OF ROMITAS AND ART

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon visiting at the home of the mentor of the Marvel Bullpen during my years in its ranks, John Romita Sr., and his wife (and my former boss), Virginia, and it was a blast of fresh air through the fetid confines of my none-too-happy/eventful life of the past few months.

You see, a while ago I decided to get up the guts to ask John if he would draw a custom piece for me of one of our mutual favorite characters, specifically Burma from TERRY AND THE PIRATES, a strip we both agree is the best ever committed to the Sunday page. John is of course best known for his defining work on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and the majority of the pieces he does for his fans feature everyone's favorite web-slinger, but his true forte is beautiful women so I figured why not ask instead for a portrait of the character who inspired him to pick up a pencil in the first place? In his formative years, John was fascinated by Milton Caniff's work on TERRY AND THE PIRATES and he saved the strips from the newspaper to study, and from there his facility for character-propelled storytelling and gorgeous linework sprang, eventually leading him to do a pretty damned good Caniff. So good in fact that he auditioned to replace Caniff on the series when Caniff left to create STEVE CANYON, a strip that was creator-owned, but the syndicate made the drastic error of choosing George Wunder over John and thus TERRY AND THE PIRATES descended into irredeemable mediocrity. But I guess the newspapers' loss was Marvel and comics history's gain, so it was all for the best.

As we reminisced about old friends and colleagues and discussed the current state of the comics biz, it felt so good to me to be able to not only sit and hear the vast wisdom of one of the medium's grandmasters merrily imparted, but to also discuss this stuff with two people who needed no preamble to the subject. They'd been deep in the thick of it for fifty years, so imagine the stories they could tell...

John and Virginia Romita: comics royalty and two totally down-to-earth human beings whom I am honored to know.

When John handed me the drawing of Burma, I was simply blown away. While her fellow comic strip cast member, The Dragon Lady, is by far more famous to the general public — and my former favorite female character in the series — those of us who've read Caniff's run on TERRY AND THE PIRATES in full all tend to gravitate to Burma because she's by far the more relatable character, plus she's a very intriguing and rather enigmatic figure. Here's the skinny o her from Wikipedia's entry on the strip (it's 100% accurate):

Burma: Real name unknown, a con artist, former pirate confederate and sultry singer but with a good heart. She meets up with Terry and Pat several times and she and Terry share a romantic connection but Burma is afraid of letting it go further. She's identifiable by her habit of singing "St. Louis Blues."

Here's what John came up with by way of his interpretation (double-click on the image to see it larger):

Once again, John's mastery of drawing women is apparent, and I have to get this framed immediately. It's 11" x 17" and it holds me mesmerized as I look at it it. (NOTE: this piece is dated 2010 because it was finished just before last Thanksgiving. John's schedule and mine did not properly jibe for us to get together for a pickup until yesterday.)

One of the things that I stand fast by is my policy of never getting rid of any of the pieces in my collection, especially anything done specifically for me, and this piece shoots straight to the Top 3 Holy Grails of the whole lot. I'm deeply honored to own this and I thank John for it from the bottom of my heart.

TWO CLASSIC PAGES FROM 2000 A.D. AND THEY'RE MINE! ALL MINE!!!

Have you ever made up your mind to finally get your shit together financially and be more thrifty, only to have that plan sent straight to Hell in a burning septic tank when confronted by something that your geekish collection just could not be without? Plus the item or items in question that have been made available to you will absolutely be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, thus making getting them that much more agonizing? Well, dear Vaulties, just such a thing happened to me right after the Christmas holidays and the expenditures that went with that, so here's my tale of woe and eventual sense of validation at spending as much as I did on what may seem a pair of trivial items to the non-geek.

I entered 2010 with every intention of being more frugal than I had been in years past, but then a certain contact in the UK alerted me to the availability of an original page from STRONTIUM DOG, my oft-mentioned favorite feature in Britain's 2000 A.D. sci-fi weekly, and not just any page, but a page from "Portrait of A Mutant," the story that got me hooked on the magazine back in the summer of 1981. Pages from STRONTIUM DOG are not easy to come by, especially ones from the "classic" period and ones from the protagonist's origin story, so I said "Fuck frugality!" and agreed to purchase the item in question. Then, no sooner than I'd agreed to buy the piece, the same contact told me h'd gotten his hands on a Glenn Fabry page from his legendary run on SLAINE, probably my number two all-time favorite Two Thou series, and when I asked him which page it was, he described one of the five that I considered to be among my five "dream" SLAINE pages, so I agreed to buy it on the spot. What followed was a lean period of living virtually hand-to-mouth while I scrimped and saved for the pieces in questions, which I assure you were not cheap and I do not command anything resembling a princely salary.

Then, after what seemed like an interminable wait as the international money transfers were processed and the art was shipped across the Pond, the package arrived and all of the belt-tightening and living on ramen noodles and cans or corned beef hash were suddenly worth it.

The first of the two pieces is the STRONTIUM DOG page, featuring a young Johnny Alpha making his first kill during the mutant uprising of 2167, the baby step on his path to becoming a highly-skilled commando leader of the Mutant Army and the badassed inter-planetary bounty hunter he's best known (and feared) as.

Drawn by series co-creator Carlos Ezquerra, the page is from 1981 and in the years between then and now, its pasted-on lettering has become partially see-through in some places, revealing an organic "hands-on" appeal that is lost in today's original comics art, the majority of which is digitally lettered, thus causing the lettering to appear only on the printed page and not the actual art boards.

The other page is an incredible tour de force of a SLAINE page by Glenn Fabry.

This one speaks for itself and sums up the incredible quality of linework and visceral majesty that Glenn imparted to the series. Seriously, when I pulled this page out of the package and held its large, heavy illustration board in my loving hands, all doubts about whether I'd made the right decision in buying it were completely erased. Unlike Carlos Ezquerra, I know Glenn Fabry socially, so the next time I see him I'd like to get him to sign this page on the back.

NY Comicon 2008: Glenn Fabry and Yer Bunche, getting loose at Jesus o'clock in the morning.

MORE NEXUS GOODNESS!!!

Cover to the double-issue NEXUS #101/102.

Here's the first of four NEXUS pages I received from veteran inker (and like-minded bad/cult movie junkie) Bob Wiacek. He did his singular magic over Steve ("the Dude") Rude's gorgeous pencils and the results are quite fine. These are from NEXUS #102, "A Death in the Family," the final chapter in the "Space Opera" arc. The sequence that stood out most for me did not feature the book's hero or his awesome and frequently heroic sidekick, Judah, but was instead the long-in-coming to-the-death throwdown between hero Nexus' lover, Sundra Peale, and her super-spy former commander, manipulative and deadly uber-bitch Ursula XX Imada.

Ursula's been a very dangerous fly in the major characters' ointment for a while but was allowed to continue breathing mostly because she's the mother of Nexus' daughters (more on them later), but when Ursula abducted and threatened to kill Sundra and Nexus' infant son, Harry, all bets were off.

Lesson to be learned: never fuck with a mother's baby.

The funeral of the awesome Jilquoix DeSmoot-9 (better known, and beloved, to NEXUS readers as simply Jil) and Ursula XX Imada. Good riddance to the latter, says I.

Here's the page in which Nexus' daughters by the now stone dead Ursula, Sheena and Scarlett, sense their mother's death. This is heavy stuff because although their mother was a monster, the girls are a lot like their father (right down to the fusion-casting abilities), so I'm curious to see how this plays out (although the gods only know when we'll get to see it since NEXUS is once more on hiatus for the foreseeable future...).

JOHN M. BURNS ORIGINAL ART...AND IT'S ALL MINE!!!

The fun I had at the 2009 Dragon Con set in motion memories of other very enjoyable cons and in no time I recalled the 2005 Bristol Con in the U.K., and thinking of a highlight from that show reminded me of some original art I recently obtained but had neglected to share with you, my dear Vaulties. I'll get to the new additions shortly, but first a little history (some of you may have already read this intro, but bear with me).

While at that the aforementioned Bristol Con I got to meet many of the luminaries of the British comics contingent, but the biggest thrill for me was meeting John M. Burns, a seriously talented illustrator whose work I first saw in a stunning painted issue of ESPERS back in the eighties. The guy's equally amazing in pen and ink or when working in color, as is proven in this gorgeous piece:

Burns is a veteran in the British comics world and his work can currently be found in 2000 A.D.'s popular NIKOLAI DANTE series, gracing the page with the welcome feel of classical painted illustration.

A sample of Burns' work on NIKOLAI DANTE.

But my interest in Burns really gets going when I remember that he worked on the newspaper strip of MODESTY BLAISE. One of the classics of British comics and adventure strips in general, MODESTY BLAISE has a huge following, but for some reason Burns' run on the series was not well received by the readers and he was let go, something about which he is famously not amused, so much so that in the Bristol Con souvenir book it was flatly suggested that attendees avoid bringing up MODESTY BLAISE if they met Burns, and that's where this story gets interesting.

When I found Burns' table I perused his originals for sale, fully-painted pages from NIKOLAI DANTE, the awesome ESPERS issue, a few MODESTY BLAISE black and white dailies, and other sundry items, all of which were well out of my range of affordability, and soon struck up conversation with the master illustrator. After the usual pleasantries I decided to throw caution to the wind and I launched into an impassioned tirade on how his ousting from MODESTY BLAISE was a load of bullshit, as well as making mention of how he was the guest who I was most excited to meet after flying over from the Colonies, and when I was done I asked Burns if he would be willing to draw the strip's protagonists, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, in my sketchbook. He thought it over for a moment and said that he'd do it because I was quite clearly on his side of the matter. He then rummaged through his stack of art in search of reference on characters he hadn't drawn in nearly thirty years, found suitable pages to work from, and commenced drawing. I thanked him and watched him work for a few moments before leaving him to his task, and when I strolled by again five minutes later there was a small crowd of older fans whispering excitedly among themselves, thrilled to witness the nigh-impossible sight of John M. Burns drawing characters that the convention's own programme had declared verboten. The crowd continued to grow, and when Burns was finished there was much oohing and aahing as he handed me this magnificent sketch:

When I returned from that trip I showed this to my fellow hardcore Modesty Blaise fan, Jessica, and when she saw it she nearly shat a sports utility vehicle.

Anyway, when all was said and done I got Mr. Burns' card and perused a stack of Burns' originals and took notes as the numbers on the MODESTY BLAISE daily strips he had available, in case there ever came a day when I could actually afford to purchase any of them. They were not what I would call expensive, especially considering the cult fame of the strip and also after having seen how much his American contemporaries charge, but I was barely two months out of a two-year stint of unemployment and just didn't have the scratch to spend on pretty pictures.

Skip ahead to April of 2009 and me reading through the two Titan Books editions featuring the entirety of Burns' run on MODESTY BLAISE. It was now nearly four years after my encounter with Burns in Bristol and I was a bit more financially secure, and reading his run prompted me to look up the numbers of the strips he had for sale and contact him with a buyer's inquiry. When i called him up I was pleased to find he had most of the strips I'd jotted down, plus one of my favorite pages from the issue of ESPERS that I loved, so I asked him how much the seven MODESTY BLAISE dailies and the ESPERS page would run me. He got back to me with a figure that I thought simply had to be wrong because he couldn't possibly be letting them go for such a bargain, but, no, I'd read it right. I could afford the lot, but it meant seriously girding my loins and deferring a couple of of financial responsibilities, but I didn't regret it because when would i ever get another such opportunity?

I scrimped and saved for about two months and eventually sent off the payment in two installments via international money order, and literally three days after he received the final payment, Burns sent me the art in a large and sturdy cardboard tube. Here are the treasures that were within (double-click on them to see them large):

This incredible page is from ESPERS #6. Here we have the psychic martial artist/assassin-for-hire Lo Chong, utterly laying waste to a pack of modern day ninja and walking off after the deed is done, lamenting how not one of them offered him the slightest challenge. When I read this twenty-some-odd years ago I had no Idea who artist John M. Burns was, but this issue and especially this sequence made me a fan for life. And imagine my disappointment when ESPERS #6 turned out to be the last issue before it got canceled; it was the first chapter in what would have been a multi-issue arc that pitted Lo Chong and a number of other evil espers against the good guy espers, but the story would not be resurrected for another several years, not until the series was revived under the marvel/Epic banner as INTERFACE, with a different (and vastly inferior) artist.

One of seven MODESTY BLAISE dailies by John M. Burns. My fascination with the dangerous world of Modesty Blaise has been gone over quite a bit — and could easily be accessed if Blogger ever gets around to restoring my Modesty Blaise blog, among the others that they took down for no god reason — but I love this one for reasons fully understood by fans of the series and its characters: here we have Modesty flat-out commanding her highly skilled and incredibly deadly right hand man, the one and only Willie Garvin, not to kill a thug who tried to murder her, while their good friend, Sir Gerald Tarrant of the British Secret Service, looks on. It's impossible to explain Modesty and Willie's relationship is so little space, but let it suffice to say that while they are not lovers they are definitely soulmates, one perfectly completing the other, so Willie finds the idea of any form of disrespect to his "princess" offensive to begin with, so anyone who would try to physically harm or kill her might as well just dig a ditch for himself and get the fuck in once Willie gets wind of such bullshit.

Our heroine in Injun garb. Be still, my heart...

What's not to like about a daily featuring the sheer absurdity of one of the world's most badassed women dressed in fancy dress Injun gear while chasing a greased pig?

The daily concluding the whole Injun/greased pig thing and giving us Miss Blaise in the shower.

Ya just gotta love this one featuring Modesty kicking a deserving motherfucker's ass with her signature weapon, the Kongo.

Here's a daily featuring all three of the major characters: Modesty, Willie Garvin, and Sir Gerald Tarrant. I love the horse, and also how it's a rare quiet moment for the characters.

A lovely print of Zetari, one of John M. Burns' beautifully designed characters. Burns threw this one in for free because he's a swell guy. Whatta mensch!

MORE ORIGINAL ART!

Following the lead established by my old buddy Jared, I periodically check in on eBay to see what original comics art can be had for dirt-cheap, and I was recently surprised to find this page by my current favorite master of puerile filthiness and outrage, Johnny Ryan, the genius (?) behind that vomitorium of juvenalia known as ANGRY YOUTH COMICS.

It cost me a total of $74.77, including shipping, and I'd say that's a bargain for a page featuring Loady McGee using a fresh cat turd as lipstick on his pal, Sinus O'Gynus. Ah, the Arts...

ATLAS COMICS, IRON JAW #1, AND THE JOY OF OWNING A PIECE OF IT

As comics go on to gain more and more respectability in the mainstream thanks to highbrow graphic novels like AGE OF OF BRONZE, BERLIN, EPILEPTIC and others, I find myself looking back on the days before the 1980's revolution of "comics as art," the days when comics had no such lofty ambitions in mind and could wallow shamelessly in the fact that they were, well, crap.

During that blessed time I devoured any and all such comics I could get my grubby little mitts on, and one company in particular seemed to crank out derivative dreck by the boatload, namely the short-lived Atlas Comics line. Lasting a scant ten months from 1974 through mid-1975, Atlas came up with a few new characters, but mostly bald-facedly ripped off other properties and only slightly retooled them into "original" post-Marvel Age headliners whose adventures were seasoned with a sense of gloom and doom that would have been quite at home in the undergrounds: the 1970 Joan Crawford film TROG was gene-spliced with Marvel's INCREDIBLE HULK to come up with THE BRUTE, KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER met Evel Knievel-style stuntman stuff as THE COUGAR, THE OMEGA MAN kinda/sorta became PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (a series that amazingly managed to change premise in each of its three issues!), and so on.

But the most blatant swipe of them all was Iron Jaw, a flagrant ripoff of CONAN THE BARBARIAN set in a far-flung future that had regressed into outright barbarism. Other than the setting the only real difference between Conan and Iron Jaw was that Iron Jaw had — you guessed it — a lower jaw fashioned from iron, but just a mere two issues after his debut his jaw would come to resemble a bear trap, providing the anti-hero with an upper and lower jaw with serrated teeth, a move which would have logically led him to be re-christened Iron Mouth, but I guess that didn't sound as cool as Iron Jaw. Issue #1 of this unintentionally (?) humorous sword & sorcery non-landmark was cover dated January 1975, but since comics are released a couple of months before their cover dates that means it found its way into my hands toward the start of my fourth grade year (Fall of 1974).

IRON JAW #1 (January 1975): cover by Neal Adams, interior art by...Mike Sekowsky? Talk about "bait and switch!"

Upon reading IRON JAW #1, even at that tender age I knew it was utter trash and I enjoyed how it tried to get away with as much unabashed sex and violence as possible, including many stabbings and swordplay-related injuries, a scene where the hero gets it on with a topless chick whose tits are unfortunately covered by strategically-placed shadows and whatnot, and a jaw-dropping (no pun intended) sequence in which the imprisoned hero tries to rape the princess of the kingdom, unaware that she's actually his sister (he's the long-lost heir to the throne and even becomes king by the end of the second issue). This material felt like it was cribbed from some of the issues of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN that I kept in a secret stash — that stuff was slightly too risque for me to get away with having in those days, much like my beloved and well-hidden issues of CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA — so I of course enjoyed it, but after the first issue I was unable to snag another issue of IRON JAW until #4, by which time the Atlas line was barely on life support.

The creative team behind IRON JAW was Michael Fleischer handling the scripting chores — he'd made a well-deserved name for himself by writing JONAH HEX and an infamously gruesome and creatively sadistic run on THE SPECTRE — with art provided by comics veterans Mike Sekowsky and Jack Abel (a fun and much loved colleague during my Marvel Bullpen days whose latter years were hampered by strokes). Sekowsky is well-known to fans of Silver Age comics, especially those bearing the DC imprint, such as JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and the unfairly reviled Denny O'Neil WONDER WOMAN run (where the badassed Amazon Princess had no superpowers and was kind of a poor man's Emma Peel), but I have to confess his work was never a favorite of mine thanks to his famously stiff figures that resembled spastic marionette attempting to disco dance when they were supposed to be fighting. That stylistic bent only added to the joys of IRON JAW #1, however, and whenever Iron Jaw killed someone the victim's body looked like one of those bogus shots from MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS where they'd lob a dummy done up to look like Nelson of Trafalgar or whomever off the top of a high-rise building ("Kiss me, Hardyyyy!!!"), and it's just so goddamned funny-looking that I couldn't help but crack up.

But while over the years I've obtained a large chunk of the Atlas line's output — including all four issues of IRON JAW — , it never occurred to me that I might someday own a page from the legendary IRON JAW #1, but my buddy Jared clued me in on just such a page up for bid on eBay. I leapt at the opportunity and ended up with the page seen below, in such good condition that I would have sworn it was maybe two or three years old rather than thirty-four, for a mere $81.00 including shipping.

Page 18 from IRON JAW #1.

As I said, IRON JAW #1 is a flagrant piece of crap, but it's a cherished piece of crap and I'm damned glad to have a page from it. Now all I've gotta do is frame the sumbitch!

The text page found in IRON JAW #1. You'd think it was an info piece on the barbarian's actual world, a la such pieces in any given Conan mag, but no dice; instead it's mostly about the creators and the planned awesomeness to be explored in future issues, but so much for that...

BLACK ALICE RULES!!!

So after a few snags I finally got my hands on the original art for the cover to BIRDS OF PREY #118, the one with the beautiful Stephane Roux art.

The cover in question, published version.

The original, to my surprise, is a piece rendered in colored pencil, with the red background, some color highlights and splatter later added digitally, so the lack of the color background makes the artist's tone work stand out quite spectacularly.

Now if only someone would get off their ass and greenlight a Black Alice monthly, or a regular backup feature!

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR CEL-ABRATION!!!

Having been a huge fan of the FIST OF THE NORTH STAR manga and anime since first discovering its gory chopsocky excellence during my third year of college (early 1985), I welcome any and all new items relating to it into the Vault of Buncheness — part of the never-ending influx that has turned my humble studio apartment into the final shot from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK — and my old friend Mark G. recently added a real gem to the collection.

For those not in the know, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR — hereafter referred to as FOTNS — is an epic post-apocalyptic saga of superhuman martial artistry and manly family dysfunction spiced with ludicrous dialogue, overwrought histrionics, and over-the-top gore and graphic violence, all initially aimed at the Japanese kiddie audience. However when the series debuted in 1983, the level of violence was considered extreme even by Japanese cultural standards, and there was considerable controversy over whether it was suitable for children. When the comics made the leap to serialized TV animation the spewing blood and entrails were largely rendered as oversaturated explosions of backlit white liquid, sort of looking like a Peter North-level cumshot gone fatally wrong, but that apparently satisfied the series' detractors and as a result the series and its laconic hero, Kenshiro, are still with us some twenty-five years later. There have been TV shows, movies, direct-to-DVD features, novels, toys, video games and spinoffs, as well as a recent resurgence in popularity, so the engine co-created by writer Borunson and Neal Adams-influenced illustrator Tetsuo Hara shows no sign of slowing down. The franchise's influence has been major, and the series is now considered a landmark.

Kenshiro: my favorite (non-American) superhero.

When I first discovered the anime version of FOTNS I was deep in my infamous early days as a perpetual stoner, and every month I would hit Manhattan's Tokyo Video to pick up an untranslated VHS tape of the latest four episodes, complete with often hilarious commercials, and run them for myself and my equally baked friends in my secluded basement suite as my bong merrily bubbled away. FOTNS proved to be a show that was fun for many reasons, chief among which was its blending of kung fu ass-whuppery and psychedelic gore and mystic auras emanated by the assorted combatants. It was pretty trippy stuff, even though the TV show's animation and character designs, especially when compared to Hara's original art, were pretty crappy.

So a while ago Mark began telling me he had a FOTNS-related surprise present for me, and he eventually mailed it to my work office. When I opened the package I found an actual animation cel from the show, and of Kenshiro himself, no less. I have another such cel from about thirteen years back, and while it depicts Ken ripping the living shit out of a bunch or evil militia-types with a spiked cudgel on a polearm, it shows him from the rear so his face is not visible. This cel, on the other hand...

The acetate piece was laid over the original pencil art, and can be removed to show said pencil work.

Obviously, I was quite pleased and contacted Mark to offer my heartfelt thanks. When I did I also asked him how he obtained the piece, and here's what he had to say:

Actually, there is kind of an interesting story behind it. Travel with me back in time, some 20+ years to 1986. I'm 15 years old, and at peak fanboy ripeness. ROBOTECH has just aired, and for someone who grew up watching BATTLE OF THE PLANETS and STAR BLAZERS, it really cemented my interest in something that was back then kind of obscure and fantastic, Japanese anime. This was way before the advent of the internet and a manga section in every Barnes and Noble's.

Being an anime fan back then required some work, something I'm sure you can attest to. One day at the old location of Forbidden Planet (how I miss that place), I came across a flyer for something called the New York Cartoon Fantasy Organization. On the 3rd Saturday of every month, some fans rented out the basement space of the Polish American Club on 56 St. Mark's Place and showed Japanese anime all day long. 5 bucks got you a day of imported cartoons. I was hooked. None of these were dubbed or subbed, and nobody cared. This was the real deal, raw on VHS from Japan anime, and we loved it. They would show a bunch of episodes of shows, followed by an intermission, and a feature in the afternoon. It was at the NY/CFO that I was introduced to so many of the great shows of what I really feel was anime's greatest period, the 80's. FIST OF THE NORTH STAR. THE DIRTY PAIR. URUSEI YATSURA. MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM. CAT’S EYE....the list goes on and on. Anyway, the little basement space had a guy in the back grilling burgers, and guys doing fan art, but the greatest bit was the dealer's table. The exchange rate was so favorable to the dollar back then, and these guys would go to Japan and score al kinds of merchandise and bring it back for sale. Posters, t-shirts, art books, and cels. The FIST OF THE NORTH STAR cel you now own comes from that dealer's room. Think I paid $15 for it. My personal greatest score there was a die cast miniature of Kaneda on his bike from AKIRA, also $15. I bought 2 and still have one mint in the box. The NY/CFO was a spinoff of the Cartoon Fantasy Organization founded in 1977 in California, still active today. Anyway, I'm glad you like the cel. I did nothing with it all those years, and I knew you'd enjoy it. I especially like the accompanying pencil art it came with. It's a production cel, actually used in the creation of an episode, so you now own 1/30th of one second of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR! Congrats!!

Needless to say, this unexpected act of Kindness earns Mark a place in my will.

"Waaaaa-Taah!!!"

YER BUNCHE'S GALLERY OF ORIGINAL COMICS ART

After running that post about stunning original art a little while ago, I remembered I had a bunch of other pieces stored away here in the Vault of Buncheness and it would be a shame not to share these works with all of my fellow comics geeks out there. So, here's my very own humble gallery of comics art, but first a wee bit of an introduction.

Among the perks of the connections one makes while in the comics biz is the inevitable windfall of original art that falls into your lap, provided you demonstrate a sincere love for the medium and the work of the creators who toil on the stuff day and night. Having worked in various capacities at both Marvel and DC Comics I came into contact with many of the industry's luminaries and in some cases am honored to call them friends, and during those years several of them have been kind enough to grace me with some of their original work. Either given as a gift or obtained at an insider's price, original art is a wonderful thing to a dyed-in-the-wool keeper of the comics flame like Yer Bunche, and every bit of it that I have will eventually be framed and proudly displayed on the walls of wherever I may end up residing, and not one bit of it will end up on eBay (look no further for proof of my loyalty/stupidity, since by selling this stuff I could pad my wallet by quite a bit).

The following gallery features my favorite pieces from my collection, garnered over the past twenty-some-odd years, and if you click on the images you'll see them at a larger size in all their glory.

Here's the one piece I obtained before I got into the biz as a pro. Years before I briefly worked as his editor on THE ORIGINALS, I met Dave (WATCHMEN) Gibbons at a convention in Manhattan and commissioned this lovely sketch of Charlie, the hero of Northpool, from the classic 2000 A.D. series RO-BUSTERS.

For those unfamiliar with him, Charlie was a kindly giant robot who guided cargo vessels into the British coastal town of Northpool. Beloved by the town, Charlie was a gentle giant until a heartless developer sent in a cadre of cruel and violent demolition robots to raze Northpool, its inhabitants be damned, and the lovable Charlie simply wouldn't have it. Defending his town from the developer's machines with a construction girder and his own armored body, the colossal robot ferociously fought the good fight until he eventually fell from the frightful damage he sustained in the shattering battle and a missile barrage courtesy of the local naval forces, but not before he totally kicked the collective ass of the developer's hardware. The story is beautifully illustrated — it's Gibbons, so the likelihood of it sucking is nil — and scripter Pat Mills really makes the reader adore Charlie, so when he makes his seemingly hopeless stand you're right there with him, feeling every punishing blow as he protects his people, and feeling the elation of the townsfolk when, battered and struggling, he rises from the ocean some weeks later and walks home, urged on by the citizens who gather en masse to sing "You'll Never Walk Alone." Sounds corny? You bet your sweet ass it does, but I defy you not to be moved when you read it. I first read that story about twenty-two years ago and openly wept during the last few pages, and I get teary just thinking about it even now. This is the UK equivalent (thematically) to that story where the Thing refuses to give up when pitted against the infinitely more powerful Champion of the Universe, even though he's being beaten to death, because he knows that if he falls the Earth will be destroyed; Charlie's tale is one of the greatest comics ever created about the nature of heroism, is rightly enshrined as a 2000 A.D. classic, and is one of my all-time favorite stories of any kind in any medium, so this sketch is very, very precious to me. There are those who would love a page from WATCHMEN, but not me. Dave, if any of the pages from this story are still in your possession, we need to talk.

The cover for the collected RO-BUSTERS Book 1: Dave Gibbons' stunning illustration of Charlie, moments before the fight of his life.

These next two come from Darick Robertson, from his celebrated run on TRANSMETROPOLITAN. We'd met years before and hit it off quite well, so when I ended up at Vertigo Darick dropped by one day and asked if I'd be willing to be in the TRANSMETROPOLITAN issue he was drawing at the time. I said "sure," and after the issue hit the stands and Darick got his art back, he handed me the two pages that feature me as a bartender.

Garth Ennis is best known for his over-the-top scripting on books such as PREACHER, THE PUNISHER, and THE BOYS, but for some reason his work on HITMAN remains unfairly glossed over. It's funny as hell, took place in the DC Universe and used that fact to entertaining advantage, and it featured some of the best art in John McCrea's career, with Gary Leach on inks. McCrea's a total riot of a human being and is utterly fun and hilarious to hang with, an aspect of his personality that really comes across in his work on HITMAN, plus he's one of the few artists in the biz who can actually draw black people without making us look odd. My favorite character in the book was Nat the Hat, the protagonist's best friend, and, knowing this, McCrea one day handed me a page that I consider to be the definitive portrait of Nat, as well as featuring the goofball demon Baytor, and everyone's favorite drunken barfly of a superhero, Captain Six-Pack.

Back in the days before vile, rude, and nasty comics could be easily obtained at the neighborhood comics shop, there were what used to be called "underground" comics, items that featured sheer, unbridled lunacy coupled with the most extreme visions of drug-fueled sexuality, social commentary, and gory, sadistic violence, and I fucking loved them. Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, and S. Clay Wilson were all heroes to my adolescent self and I thank each and every one of them for helping to simultaneously expand and warp my young sensibilities. I should also note that I discovered their works a good six years before I ever did drugs, so I appreciated it solely for the insane creativity and uninhibited artwork on display, to say nothing of the lovingly detailed and exaggerated vaginal cartography that I found much more interesting than much of what could be had in publications like HUSTLER of PISS FLAPS ON PARADE. And among that pantheon of reprobates with pens was one Gilbert Shelton, creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Wonder Warthog, one of the silliest and most consistently hilarious of the parody superheroes. WONDER WARTHOG AND THE BATTLE OF THE TITANS is one of the most falling-down idiotic things I've ever had the pleasure to read, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A textbook example of how to do a humor comic right.

So in 2005 when I went to England for the Bristol Con, I was surprised to meet Shelton in the flesh and gush over how much I enjoy and admire what he does. Now that the underground has been more or less absorbed into the mainstream with artists like Peter Bagge and Johnny Ryan representing in the name of outrageous material, pioneers like Shelton are mostly remembered by us aging kiddies whom they unknowingly corrupted, so it was a real treat to obtain this sketch from the man himself.

While at that same convention I got to meet many of the luminaries of the British comics contingent, but the biggest thrill for me was meeting John Burns, a seriously talented illustrator whose work I first saw in a stunning painted issue of ESPERS back in the eighties. The guy's equally amazing in pen and ink or when working in color, as is proven in this gorgeous piece:

Burns is a veteran in the British comics world, and his work can currently be found in 2000 A.D.'s popular NIKOLAI DANTE series, gracing the page with the welcome feel of classical painted illustration.

A sample of Burns' work on NIKOLAI DANTE.

But my interest in Burns really gets going when I remember that he worked on the newspaper strip of MODESTY BLAISE. One of the classics of British comics and adventure strips in general, MODESTY BLAISE has a huge following, but for some reason Burns' run on the series was not well received by the readers and he was let go, something about which he is famously not amused, so much so that in the Bristol Con souvenir book it was flatly suggested that attendees avoid bringing up MODESTY BLAISE if they met Burns, and that's where this story gets interesting. When I found Burns' table I perused his originals for sale, fully-painted pages from NIKOLAI DANTE, the awesome ESPERS issue, a few MODESTY BLAISE black and white dailies, and other sundry items, all of which were well out of my range of affordability, and soon struck up conversation with the master illustrator. After the usual pleasantries I decided to throw caution to the wind and I launched into an impassioned tirade on how his ousting from MODESTY BLAISE was a load of bullshit, as well as making mention of how he was the guest who I was most excited to meet after flying over from the Colonies, and when I was done I asked Burns if he would be willing to draw the strip's protagonists, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, in my sketchbook at his very reasonable price. He thought it over for a moment and said that he'd do it because I was quite clearly on his side of the matter. He then rummaged through his stack of art in search of reference on characters he hadn't drawn in nearly thirty years, found suitable pages to work from, and commenced drawing. I thanked him and watched him work for a few moments before leaving him to his task, and when I strolled by again five minutes later there was a small crowd of older fans whispering excitedly among themselves, thrilled to witness the nigh-impossible sight of John M. Burns drawing characters that the convention's own programme had declared verboten. The crowd continued to grow, and when Burns was finished there was much oohing and aahing as he handed me this magnificent sketch:

When I returned from that trip I showed this to my fellow hardcore Modesty Blaise fan, Jessica, and when she saw it she nearly shat a sports utility vehicle.

Also from Bristol is this Dave Gibbons sketch of another 2000 A.D. mainstay, ROGUE TROOPER.

During my time editing Vertigo's OUTLAW NATION (available in its entirety in one thick, black and white volume) I became friends with the book's art team of Goran Parlov and Goran Sudzuka, known collectively as "the crazy Croats," and fell in love with their work. My favorite character in the series was Lola, a frighteningly disturbed young lady who was beautifully illustrated by the Gorans, and once they found out that I liked her they sent me drawings of her as a surprise. While I hate to play favorites on such things, I have to admit that this piece by Goran Parlov is one of my favorite pieces in my collection.

Not only is it an ideal portrait of Lola, it also shows off Parlov's command of a brush in the amazing rendering on the leather couch. I would have been happy enough with Lola just standing there, but that couch is simply beautiful.

One of my favorite cartoonists since my early childhood, Sergio Aragones is one of the planet's undisputed masters of humorous illustration, and I was lucky enough to meet him a few times during my years in the Marvel Bullpen when he was working on his epic barbarian comedy GROO THE WANDERER. This was early in my career and I made sure to get an autograph from every one of my favorites who passed through, so when I asked Sergio for his autograph he smiled and took the scrap board I handed him to sign, and rather than just give me an autograph he instead filled the page with this drawing of the moronic Groo and his dog, Rufferto.

Sergio's drawing speed is legendary, and I can tell you as an eyewitness that this drawing took him maybe sixty seconds. Complete and utter mastery of his pen.

As technology and the creation of comics intermingle, one of the downsides of collecting original art from the past six years is that the actual pages drawn by the artists no longer have the word balloons attached since those are now lettered and composited digitally. There are those who enjoy having the wordless illustrations, but for me they lose a bit of the fun when you peruse an image that's clearly supposed to feature dialogue. Fortunately my buddy Amanda Conner is a gifted visual storyteller who is able to imbue her characters with personality and body language to spare, so this now-iconic page from her work on the JSA CLASSIFIED Power Girl mini-series speaks for itself.

JSA CLASSIFIED #1.

Channeling her inner Wally Wood and keeping P.G.'s considerable assets right in the camera — as well as that almost uncomfortable-looking and fully intentional camel toe — this page prominently displays the character's sassy self-confidence to great effect.

Here's another age from the same book. I had to have this one for two reasons: the amusing POV booby shot, and the guest appearance of Yer Bunche in the last panel (I'm seen underneath her gloved hand), both on one page. Sweet!

Amanda's finishing up her work on the upcoming TERRA mini-series, and after that she jumps straight into the POWER GIRL ongoing series, so show the lady some love and buy the motherfucker, already! It's a ways off, but you know what I mean.

It was my distinct pleasure to spend the better part of a year editing Y: THE LAST MAN after original editor Heidi MacDonald departed, and my resulting friendship with series co-creator and penciler Pia Guerra was an unexpected side effect from the assignment. And while I love Pia's work on the series, the only page I simply had to own was this creepy image because not only is it a chilling sequence, it also features my editorial credit.


These next two pages come courtesy of Darick Robertson again, from THE BOYS. This is the bit in which Iron Man-esque Tek-Knight saves the world by blowing up an asteroid that would have otherwise decimated the planet. A standard superhero scenario to be sure, but the rub here is that Tek-Knight is suffering from terminal brain damage that urges him to fuck anyone and anything that gets near him, a seemingly pointless bit of multi-issue setup that literally climaxes with the hero discovering that the asteroid, for no explained reason, has a pussy, so he of course has to hump the shit out of it, all while his lusty vocalizations are heard the world over thanks to the live audio feed from his helmet. As Tek-Knight reaches "the vinegar strokes," the asteroid explodes. Sheer ribald poetry.


I truly love Kyle Baker's fun, animation-influenced drawing style, and this panel from his run on Plastic Man cracks me the hell up. After the presumed death of Billy Batson — aka the "Shazam!" Captain Marvel — , his kid sister, Mary Marvel, delivers a touching eulogy at his funeral, a speech explaining how it's important for superheroes to wear bright and colorful costumes so they can be good examples to children. What makes this should-be-poignant moment funny is the sight of an earnest Mary delivering this tear-jerking monologue as she poses with her ass in the camera and her unusually large (for her, anyway) lightning bolt-emblazoned boobs jutting out over the dais, while the Catholic dominatrix-look Huntress, a bippy-shirted Supergirl, and a bosomy phalanx of Catwoman, the Black Canary, and Power Girl stand by in solidarity, each with her dairies on prominent display as a priest fights to tear his eyes away from the superheroic titty parade.

And in case you're wondering how this penciled page is the final art used for the published version, allow me to explain. Kyle drew the book in pencil, then scanned the artwork and futzed about with it in Photoshop to attain the desired results for the finished product. It looked great finished, but I love the fleshiness of pencil art in general, and this piece in particular.

I've frequently mentioned how my favorite part of having worked in Vertigo editorial was becoming friends with some of the creative talent, and maintaining those friendships to this day, and the artist with whom I'm in almost daily contact is Chris Weston, aka "our man in Eastbourne." Chris is a sickeningly-talented illustrator who makes it look easy, and was an absolute joy to work with, so I feel honored to have been given the following pieces from the Grant Morrison-scribed THE FILTH, a lurid, bizarre, raunchy, and just plain downright mad series loaded to the gills with envelope-pushing imagery.

THE FILTH #1, cover by Alex Segura.

The first page came from Gary Erskine, the equally-skilled inker on the series and a lovely human being, and shows off some of the epic scale the creators strove for, and achieved.

Issue #1 of THE FILTH features a psychedelic sex scene, some of which contained images my boss felt went a little too far, so she requested that Chris "pull back" from some of it. These illustrations come from the lead-in to that sequence and were later composited into a finished page with more artwork.

The next page is the original pencil version of the psychedelic sex scene. Break out your paperback of the collected THE FILTH and compare this with the published version; my boss deemed the central figures, with Ned Slade kneeling to couple with the splay-legged Miami Nil, as being "a bit much," so she requested that Chris draw a less explicit patch of art to cover up the action, and that's the version that saw print. I'm sorry, but considering that it was a book for adults in the first place and no graphic depictions of frothing and turgid genitalia are in evidence, I call bullshit on such pointless prudery. I mean, really, who's being protected here, and from what?

Up next is a bunch of work from THE FILTH #5, the chapter entitled "Pornomancer."

Cover by Alex Segura.

The following page is one of my favorites, and caused me to laugh out loud when I pulled it out of the envelope it arrived in from the UK.

It features an on-set view of porn star Anders Klimaaks, hard at work on his latest tenderloin epic. boning an actress in Amish drag while he channels the Prince of Darkness. This lovely image pleased all who saw it...that is until it was ready to go to press and my boss got cold feet at the last minute. She suggested having Chris do a rush re-draw at the eleventh hour, but, loving the piece, I suggested instead that we have the separators handle the perceived problem by creating a color effect to simulate the wear and tear seen on a well-watched porno tape and use that to obscure somewhat the crotches of the main figures, despite the fact that not link sausage or saucy lippage was in view. That worked out well enough, but I still feel such in-house censorship was unnecessary and pussified, especially coming from an imprint that wallows in pride over how allegedly "edgy" it is. Anyway, when I saw Chris a few weeks back at the recent Javits Center con he gave me a bunch of his original concept sketches and art for that issue of THE FILTH that featured his original stabs at the Satanic splash page, as well as other bits of art depicting the goings on at the porn studio, some of which were later "toned down" (read "censored") or excised altogether.

Thumbnail rough for the splash page.

The "tighter" version that was used as the template for the finished page; note how the actress' facial expression has changed from one that could be seen as alarmed or fearful to one of disinterested boredom or apathy, just like the look seen on many an adult video starlet's face (or so I've read about in investigative reports..yeah, read about in investigative reports!).

The next three items are images that were to be seen as Anders Klimaaks tells the reader about himself and what he does for a living and, again, much of this stuff was snipped due to its perceived prurient content. I think the depiction of such activities in a clear and realistic drawing style may have been at the root of the problem, especially when the reader sees Anders' hands about to explore his co-star's more intimate bits, or images of him genitally connecting with her, despite no graphic shots resembling excerpts from a med school film. Simply put, anyone who's ever had sex has no trouble doing the visual arithmetic, and that may have disturbed some delicate sensibilities. (But certainly not mine.)


The closeup of the "facial" in the final panel below was later somewhat patched over by DC's production department after my boss requested the amount of black ejaculate be considerably lessened. I thought that was ridiculous since the reader knew that the bonneted actress was taking a face-full of inky cum — Anders' claim to porn fame is his unique ebony population paste — , so why edit it? Does the excision of some of the fluids make it any less a flying barrage of jet black jizmo? I think not, and it's so absurd anyway, why balk at all? Compare this panel with the printed version and you'll see what I mean.

And we close with a sketch Chris did for me when we shared a room at the Bristol Convention, some three years ago.