Michael Turner, a popular comic-book artist who came to fame in the mid-1990s and was best known for creating two sexy female lead characters, Witchblade and Fathom, died June 27 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 37.

The cause was complications from treatment for bone cancer, his colleague Vince Hernandez said in a statement.

Armed with only a hastily assembled five-page sample of his work, Turner was discovered at a comic-book convention in 1993 by Marc Silvestri, one of seven artists who founded Image Comics in 1992. Within months, Turner went from waiting tables to being a top-selling artist.

Turner, along with Silvestri and a few others, soon created his best-known character, Witchblade, named after a supernatural weapon that affixed itself to the arm of Sara Pezzini, a homicide detective in New York; the transformation left her provocatively clad, armed and dangerous.

The novelist and part-time comic-book writer Brad Meltzer, in a special edition of the comics-industry magazine Wizard that was devoted to Turner before he died, said: "Anyone who says they didn't become aware of Mike when they saw one of his hot girl drawings is a liar. That's when he hit the radar."

Witchblade first appeared in comic books in 1995 and became the basis of a live-action series on the cable channel TNT in 2001. It ran for about two seasons.

In 1998, Turner created the aquatic Fathom, published by Top Cow Productions. In her secret identity, Fathom was Aspen Matthews, a marine biologist with a model's looks.

Two years later, Turner learned he had a type of cancer called chondrosarcoma in his right pelvis. He lost his hip, 40 percent of his pelvis and 3 pounds of bone and underwent nine months of radiation therapy. He eventually went into remission, only to have the cancer return several times.

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