Saturday, October 29, 2011

Batman: Year One

The other day I watched the fantastic animated adaptation of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's seminal 1980's mini-series Batman: Year One. They captured the flavor of the book perfectly and it was almost identical to the actual comics. I really, really liked it. It made me want to dig out the comics. For some reason, I didn't buy the original issues when they came out. I think it was because they came out in the 2-3 period after Crisis On Infinite Earths when I stopped reading comics (I refer to them as the dark years). In 1989, I picked up a beautiful hardback book collecting Year One plus other Miller Batman classics like The Dark Knight Returns, Wanted: Santa Claus Dead Or Alive, and The Mark Of Batman. I reread these stories and was struck once again by how innovative and unique they were.
I was lucky enough to meet David Mazzucchelli at a convention in New York City in 2002 and told him how much I liked Year One and he was kind enough to do a quick sketch of the Dark Knight for me.
I really hope Warner Brothers Animation and DC continue to put out these great animated movies. They're turning out to be a lot better than the live action stuff they've put out in recent years.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

More Original Art

Here are the remaining four pieces of original art in my collection. Like I said earlier, I wish I could afford more. Maybe the next time I go to a big convention like San Diego, I can pick up some more pieces. First up is page 16 from Superman #293 by the one and only Curt Swan.
And finally we have three pages by the wonderful Irv Novick, pages 2 and 5 from Detective #425 and page 3 from The Flash #235. Irv has always been my favorite Flash artist, probably because his version of the Scarlet Speedster was the first one I was exposed to and his Batman was highly underrated. I'm really glad I got these pieces.

Monday, October 10, 2011

My Original Art

One of the areas of collecting I've always wanted to get more into is the original art area. I think finances are the main reason I haven't been able to start a big collection but I do have a few pieces I've picked up through the years. Here are a few of them with their printed pages included.Justice League #155 page 16 by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin
The Brave And The Bold #169 page 2 by Jim Aparo
Superman #303 page 9 by Curt Swan and Bob Oskner
Stay tuned for some more Swan plus a triple threat of beautiful Bronze Age pages by the awesome Irv Novick in the days to come.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Gold Key's The Twilight Zone

I've been watching a lot of The Twilight Zone on the wonderful new MeTV Network and it's whetted my appetite for some of the old Gold Key Twilight Zone comics. Published from 1962-1979, it featured the standard Gold Key style story and art based on the popular series. Of course, my favorite part of Gold Key books of the Silver Age were the painted covers. Every series they put out then featured a lot of these and they were mostly excellent and The Twilight Zone was no exception. Here are a few to demonstrate the typical quality of these paintings. A lot of them were uncredited but an artist named George Wilson was credited with some of them starting in the late 60's. He drew the cover to issue #23 from 1967.
The rest of these are uncredited but they all appeared within the first ten years the book was published. I need to look out for these on Ebay or the next con I go to. I'm sure I'll enjoy them although maybe not as much as the actual show.
Once again, thanks to the fantastic Grand Comics Database for the cover scans.

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