I’ve enjoyed Ed’s work for a long time and always considered him a more than capable artist, but I never knew just how good he really was until I came upon this piece at his table in San Diego. I’ve followed his artistic progress over the years and watched him grow from a Mike Deodato clone, to yet another Jim Lee clone (as if we didn’t have enough of those), to…..THIS!!!!!

I wasn’t particularly looking to add another Benes piece to my collection, but I just could not deny my attraction to this piece when I saw it. The funny thing is that it was the only splash page hanging on the rack and it was surrounded by several covers, which were much more expensive (about double). But all those covers, as nice as they were, didn’t have the same intensity and dynamic quality that this piece had. They were all good, solid, pieces - as I stated above, capable. But this splash was like that pretty girl you notice from across the room, the one that stands out among the sea of faces. As soon as I walked up to take a closer look, I pretty much forgot about all the other pieces surrounding it, covers of not. It took me about 5 seconds to put on my glasses, another 5 seconds to study the piece, and even less time to reach up and pull it off the wall.

Court Gebeau (who reps Ed and was running the booth) told me that Ed is quite picky about his inkers and as much as possible prefers to ink the work himself. Even in cases where inkers are assigned to him, he would usually just submit blue line scans and keep the penciled originals so he could ink them himself at a later date. In this case, you are looking at pure Benes pencils AND inks! While that fact didn’t affect my decision to pull the trigger as quickly as I did, it’s certainly a very creamy icing to an already very rich cake!

Now about the piece itself. It’s the page 2 splash to a 10-page story entitled “A Losing Battle” which appeared in the DC one shot “Untold Tales of Blackest Night.” It features a dramatic shot of Donna Troy literally knocking the head off of some zombie creature. The exquisitely detailed page also features fellow TEEN TITANS Starfire, Cyborg, Wonder Girl, and Dove (of Hawk & Dove) doing similar damage to the zombie hordes. It is quite simply a spectacular battle scene! The level of detail and quality of the linework made me realize, the moment I bought it, that I would once again have to apologize for the scan not doing it justice. But what else is new? LOL

Anyway, my thanks to both Court and Ed for selling me this and for not being the kind of people you are disappointed to finally meet in person. Make sure you check out their respective websites for lots of cool and fun stuff.

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