What eBay Hath Wrought 80: Cloak & Dagger Sketch Card

I had hoped to get an Archives box break or 2013 SEGA Card-Gen team posted (the Chicago White Sox are next, I believe), but I had some real life tasks come up and never really got any traction on anything. One of my hobbies outside of sports card collecting is comic books. I haven't been able to read my comics much over the last couple years as I've been going to school and working, and there just doesn't seem to be enough time in the week to sit down with a stack of comics and read them. But I still love comic books and comic book characters.

I picked up this Cloak and Dagger sketch card from eBay after doing a search for comic book sketch cards just to see what kind of stuff was out there. Many of the top-tier characters and famous artists command top-tier prices, but you can find relative bargains in cards featuring lower-tier characters and artists who aren't well-known. And you don't even have to sacrifice quality, as there are plenty of artists just looking to get their names out there who have talent and put a lot of time and effort into their sketches.

Cloak and Dagger are a couple of my favorite lower-tier characters from the Marvel universe. They were created in 1982 as part of a Spider-Man storyline; teenage runaways who were injected with experimental drugs that gave them powers. They carried their own series' for a while and also did a stint in a joint series with Dr. Strange, and once those books were cancelled they have made appearances in other books over the ensuing decades. I think their power sets are intriguing and they have a neat synergistic dynamic going on. Cloak's dark powers leave him starved for light, and Dagger has to discharge her light powers or risk overloading. By working together they are able to keep their powers from overwhelming them.

This card comes from Upper Deck's Marvel Beginnings Series 2, which was released in 2012. The sketch cards were seeded 1:72 packs or 1:3 boxes, so they were a fairly tough pull. I believe the artist for this card is named Daren Douglass, but I haven't been able to find a site where he posts other sketch art he has done.