The Fifty - Barry Windsor-Smith Enters My Permanent Art Collection

After making a gallery room for The Fifty and putting the JHW3/Mick Gray spread from Alan Moore's Promethea therein, I looked over my collection. I have about a dozen pieces that would be in The Fifty right now. This is quite possibly #1 on the list. It won't be the only BWS in The Fifty, you can count on that!, but it may be the best.

Young Gods 1 page 4 splash from Barry Windsor-Smith's Storyteller

Now that is fine comic art there, yessirreeBob!

And because it is kind of fun, I will assign numbers. these numbers will change over time as The Fifty gains, and possibly loses, members.

1. BWS STORYTELLER: Young Gods 1 page 4 splash
2. PROMETHEA 24 pages 10/11 double page spread

The Fifty - Promethea Enters My Permanent Art Collection

As evidenced by my last post, I am reassessing my comic art collection. I will have children in college in a few years and will be hitting the half-century even before that. I have about 600 pieces of original comic art. I want fewer pieces, better pieces, and that is nothing new.

So I will accumulate The Fifty. Fifty pieces of art that will hopefully be in my collection when I die on my 100th birthday, 11/29/2066. It will have been a sweet life.

Now a few things must certainly be addressed. I have over 100 Starman pages and they are not going anywhere. Tony Harris Starman and Dr. Strange Flight of Bones will not be part of this equation. But otherwise my art will generally fall into two categories: The Fifty and everything else. And woe to any pieces on the wrong side of the tracks. Should the train come along they could well find themselves swept away in the momentum. It has happened already to many of their comrades in ink.

And pieces can leave The Fifty. Comic art collecting is a fickle and fluid pursuit. But until yesterday I had never had a piece leave the fold and then return.

Promethea written by Alan Moore with art by JH Williams 3rd and Mick Gray

I think its' imminent return is cause for a declaration of loyalty, so it is now a member of The Fifty. I never should have sold it and am grateful that I have been given the opportunity to rectify that poor decision.

More from The Fifty later.

Selling, selling, and selling a little more...through ComicLink!

A few posts ago I was pimping some sales on ebay and said something like "if I could sell forty $150 pieces and then buy one $6000 piece with the money I would do it in a heartbeat". Well, it will take a bit longer than that, but I have essentially gone and done this horrid horrid thing; I have sent 36 items to ComicLink for inclusion in their next 2 auctions, taking place in August and September. But they are not just $150 pieces...well many of them cost that much but will only bring 30-60% of that back. But I knew I had to throw in some yummy stuff as well if I wanted to generate any serious cash at all. Also, in order to get ComicLink interested I knew I better have a few very strong pieces in there as well.

Jason from ComicLink was very easy to deal with. So far at least. ;-) I showed him some things from my CAF and asked if they made the grade. After clearing that hurdle, I decided I was good to go and starting pulling the Itoyas and picking pieces to send out. I probably only used 25 of the 36 items Jason approved and instead sent some other stuff. And boy was I surprised at what I pulled when those Itoyas were being flipped through!

I always knew I was going to sell my Mignola cover. It was a huge impulse buy and if I am going to spend that kind of cash I need it to fit my collection better. And a Witchfinder cover does not fit into my collection, no matter how tremendous a cover it is. I have my eye on a Mignola piece that is three times what I paid for this one and has none of the features in the Witchfinder cover that drew me to it. In other words it has Hellboy on it. The best Mignola pieces have the design strengths that really make Mike Mignola exceptional as well having Hellboy, the character with which he will always be most associated. Well, I am not a big enough fish to swim in that pond, but a great Hellboy, Batman, Starman piece is within my reach and that means the best Mignola I have will have to make way in order for me to get that elusive other piece. And the Witchfinder cover has the balance in black and non-black areas throughout that really draws me into Mike's work. I was blown away by it when I was flipping through Mike's portfolio that day, and happily handed over all those hundred dollar bills a few minutes later. But now I have seen the $7500 piece that will fit my collection like a glove, and the call of THAT NEXT ELUSIVE PIECE OF COMIC ART is strong.

What I did not know was that I was going to sell my two Travis Charest Flash annual pages.

What I did not know was that my Duncan Fegredo Baba Yaga, Hellboy, and Koschei The Deathless piece would end up in that box as well.

And I had never considered the possibility of the Chris Stevens OIL PAINTING going in the box, yet Jason will see it right away when he opens that very box today.

Art from Gene Ha, Paolo Rivera, and Leinil Yu is suddenly gone from my collection. Almost all art by those guys has in fact left. Almost.

I am going to have 50 stellar pieces of art soon. I have over 600 pieces of art right now. 25 of them may be in the stellar range that I am talking about. I will sell hundreds of pieces to get the rest. The Starman pages, over 100 of them, are not going anywhere. (Well, not Tony's Starman pages anyway.) Most if not all of the Dr. Strange commissions, the true commissions, are safe and sound here at home. But so much else is in jeopardy in order for me to get a nice Frank Miller. Or an Alex Raymond. Maybe a political Winsor McCay. A Foster Valiant panel. So much more BWS. .

In fact, I saw that ComicLink has a November auction as well. Hmmm.

ps I know I have not told the rest of the Teddy K tale. It is coming.



EDIT: Okay, I see 5 of my items in the August focused auction. This is a good thing, I expected less. Okay people, bid away!

The Shade - mystery artist revealed

Okay, in my past post I showed this piece of art for the first time.

The artist is Teddy Kristiansen, correctly identified by Kevin Pasquino in about 0.42 seconds. This is the ten year commission. I forget the date exactly, as until this experience I didn't keep very detailed records, but once upon a time a young art collector thought he had hit upon the opportunity of a lifetime when Danish artist Teddy Kristiansen agreed to take a commission. I had been reading Starman and other books like House of Secrets and Grendel, both of which featured Teddy on art at some point. I loved his expressive and disfigured style. I thought long and hard about getting a House of Secrets inspired commission or something Grendel (Hunter? Argent? Prime?) but settled on ol' Dickie Swift, The Shade. So I paid Teddy $150 for a black and white commission of The Shade from Starman. Same story different (con?) artist. Teddy was very keen to do it and replied to my emails frequently initially. Then the cash was sent across the world and communication ceased. A cold and long silence enveloped us all. It looked like all was lost.

Eventually our enterprising Dane began a blog. The 21st century had continued to make the world a smaller place. So I emailed, emailed again and so on and so on. Then I began leaving a comment on his blog posts. Each and every time he posted I left a comment within a day or two. Nothing mean, just a compliment on the blog post and a query about my commission from 7...8...9 years ago. You get the idea. At first he replied and said he had lost the list, yadda yadda yadda. He would delete the comments and I would comment again until he replied to me. Then he stopped replying, just deleting then. Then, like bloggers the world over, his posts became less frequent and he eventually stopped blogging reliably. Maybe one a year. I would be there immediately of course, civil but persistent. But about year 8 or so the blogging stopped, replies ceased and once again silence and darkness fell over the land.

Meanwhile, other collectors had been venting their tales of woe and lost Danish. The reader is advised of this should he or she care to seek our the other tales common to this continuity. But I digress. I also do not have the time to tell those tales, only my own.

Then lo and behold, our now older art collector happened to come across a most curious site one day. Online. buried under "Media Guests" and listed as a guest of Man of Action Studios was none other than our (presumed very rich by this point) Danish (escape?) artist, Teddy Kristiansen. Surely a Man of Action would recognize a kindred spirit, so I leapt into action and emailed MoA Studios. I also left a comment on the blog wasteland. I just had to let them know how happy I was to be given the opportunity to talk to Teddy in person when the show opened. you know, like 10:01. Or whenever, I would be there reliably. Or maybe persistently is a better word. Consistently? Hmm.

Well, I guess they got the idea despite my inability to be clear and articulate. Or precise. Exact? Anyway. Teddy emailed and said, why wait I can send it last week. Sure, sure I said. Why wouldn't I believe you, you are clearly a Man of Action. And don't you know it I got the above piece in the mail a week or two before the show. The mailing included the usual shenanigans, but it got here in the end.

And I hated it.

Immediately.

Next time I will tell you why.

The Shade - mystery artist post

The above portrait of Richard "Dickie" Swift, aka The Shade, sits in my comic art portfolios. This particular piece has had the signature cropped out. Anyone care to try and guess who the artist is? I am going to do a post that will require use of this piece of art, because I don't really like it. But before I do that, who drew it?


D'OH! Kevin P emailed me right away the correct answer. It was easier than I thought I guess. Or is Kevin that good?

Selling some really wonderful sketches on ebay

I am looking to generate a fairly substantial war chest for the August Heritage comic art auction. I am hoping to generate most of my purchase money through the sale of art in my collection. To that end I am listing some things on ebay this weekend, and you can see them by clicking the link to the right. You can also click on the link to my CAF gallery and see some for sale pieces there as well. If I could blink my eyes and sell 40 pieces at $150 each and buy one piece for $6K I would do it in a minute. Maybe twice. Here are some of the things you can find at those links to the right.

Carlos Pacheco commission - Dr. Strange

Not much time for a write up, time for work. Here is a wonderful commission I was lucky enough to get from Carlos Pacheco recently. I loved his work on Avengers Forever in particular, so when this opportunity arose I took it eagerly.

Dr. Strange commission by Carlos Pacheco