Power Girl and Wonder Woman by Jeremy R. Scott

Today I've got a couple of sketch cards to show off from artist Jeremy R. Scott. Usually I try to link to an artist's social media pages and website. He has a website, but it hasn't been updated since the end of 2016. The same goes for his various social media accounts.

The first sketch card I have is this Power Girl from the Cryptozoic DC Comics: Justice League set. His art style is pretty distinctive, and I don't know if everyone will like it, but I think it looks cool. I was very happy to grab this one for my extensive collection of Power Girl artwork.

I was a little surprised that I was able to get this Wonder Woman card from the Cryptozoic DC Comics: Bombshells set. Wonder Woman is a very popular character, and it can be hard to beat out all the other collectors for artwork featuring her. I was able to land this one, though, and that was pretty cool. For those who are wondering, Bombshells is a spinoff that features various DC characters redesigned for a 1940's setting. They started out a designs by artist Ant Lucia, but the figures became so popular that DC cashed in with a whole line of merchandise and comics. I think it's pretty cool, and I have a full run of the print comics, although I haven't read the digital comics that came before.

I would like to track down more artwork by Jeremy R. Scott, but it looks like he might be difficult to track down. I guess I'll keep watching eBay. I was happy to be able to get a Power Girl sketch for my main art collection, and a Wonder Woman sketch as well.

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.

Sketch Card Week Bonus Round: Sketches from Emerald City Comic Con 2012

These aren't sketch cards, but I haven't ever posted the sketches I got at the 2012 Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC). My other blog has a post about the sketches we got at the 2006 ECCC, if you want to check those out. My wife and I went to one previous ECCC while we were dating (maybe 2004? I don't think we knew each other in early 2003 and I was in Iraq on the 2005 dates), but we didn't get any sketches at that one. I don't remember a lot about the interactions we had with each artist for this post, but oddly enough I have a map in my head for approximately where in the convention hall each artist's table was located. I'll try to remember as much as I can.

One thing I definitely remember is that the show got a lot bigger between 2006 and 2012. The hall was super-crowded, and we had our twins who were just over a year old in a huge double stroller that we were trying to push around, as well as a second stroller for our three year-old boy. I have grown in patience over the years, but about halfway through the first day I was ready to leave and go straight home because the crowd was getting me frustrated. My wife talked me down from acting rashly, and we made a better plan for getting around and seeing all the stuff.

I don't know if artists like this or hate it, but I take a list of characters I like and ask them to sketch any character on my list that they feel would be cool. Sometimes I have a list of artists I am looking for, but I will also stop at any booth where I like the art on display and there isn't much of a line. If I recall correctly, Randy Emberlin was set up near to some huge megastar-type guy like Adam Hughes or something, and his booth was kind of overshadowed by the line for the other booth. I wasn't familiar with Emberlin's previous work on Spider-Man, but I liked what he had on display and he did this awesome old-school Punisher for me. 

I am having some difficulty remembering if Jon Morris drew this for us on request or if he had it already on display. I have a vague memory of having to figure out how to transport the piece while the paint used for Mr. Freeze's gun dried, though. That could be a false memory, though. Either way, he's got a pretty cool art style and I like his stuff. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that he chose Mr. Freeze from my list and drew him right there in front of us.

I am having a similarly difficult time remembering how we got this Cookie Monster sketch from Adam Watson. I think he was set up near Jon Morris, though, and they might even have been sharing a booth. I noticed that Adam Watson recently reblogged something that Jon Morris posted, so they know each other well enough for that. I don't know. He also appears to be interested in entomology, which makes him all right in my book. I was an Entomology minor for a while during my first attempt at a college education.

I don't remember a lot about Dean Trippe. He had some cool prints and I think I knew his name from seeing some of them online. At that time I was looking at a lot of comic book fan art, probably in preparation for this convention. He did this nice Spider-Man sketch for us, complete with tingling Spider-Sense.

Chris Burnham did this She-Hulk sketch for us. He drew it on a really big piece of paper, which is cool, but it was hard to carry around. Most of the other artists used paper from the sketch pad I was carrying around in my backpack or smaller paper of their own. So I had to figure out a way to carry this large paper without it getting destroyed. It's a pretty cool sketch, though.

Colleen Coover was really cool, and we chatted with her and her husband, Paul Tobin, for a little while. I think we chose this Wonder Woman sketch from her portfolio, and then she personalized it for us.

We barely caught Laurie B! as the convention was closing down. I think she was pretty burnt out after a long weekend and she apologized that she couldn't do a free sketch. We weren't expecting a free sketch anyway, and she did this Power Girl sketch for a very reasonable price. Getting a sketch from her was probably one of the highlights of the convention for me. I love her work, and I was glad that she made time for us even though she was ready to get out of there. You might be wondering why I would wait until the very end of the convention to get a sketch of a favorite character from a favorite artist. I don't know. Things just worked out that way.

I think I was drawn to Michael Cho's booth because I liked the prints he had on display, but I may have gone looking for him specifically. He's got some cool stuff out there. I'd probably seen some of it online prior to the convention. He did this Captain America sketch for us. 

The only sketches I commissioned before the convention were a group of three sketches featuring the characters my kids are named after by artist Jeremy Dale. Because they were pre-commissioned, they are a lot more detailed than most convention sketches and they cost me a little more. But it was totally worth it. This is some good art. First up is Hulk.

Jeremy and his wife, Kelly, were very friendly and we talked to them for a while when we went to pick up the sketches at his table. They were nice people, and they seemed like the kind of people we might have hung out with in real life 1) if we lived near each other and 2) if we were the sort of people who hung out with other people. Anyway, they were cool and friendly. This one is Wolverine. My scanner and my phone camera both have a hard time with the colored paper that these are done on, so the colors are a bit off.

Sadly, in November of 2014 I saw that Jeremy had died very suddenly, and it later came out that he had an autoimmune disorder triggered by a case of the flu. Obviously I only knew him from a short conversation at a convention, but it's one of those events that sticks with me for some reason. This third sketch features Thing from The Fantastic Four.

I don't remember much about meeting Leigh Kellogg, but this Rogue that he did for us is super cool. In trying to search out more information on him, I discovered that he worked on several video games I enjoyed, like Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far and MechCommander 2 from a while back, and more recently the Facebook/Mobile game Marvel: Avengers Alliance. Unfortunately, Disney very recently decided to shut down Avengers Alliance, a game that I played quite a bit over the last couple of years.

We got a lot of good sketches at ECCC 2012 and we've been trying to get to another convention, but it seems like the dates and finances never quite match up. Maybe 2017 will be our year to go to one of the conventions in Portland, Seattle, or Salt Lake City.

The Art Collector

I've shown off quite a few pieces of art done by John Soukup aka Kettle over the last year or so, including several sketch cards, a sticker sketch, and a Ken Griffey Jr.-themed painted baseball. Several times I have expressed the desire to own a larger piece of his work, but I wasn't ever sure if I would be able to make it happen.

Earlier this year he posted one of his paintings on eBay, a piece featuring Marvel comic book characters Thing and Man-Thing having some tea. I was in a position to bid on it at the time, probably because it was around tax return time, and when the dust cleared I was the winner.

I'm not 100% sure that I 'get' this painting, but I know a Carfax report shows information for used cars, like accidents, ownership history, repairs, and maintenance records. I would imagine that it would be useful to get a similar report for someone's heart, so you can know what kind of stuff to watch out for before you begin a new relationship. That might take some of the fun and mystery out of things, though.

I was really excited to see the next painting he posted a little while later. I had actually seen it on his DeviantArt page in late 2015, and I liked it so much that I even left a comment on the gallery page. And I mentioned it in a blog post in January. I'm not sure why, but I could stare at this thing for hours. I went back and looked at it quite a bit online over the first couple months of 2016, and when Kettle posted it on eBay I knew I had to have it for myself. 

He e-mailed me around the same time to show me some other work and I had to ask him the story behind this painting. The short version of his response is that he goes to a lot of comic conventions and there are always women there cosplaying (dressing up as characters from comics/TV shows/movies) and when they walk by everyone is looking at them and thinking about them. He wondered what the cosplayers were thinking about while everyone was thinking about them and decided that they were probably disconnected from all the attention and instead were thinking about what their cat was doing at home. So this is a Wonder Woman cosplayer focused on her cat while everyone else is focusing on her.

I was able to win this painting, too, and unfortunately as soon as it arrived my wife stole it from me. We share the room that we use as an office, so I still get to look over at her wall and see the painting, but it's not the same as if it were actually mine. I will have to steal it back some day. These are some decent-sized paintings, with the 'Carfax' one being 20" x 20" and the Wonder Woman one (titled 'Left Iowa Saturday Afternoon' on DeviantArt) being 18" x 24".

I am pretty excited that timing and fate matched up in a way that allowed me to obtain both of these paintings for my collection. While these weren't small purchases for me, I feel good every time I look at them and that's more than I can say about a lot of the stuff I buy. While I don't 'get' everything that Soukup / Kettle produces, he does a whole lot of stuff that speaks to me, like there is stuff in the art that tells me he's been to some of the same places mentally as I have. The Star Wars and comic book references are an important part of that, but I think there is more to it than just recognizing the characters or pop culture references. It has more to do with which characters he uses, how they look, and how they interact with each other and their environments. I don't know if any of that made sense. I'm not that great at talking about art and I'm probably even less good at talking about feelings.

At the Trade Deadline 42: An Awesome Trade Package from Lonestarr

I recently got a massive trade package from blogger Lonestarr / Twitch. It touched on nearly every part of my collection. I scanned quite a bit of it for this post, but there was plenty more. I just couldn't scan any longer.

I don't have many Elway cards, and this SPx Gold card is a great addition to my collection. I remember that the Hakeem Olajuwon SPx Gold from this set's basketball equivalent was one of the prizes of my collection in my teen years. Hologram, die-cut, and foil on thick card stock? Yes, please!

This package may have nearly doubled my Peyton Manning collection. It certainly was a big boost to the number of Manning cards I have showing him in a Broncos uniform. I've heard rumors that Peyton will officially announce his retirement soon. I guess we'll see what happens. That whole business with the sexual harassment allegations from his college days is pretty disappointing. Without any context outside of working in male-exclusive jobs for a large portion of my life I imagine he tried to pull some sort of prank that went over the line, and instead of owning his actions he denied them and went on the attack. Probably a sincere apology and an admission of wrongdoing 20 years ago would have cleared the whole business up.

There were plenty of other Broncos in the package. That Terrell Davis is probably my favorite of this bunch, although it is hard to deny the power of Tim Tebow. I wore my Tebow jersey just the other day. Apparently there was a poll recently in which respondents were asked who their favorite and least favorite NFL quarterbacks were. Tim Tebow appeared in the top handful of both lists (5th-most popular, 2nd-least popular), despite the fact that he hasn't played in a regular season NFL game for a few years.

Switching sports to basketball, several Houston Rockets cards were included in the package, highlighted by a couple of appearances by my favorite player of all time, Hakeem Olajuwon. I also liked that Panini Black Friday Dwight Howard card, although Dwight Howard himself has been pretty underwhelming as a Rocket. I have to wonder how long it will be before he and James Harden get run out of town and the Rockets enter another rebuilding phase without really living up to their potential? It's almost like a repeat of the Yao Ming / Tracy McGrady days, although their problems had more to do with injuries than with attitude. I don't know why that Earl Boykins cards has rounded corners. It must be a parallel that I am not aware of.

There were two other cards in this Astros scan, but I cropped them out when I discovered a big hair on the scan in front of one of them. It was a sweet card, but I was so done with the scanner by that time. I like that Bill Virdon card. I pulled an autograph of his out of a box of Heritage in 2014. For whatever reason that makes him stick in my head. I'm not about to run out and start a Bill Virdon PC, but I'm at least two cards into one now. I love those rainbow-colored uniforms. Sometimes I think I might be part unicorn or part leprechaun or something.

There were plenty of Astros from all eras in this package. I think I've mentioned at least six times that I didn't scan them all. I DIDN'T SCAN ALL THE CARDS IN THIS PACKAGE! There were a lot of cards. If I were a rapper I would be bragging about all of my phat stacks (of cards). But I'm not a rapper. When I try to sing or rap my wife tells me, "No!" and mists me with a spray bottle.

That Nolan Ryan / J.R. Richard card is one of the cooler cards in the package. It's an Astros card, but it's also a Nolan Ryan card, but from a time when he wasn't an Astro. And now the Astros are in the A.L. so this card wouldn't even be possible anymore unless they started making AL West Leaders cards. At that point Topps would have jumped the shark. Can you imagine Division Leader cards for all of the different divisions? That would be ridiculous.

The Astros probably got the least freaky of the 1995 Fleer card designs. Things don't get all that trippy until you're below the waistline and the colors go weird, which I guess is kind of a metaphor for life.

I like those framed Gypsy Queen parallels. That's one of the few things I like about the Gypsy Queen brand. I guess I'm a Ginter man if it comes down to faux-old-timey vintage brands. I like that Lance Berkman Soaring Stars card. It's like he's defending the Earth from Randy Johnson-thrown meteors with a cosmic bat or something.

Now we're getting to the hits portion of this trade package. Those two cards on the top are serially-numbered. Nolan Ryan is # / 250 and Tony Scheffler is # / 200. Olajuwon is die-cut, Prizmed, and # / 199. Also he is wearing those cool goggles that he sported for a while. He tried, but he couldn't rock the goggles as well as Horace Grant did. If there were a Mt. Rushmore of eyewear it would definitely have Horace Grant and Kent Tekulve on it. Who else would be on it? That Aaron West autograph is pretty cool, too. When I see the name Aaron it makes me think of that Key & Peele Substitute Teacher skit.

These relics are all pretty cool. I believe that Lancaster JetHawks Mascot Patch is my first manu-patch relic. Some of my readers might be impressed that I have remained untainted this long, while others wonder why I didn't get on the manu-patch train a long time ago. My one stalker might comb feverishly through my posts to find out if this really is my first manu-patch card. I know for sure that the J.R. Towles card in the upper right contains my first game-used base relic. The other relics are your more standard swatches of fabric, but the Rod Smith is # / 750 and the other card contains the previously-mentioned Tracy McGrady's pants or something. It's not a breathable enough material to be a jersey.

Closing things out are some non-sports items in the form of sketch cards featuring some of my favorite comic book characters. I believe the She-Hulk sketch was done by Lonestarr / Twitch himself, while the Wonder Woman sketch was done by Colby Zigler. I haven't been able to add as many She-Hulk and Wonder Woman sketches to my collection as I'd like, so these were a welcome addition to my sketch card binder. (I wish I had a sketch card binder. I actually don't. I have a vague idea of which sketches I have and sometimes I can find them in among the other cards in boxes and the piles of cards on my desk.

Closing things out is a sketch of Power Girl reminding all the fanboys out there that Cosplay does not equal Consent. That's a big deal with cosplayers and models, both online and at convention or promotional appearances. Sketch artist Cesar Feliciano has illustrated what might happen if one of these rude folks mistook Power Girl for a cosplay model.

This was an awesome package from top to bottom, and I was super-stoked to flip through all of it. I wasn't super-stoked to scan all of it, but I scanned many of the best parts. The rest of the stuff you'll just have to wonder about. It was all pretty cool, with plenty of touches personally-tailored to my collecting habits. Thank you!

Wonder Woman Sketch Card by Bianca Thompson

One artist I've had on my wish list for a long time is Bianca Thompson, who has a very distinctive airbrushed art style. I've chased quite a few of her cards on eBay, but it took a while for me to actually win one that matched my collecting interests. I was kicking myself a bit for missing out on a really cool Princess Leia sketch she listed a while back. I think I forgot it was ending and took a nap or something, and by the time I got back on the computer it had ended. A little while later this Wonder Woman sketch popped up and I won it. She takes commissions so I guess I could have asked her to get on the commission list for a Leia, but to be honest I didn't think of that until now.

She's got a decent inventory in her eBay store that covers a wide variety of comic book, movie, and other pop culture subjects. She has also worked on a few licensed sketch card sets, so other sellers occasionally list pack-pulled stuff she's done. I like her art because it's distinctive. No one else in the sketch card world really does what she does. I am drawn toward artists whose work stands out, so when I am scrolling through the sketch card listings I can recognize their work at a glance. You can see some of her other artwork on the back of the sketch card as well as on the business card she included in the envelope:

You can see that she also does sketches on blank comic book covers, and I think the Rosie the Riveter-inspired Wonder Woman there is available as a poster or a print. Her website has got galleries of quite a bit of her stuff, and like I mentioned before her eBay shop is usually pretty well-stocked.

Wonder Woman Personal Sketch Card by Stacey Kardash

Recently a post popped up, possibly on one of the sketch card groups I follow on Facebook, announcing that artist Stacey Kardash was holding a sale in her Storenvy shop. I went and dug around and found this Wonder Woman sketch card. It's a pretty nice sketch. I like the colors, but unfortunately my scanner really wants to wash out huge sections of color and replace them with blank space. You should check out her Facebook and page and her shop to see some more artwork she's done.

Wonder Woman is one of my favorite comic book characters, but I don't add a lot of sketch cards featuring her because they just aren't available. There are at least one or two very dedicated Wonder Woman collectors out there, and they seem to snatch up most of the available stuff, often even before it hits the open market. Other people grab up the few cards that make it onto the market, so I consider myself pretty lucky when I can land a good one like this card here.