Okay, maybe not spandex. Any comic geek worth their back issues knows that most modern superheroes and heroines don’t really use your everyday, average spandex anymore. If you’re not blessed with super-durable skin like Superman or Aquaman, it’s pretty likely that your skin-tight outfit is reinforced with a force field or some kind of high-tech titanium microfibers, often fabricated by one of your crimefighting compatriots and the multinational industrial corporation owned by their alter ego. That is, if you don’t own your own corporation. Spandex just can’t stop a bullet.
Of course, these costumes come in all forms and colors and shapes and degrees of undress and/or ridiculousness, and none have been more ridiculously undressed that the superheroines. This decade has seen a respectable taming-down of the usual superheroine garb, but big hair and dental floss was the norm for the unfortunate 1990s. Like any red-blooded male who grew up during that era of comics, also referred to as ‘The Inappropriate Disproportionate Age’ (falling somewhere between Early Modern and Current Ages), I have an affection for super-women. Oh, sure, I enjoy all manner of male heroes, and have recently developed a serious thing for Iron Man, but unless they’re robotic or alien or Batman, male superheroes are just kinda boring to look at.
My awakening to comic books as art came when I took a trip to the Words and Pictures Museum is Northampton, Massachusetts, back when it was still open. In person and in full size, these comic pages and characters came to life and suddenly became important. Unfortunately, Kevin Eastman, the owner of the museum and one of the creators of the Ninja Turtles, decided to close it up and turn it into a digital museum. Of course, their website hasn’t been updated in over 5 years, so that particular project went pathetically unfulfilled, and it left a gap in nearby places to see comic art. And my heart.
So, I began to collect original comic character artworks. I’m not interested so much in published pages from comics, though I do enjoy an artist’s unique interpretation of an iconic character. You can take 200 artists and each of them would draw Catwoman differently, and each one would choose a Catwoman from an different era of comics. You have the classic purple and green affair, the basically-naked-and-covered-in-purple Jim Balent version, animated series Catwoman, movie Catwoman, goggled Jim Lee Catwoman, the huge ears of the Tim Sale version and everything in between.
The most interesting way to attain these works is by going to comic cons, finding an artist with a price chart for sketches set up on their table, and dropping twenty to fifty bucks to get a drawing of the character of your choice. Usually, there’s a sliding price scale for works that are just pencil, or inked, or colored, or involve backgrounds and more than one character. You can bring a sketchbook and ask the artist to sketch their work inside of it, but usually, the artist will have a pad of bristol nearby with easily removable pages. I prefer this method, as they’re more easily frameable as individual works and the paper quality is more solid. After a few hours, your work is usually ready, affording you the time to browse the rest of the con and enjoy the meandering Stormtroopers and that girl in the Power Girl costume, who will forever haunt my memories. It’s a system based on trust, though, and if for some reason you can’t locate the artist later, or they’ve had to pack up and go home, it’s a good idea to have your name and address inside your sketchbook or write it down on the list.
In the madness of the NY Comic Con, I requested a drawing of Poison Ivy by Danielle Corsetto from Girls With Slingshots. To make a long story short, she got locked out of the con (along with thousands of other folks) and got behind on sketching, but she was kind enough to mail me this beautiful work later. It is an exercise in patience and really hoping that the artist turns out something that you like. So far, I’ve never been disappointed.
The other method I use to collect these artworks is via online resources. This can also be a delicate process, mostly due to the payment large amounts of money for unique things which can be damaged in shipping. In one instance, I directly contacted an artist that I admired when I saw that he had a beautiful drawing of Catwoman on his own personal gallery. After paying the hundred or so dollars up front, it took him well over a year to send the artwork to me, and threats of mail fraud and other such unpleasantnesses became involved. Artists may be uniquely talented, but that doesn’t get ‘em to the post office.
EBay is also an excellent resource, with a few choice sellers often listing large amounts of original works of various characters. It’s hard to value any one work beyond the others, but this David Mack Batman at the right, done entirely in brush and ink, is simply a beautiful artwork, comic or not. Quinton Hoover, Diego Maia, Ron Adrian and Cully Hamner have found their way into my collection, as well as other artists who I know on a personal level and admire, such as my friend Rachel, who painted me a cool indie-style Wonder Woman.
Your local AC Moore will probably have some kind of eternal frame sale going on, as well as a weekly 40% off coupon, so take advantage of it. Sure, it might not be that high-brow abstract nonsense, and it may not be sickeningly pastoral landscapes, but it’s so much cooler.
