Holy Grail Pages…

I mentioned in a post a few weeks back about a story from Blazing Combat #3 . I have been chasing the original art for a story called U-boat for a few years .

When it first came up for sale it was out of my price range. I put an offer in which was politely rejected. If I had to keep only one artists original artwork it would be Gene Colan. I love Genes’ ability to tell a story.He is the master at making the sublime look interesting. His totally unorthodox panel layouts are as much an aspect of his storytelling as the panel images themselves. One of the reasons I particularly loved this story is the inking. Gene has had an outstanding run over the years with Tom Palmer, but in these early Warren magazines he inked himself and used his signature ink wash to embellish the story even more. Gene is known as the master of light and shadows and this story in particular really grabbed me. I swear that on the opening splash page you can see and hear the waves moving in the ocean. This story is from 1966 and when you look at the body of work that Gene did from the 1940’s to 2000’s it is particularly impressive.

About 3 years ago the story came up for sale again, and again, I was politely declined. Third time is a charm I guess as we were able to come to an agreed upon price this time. I have the story framed and taking up a complete wall in my house and you are able to follow the story page by page to the end .

I have been fortunate enough to pick up some work from my favorite Silver Age and Bronze age artists over the years and when I was a kid I never in my wildest dreams figured on owning original art from the masters. Most of us have dreamt of owning a run of our favorite comics and realize the rarity of this adventure, but collecting original art is the ultimate in comic book rarities. There is after all only one of each page.

I have uploaded the complete story to my website. It is not for sale. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Continued Happy Collecting!