop and collage. The line fits him exactly: a comedian-musician who spent his life in both music and pictures was the ideal person to notice that criticism is a translation between incompatible media — and the earliest print citation anyone has found already had his name on it.