2014 Marvel 75th Anniversary MODOK Sketch

I did something this weekend that I haven't done in quite a while. I sat down with my monthly stack of comic books and I read them. With all the other stuff I have going on all the time it seems surprisingly difficult to sit down with 15-20 comic books and get through them all. I didn't read through them all in one sitting, but I did manage to get through my stack over the course of a day. My August shipment is scheduled to come in this week, so maybe next weekend I will be able to read another batch of books. It's sad that it can be so difficult to make time for the things we like to do. It seems like I am always bumping something from my list so that I can do something else. But I also feel like I waste a lot of time doing not much of anything. Time management isn't my strong suit, I guess.

I picked up this sketch card a little while ago on eBay. It's a sketch of MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing), He was created in the late 1960s as a Captain America villain, and has plagued Captain America, the Hulk, the Avengers, and various other people as well. One of my favorite versions of the MODOK character appears in the Superhero Squad cartoon series, which is really a great show if you like superheroes and funny jokes. He was created by AIM scientists in an experiment designed to create a being that could improve and study a newly-created Cosmic Cube. Obviously things went wrong and MODOC (Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing) became MODOK, overthrew his masters, and became the leader of AIM. He has a vast memory, increased intelligence, limited psionic powers that are focused and enhanced through his headband, and the ability to calculate probabilities with such accuracy that it acts as a kind of precognition. His powers have caused his head to grow so large that he requires a hoverchair to get around. His increased intelligence has not led to an increase in fashion sense, so he goes to the same barber as Doctor Octopus and chose the colors yellow and purple for his mobility suit.

The sketch itself comes from a 2014 Marvel 75th Anniversary set put out by Rittenhouse Archives. Rittenhouse puts out a variety of non-sports sets as well as the annual WNBA boxed set. The art was created by Eliseu Gouveia, an artist out of Portugal. I bid on this particular sketch because the linework is good, I like the coloring on this piece, and the price was right. There are a few MODOK sketches out there, but not a whole lot of them. I am pretty happy with this one, especially for the price.

There are so many good sketches out on the market right now that it would be impossible to get all the ones I like, and more are coming out all the time. My watch list on eBay alone has probably got 40 awesome sketches in it that I will never buy because I don't have millions of dollars. I have had to narrow my collecting habits down, so I have a list of characters I am interested in obtaining sketches of, and a list of artists whose work I like. When something from one of those lists pops up with a low opening bid I usually try to at least put in an initial bid so I can watch the auction until it ends. Ninety-eight times out of a hundred the bidding goes way up above anything in my price range and the card goes to someone else, but every so often I slip one through and get to add to my collection. I'm glad I was able to add a nice MODOK sketch to my hoard, and hopefully I will be doing some more comic book reading this weekend.