(Not at All) Recent Comic Art Acquisitions

One thing I love almost as much as trading cards is comic books. Recently I've been feeling bad that I stopped reading my comics, and I've made an effort to remedy that. I'd accumulated a several-year backlog that felt insurmountable, as I subscribe to around 30 titles a month and had fallen off the reading wagon several years ago. I was never going to get around to reading all those books, so I picked a monthly shipment a few months ago and started reading from there. Reading a few books a night gets me through my pile in about a week, and I don't have to feel guilty anymore about buying books and not reading them. Will I go back someday and organize and read all the stuff I missed? Maybe. Probably around the time I go back and sort all the trading cards in my collection shed. It might be easier when/if some of my kids move out in a few years and I can claim a room of my own for sorting.

One thing I really enjoy is collecting artwork of favorite characters of mine. Sometimes I seek out commissions, and sometimes I buy artwork that's already been done. Reaching into the wayback machine (this post was originally created in September of 2018), I'll try to recall some of the particulars of the artwork shown here.

This first one was definitely a commission, a Power Girl sketch cover from artist Alessandro Micelli. I forget most of the details, but he was offering commissions at some point and I was able to get on his list. When commissioning Power Girl artwork I generally ask artists to focus on her strength rather than cheesecake poses. I think he delivered on this one, done in his signature style. You can check out his work on Instagram.

I believe this She-Hulk illustration was also a commissioned piece, from artist Kate Carleton, who now apparently is Kate Dykstra. I like her art style and have purchased several pieces from her over the years, although not recently. My purchasing of artwork has slowed down over the years, and it's pretty rare for me to add something to my collection these days. She can also be found on Instagram, and is also taking commissions in her webstore at the moment.

These next two are sketch covers I picked from a group of pre-done artwork. The artist is Doug Riggsby, who appears to have dropped off the face of the earth at some point in 2019. If I recall correctly, I purchased the covers through his daughter, Emily Riggsby, who is/was also an artist. Her Facebook page has been taken down, so I'm not sure where you might locate either of them to get artwork. Some stuff is still available on eBay from various sellers.

The cover on the left features Vampirella of comic book fame and Count Chocula, the cereal mascot, with a joke alluding to the Count's sugary origin. The cover on the right shows She-Hulk mistaking Tigra for Tony the Tiger, and Tigra retorting with a Jolly Green Giant barb.

The final piece of artwork in this post is a dynamic illustration of barbarian Red Sonja, who has a long history in comic books. The artist is Scott Dalrymple, and I believe I purchased it directly from the artist's eBay store. I don't have a link to the eBay store, as the purchase was made several years ago and I lack the ambition to research it tonight. He can be found on Instagram, though. I particularly like the word perspective on this one.

Not a lot of commentary to go along with the artwork in this post, as I can't recall most of the details anyway and it's getting a bit late in the day as I write this. The kids are hoping for a snow day tomorrow, but it seems unlikely given the weather report. We'll probably get just enough snow to make the commute miserable. I do enjoy getting my art portfolios out from time to time to look at the artwork I've accumulated. It's not a huge collection, but it's good enough for me.

Inktober Sketches and a Pin by Kate Carleton

I got my Star Wars sketch card draft queue whittled down quite a bit, but now I've got a backlog of Comic Book sketches and Japanese wrestling cards built up, along with handfuls of other stuff and a surprisingly large number of baseball card draft posts. I guess having too many things to post about is a good problem to have.

I also have (somewhat) recently received a couple of packages from other bloggers that deserve to be posted about, but the sheer amount of stuff they sent has made it difficult to get the cards on the scanner and ready to post. I will get there eventually, SumoMenkoMan and madding.

Today's post features a package I got from an artist who has been featured a few times on this blog, Kate Carleton. This purchase is split into two parts. The first part is these two sketch cards. There is an art challenge every October called Inktober, where many artists will try to do an ink drawing every day for the month. Carleton was offering her Inktober sketches on her webstore, and any sketch purchased would get colors added to it before shipment.

I ordered a couple of them, a Darwyn Cooke-inspired Wonder Woman, and Rowan Atkinson's man-child character Mr. Bean. I love the art that Darwyn Cooke did, like his DC: The New Frontier mini-series from about a decade ago. He died in 2016 from lung cancer, which is extremely unfortunate. I also love Carleton's take on the concept.

Mr. Bean is also a favorite of mine. I really like all of the television stuff Atkinson did with the character, and I love the Bean movie more than anyone probably should. I've never thought to ask for a sketch of the character, though, so I was glad to see him among the Inktober sketches on offer. I've heard rumors that Mr. Bean might be making a return to the movie screen soon, but I don't want to get too hopeful.

Carleton has closed down the webstore I purchased these from, as she has been busy with conventions and the like, so I am not sure where you can go to look at her inventory at the moment. I linked to her Facebook page a couple of paragraphs ago, and she is pretty responsive there. That's also where she makes announcements about sales and commission opportunities. She's got sketches in the new Star Wars 40th Anniversary set from Topps, as well as the Clerks set coming out from Upper Deck. She's also been involved in a bunch of past releases from Star Wars, Marvel, DC, and small-press stuff, so you can find her work fairly readily on eBay.

The second part of this package is an enamel pin featuring her logo. She offered these up for pre-order, and anyone pre-ordering a pin also got a sketch. I couldn't turn that down, so I ordered one. It's even serially-numbered # 6 / 100. She has this pin as well as a few more designs available in her Etsy shop.

This was the sketch I received with my pin order, which features her avatar in a different pose. I kind of wish I had an avatar of my own that I could use to put my brand on things, but I guess first I would need to actually be creating something of value. Maybe someday.

She also included a business card with some of her social media stuff on it. That Storenvy link is the store where I purchased the sketches from. I am not sure if she will reopen it, or if she will move her sketches to the Etsy shop at some point. I'll likely be watching both sites, as well as her Facebook page.

Some Holiday Sketches by Kate Carleton

One of the artists I follow on social media, Kate Carleton, offered up discounted sketches in her webstore during the holidays. I already had a couple of her licensed sketch cards in my collection, but I wanted some art from her for my two main sketch collections, Princess Leia and Power Girl.

She made these while streaming on Facebook Live and I happened to be logged in at the time, so I got to watch the process. They were originally supposed to be smaller sketches, but she said she ran out of the smaller stock and wound up upgrading them to 5" x 7" illustration board, which is a bonus because artists usually scale up prices based on the size of the work. Watching the art being made is pretty cool, and it gives you an idea about the amount of work it takes to get these things done. Each of these sketches took 40-50 minutes from start to finish.

When I watched the video, my own personal hangups led me to misinterpret a couple of things that Kate said, and I wrote about it here. She contacted me with some clarification and I hope that I haven't soured her on selling art to me, as I am a big fan of her work. I put my foot in my mouth from time to time, and I feel bad about passing judgments on someone I don't know well based on a few minutes of video. Artists are people, too, and I am sorry that I jumped to conclusions. I am quite happy with the finished sketches, and I am glad to have Carleton art for both of my primary sketch card collections. I feel weird deleting my grouchy rant completely, but I did make it harder to read and I would encourage you not to read it. I hope that Kate Carleton will accept my apologies for writing it.

If the video has sound, you also learn what the artists think of your requests. It sounded like Kate was kind of disgusted by people who request Power Girl sketches, and she was a little burnt out on Star Wars. I could be reading too much into it, but I felt a little insulted. I know that people tend to view me as kind of a negative or slow person because of the way I speak, so I could also just be reading her voice and phrasing wrong, just like people do with me. There are plenty of nasty trolls in the fan bases of both characters. She doesn't know me personally, and maybe her interactions at conventions or online have created a certain impression in her mind. Most of us at least occasionally spend time complaining about our customers and/or our work. I just do my complaining squirreled away in a government office building, while artists doing videos are kind of out there in the open. As an art consumer, I just interact with the art as an excited recipient. For the artist, it is just work, like me grinding away at writing a contract. It was just a couple of comments that I could be overreacting to, but watching the rest of the videos is pretty neat. I don't want this to turn into a negative review, but that stuff has been stuck in my head and I needed to get it out. I am happy with her artwork and generally enjoy her posts.

I think these sketches turned out very nicely. I like Kate Carleton's work, and she is on the list of artists I regularly search out on eBay. She's also got some licensed and unlicensed sketch cards on her webstore in a variety of price ranges, so if you like what you see here there are a couple of venues to get your own Kate Carleton original artwork.

2016 Marvel Masterpieces Nova Sketch by Kate Carleton

I didn't do a post yesterday. I planned on it, but I had to work and by the time I got home I didn't feel like doing anything. I did take my kids to the park for a little while, but that was about it. I had to try to keep them busy all evening as my wife had some homework due and needed some uninterrupted time to get through it. Today was my first day off in quite a while, so I slept in and then did some yard work.

One of the best-looking comic book card sets to be released this year was 2016 Upper Deck Marvel Masterpieces, featuring artwork by Joe Jusko. Unfortunately, it was one of those high-end products that the average collector is never going to obtain in any quantity. A full 1/5 of the base set is short-printed in one way or another, and the SP cards are hard to get and quite expensive. There are actually some parallels with higher print runs than the SP base cards, so some people are creating hybrid sets with the parallels in place of the actual base cards. I haven't done any of that, but I've considered my options just because the artwork is so good-looking. One thing I have been able to do, however, is grab a couple of sketch cards from the product on eBay.

One cool thing that Upper Deck did with the sketches this year is ask the artists to take inspiration from the cards in previous Marvel Masterpieces sets. Some artists took this more literally than others and some used comic book covers or other artwork as inspiration, but most artists did what was asked. So if you were wondering why so many sketches from this set look similar, that's the reason. They were all taking their inspiration from the same source material.

Today's sketch came from artist Kate Carleton, whose work has appeared on this blog before. The character is Nova, a character I liked as a member of the New Warriors. I've lost track of what he's been up to in the comics over time, but I still have that nostalgic attachment to the character. I came across this sketch while looking for Marvel Masterpieces sketches to add to my collection, and the artist, character, and price were all right for me, so I picked it up. On the right is the base card from 1992 Marvel Masterpieces that this sketch was inspired by.

Here is the back of the card, with nice sections for the artist to write their name and what their inspiration was. Many artists don't fill these blocks out (not cool!), but Kate Carleton did. I don't know all the history for this set, but you can see that the back is printed with the set name as 2014 Marvel Masterpieces, suggesting that there was at least a two-year delay in production.

An Avengers: Age of Ultron Sketch by Kate Carleton

I've been trying to build my post queue up, but I have mixed feelings about it. Right now I'm five days out on posts, so I am writing this five days ago. Things that are current now won't be current when you read this post on Thursday, and it is highly likely that something of note will occur during that time. So if I'm ahead on posts there is a risk that the content will no longer be relevant upon publication, but if I don't get ahead on my posts I am always under the gun to get a post written out for the current day. Probably the right answer is to just get photos processed and loaded up, but save the actual post writing for one or two days out. But the real right answer is just to get as many posts as I can written whenever the blogging bug hits me, so that when real life interferes or I get into a motivational slump I still have stuff ready to go. None of that has anything to do with today's card, though. It's just what I've been thinking about.

This is a sketch card from 2015 Upper Deck Avengers: Age of Ultron. The sketch is Avengers character Scarlet Witch, done by artist Kate Carleton. I've mentioned a few times that I don't especially like Scarlet Witch as a character, but it seems like there are a lot of good sketch cards out there featuring her. That means that when I am trying to track down a certain artist for my collection it is likely that I might end up with a Scarlet Witch sketch.

Kate Carleton is one of the artists I'd been trying to track down to add to my collection, and this sketch was the right one for my collection. It sat in my Watch List for a long time and I always figured that someone else was going to snag it before I got around to buying it.