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| Dave Sim Mars Attacks variant cover |
But Dave Sim has gone nuts. No, I am not talking about his mental state, which seems to me to be just fine. I am referring to his penchant for the brush and jar of ink of late. Dave Sim wants to draw like Alex Raymond and is doing his best to learn how to do so. It seems a truly maddening pursuit, even for one as talented and accomplished as Dave Sim. He was documenting the process in one half, the more accepted half, of his groovy comic Glamourpuss. Glamourpuss only ran about 33 issues (that is off the top of my head, but I think I have about 33 issues) and was a beautiful book. I never completely warmed to some of the model shots myself; I always disliked the faces (even though Dave encouraged this with his model's facial expressions) while I loved the fashion. The fact that the model/fashion part of the book suffered was only in relation to the strength of the history of photo-realism comic style half of Glamourpuss, which was fascinating to this reader at least. I ate it up.
But then Glamourpuss ended. Dave has since entered into a deal which requires re-working some of the Glamourpuss stuff into The Strange Death of Alex Raymond. Or at least it started out that way, even if he may have had to re-draw it all anyway. In any event it has apparently gotten complicated and proven to be a lot of work for Dave, and is far from ready for print. Which means it is far from ready from producing significant revenue for said Mr. Sim. Which brings us to the cover pictured above, auctioned at Heritage, and purchased by yours truly. See Dave needed capital, and IDW and Ted Adams proved smart enough to get some work out of him at that point in time. No surprise there as IDW is just killing it publishing wise in my opinion. The first, and perhaps best, of this arrangement was this Cerebus Attacks cover, a variant for Mars Attacks which had something like 20 variants for some sort of celebration/promotion.
Look at that thing closely. The degrees of depth conveyed from the front of the figure though the destroyed portion to the back of the figure and beyond is masterful. Its' Homeric is what it is. Homeric.
Dave Sim, welcome to my permanent collection. Welcome to The Fifty. This makes 19 pieces revealed. We're getting there, and that is a bit scary. Comiclink has about 40 pieces of mine coming off in the next few auctions. I was deleting them from my CAF today and was wondering what the fuck I am thinking. I was so happy getting some of these pieces over the last 20 years. But in the immortal words of Robin Harris...if you gotta go, you gotta go. This is getting real, real quick.
Also, I think I am re-arranging the list a bit. Somethings seemed out of place, perhaps ranked more out of perceived importance rather than pure unadulterated love. This may change again, but today the list looks like this.
The Fifty
1 BWS Storyteller Young Gods page 4
2 Tony Harris / Ray Snyder Dr. Strange WIRED Magazine cover
3 BWS Weapon X page
4 JHW3 Milestone Forever pinup
6 Paul Smith Dr. Strange vs Dr.Doom
7 Dave Sim Mars Attacks variant cover
8 Gene Colan / Tom Palmer Tomb of Dracula 44 page 1 splash
9 Dan Green Dr. Strange: Into Shamballa splash
10 Tony Harris 1994 Starman pinup
11 Bill Sienkiewicz Superman 400 pinup recreation
13 Darwyn Cooke Wonder Woman
14 Dan Adkins Dr Strange 170 page 1117 Anna Merli Clea
18 Mitchell Bretweiser Dr. Strange watercolor
19 Jae Lee Dr. Strange
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