What eBay Hath Wrought 117: Groot and Rocket Raccoon Sketch by Jason Crosby

After picking up a Red Sonja sketch card by Jason Crosby, I kept my eye out for other sketch cards created by him. I found this sketch of Rocket Raccoon and Groot from Upper Deck's Guardians of the Galaxy set, based on the Marvel film. I can't say I've been a follower of the GotG comic books or anything, but my wife and I did go and see the movie in the theater a couple of weeks ago. Going to the movies or really any type of outing is a rare thing for us. I typically don't have the time or attention span to devote to watching a movie, and we have a hard time justifying getting a babysitter for our kids. I thought the movie was pretty good. Most of the Marvel movies I've seen have been pretty good, but I haven't seen all of the recent ones. I don't know if I've seen any of the recent DC films, either. The Marvel cosmic universe has a lot of interesting stuff, but I think I was turned off of it in my youth because a lot of it was pretty wordy and navel-gazey. The movie did a good job of making most of the main characters interesting on an individual level. In looking at pictures for this post, I came across this fan art by Justin Ponsor of Rocket and Groot done up to look like Han Solo and Chewbacca, which is actually a pretty good parallel as far as mercenary space-farers go.

Pretty good stuff all around. I was glad to add another Jason Crosby sketch to my collection, and it will serve as a nice memento for our great date of 2014. Perhaps in 2015 my wife and I will be able to go out twice or something.

It is nice when the artists go out of their way to sign the back of the card or otherwise make it obvious who actually created the art. I hate trying to identify and credit the artist of a sketch based on a hieroglyph on the front of the card or a couple of hastily-scrawled initials. From what I hear, the artists don't get paid much to do these sketches for the card companies, so the value of doing them really comes from the exposure they get and the commissions and jobs that might come from the sketch cards being seen. All of that is hard to get when no one can figure out exactly who made the art. 

What eBay Hath Wrought 112: Breygent Red Sonja Sketch Card by Jason Crosby

If you like swords and sorcery in your comic books, there are two big names out there. The main guy is Conan the Barbarian, and the main woman is Red Sonja. There have been other attempts at barbarian comics, but those are the only two that have really stood the test of time. I wanted a Red Sonja sketch card, but I had a few criteria that made it somewhat difficult to find the right one. I wanted one that was clearly identifiable as Red Sonja, which meant one that showed off her trademark red hair and chainmail bikini. I wanted one that was well-drawn, which is a pretty subjective thing, I suppose. And I wanted a sketch card that emphasized her warlike nature over just being some cheesecake model who happens to be wearing chainmail.

Eventually I settled on this sketch by Jason Crosby from Breygent's Women of Dynamite set. This one checks all of my blocks, and I would imagine that if there were a real Red Sonja out there in the world she would look a lot like this. Actually, she would probably have the sense to wear a few more clothes, but if a loincloth is good enough for Conan I guess the chainmail is good enough for her. I like the colors on this one and really couldn't be happier with it. A lot of the sketches in the set are very short on color, and to be honest a lot of the sketches in the set are just butt-awful. This one met all of my criteria and is well-drawn. It's cartoony without being overly simplistic.

I looked around at some of Crosby's other work. It looks like when it comes to sketch cards he sticks mostly to horror topics. He's got a lot of Mars Attacks! sketches out there, some Cthulhu stuff, and his recent Marvel and DC comic book sketches made my mind explode. You can see a lot of it on this thread in the Blowout Cards forum dedicated to his art. Looking up all of his sketches while researching this post makes me want to go out and get all of it. But that would be crazy. He had a Rocket Raccoon and Groot card that sold for $305.00 recently. That's about 20,000 leagues out of my league. But I am pretty happy to have this Red Sonja sketch, and hopefully I can pull more of his work from DC or Marvel packs down the road.