Celso envisioned the ownerless umbrellas representing souls carried by currents and winds, so it was great to see how much thought went into it.

Every single panel could have been a splash page. This is absolutely superb.

Great texture and contrast

Makes me wish Russ Heath had gotten a full X-men run

When your time comes, you go!

Touché —or is it tush, eh? 

One tramp stamp, coming up!

And kicks right off with a bold innuendo!

Or the backside of a pirate map..?

Another one! 

Bill should get you on a CAF+ Live show to tell the story behind this. I'm in awe.

How did you manage to get your hands on a published Astroboy page? 

I thought all of his Astroboy art was collected in the Tezuka Museum in Japan. Great score!

I had no idea of the retail range on these pages —so it's great to see them selling. Impeccable draftsmanship.

At first I thought this had a trans-Atlantic, Marvel crossover cameo by H.E.R.B.I.E.  but it's stilll swell without it. 

There it is! Great live sale pick-up!

Do people just not like to comment on items foe sale?

This is pretty wonderful.

How am I the first to comment on this exquisite piece? 

This is fundamentally gorgeous. 

Congrats, Malcolm —you deserve abundant jealousy from the rest of us with this acquisition!

Something tells me that the story behind this piece is longer than the Grant Morrison run on Batman... very cool, though!

First published in The Studio by Dragon's Dream Press. A stone cold masterpiece!

Old School Raven. 

Perfect artist for an Agents of Atlas team-up. Nobody draws these three like Philip Tan.

He did some cool variant covers for Spider-Gwen, too - with interesting perspectives. He never defaults to ordinary. 

Chewbacca snacks - before the fact!

A big get for sure

Not a lot of these in the world! 

Superb lettering for sure!

This is a WILD issue. Written by Peter David and featuring The Demon, Etrigan and the human to whom he's bound, Jason Blood (pictured here), Supergilr (Linda Danvers) is lured into all kinds of demonic shenanigans by her scumbag boyfriend, Buzz. This one's got murder and torture and a demonic cult. Not the Supergirl you'd expect, but borderline Vertigo material. 

Cool addition to your collection!

Snake to the face!

I would hope there is no romance tension in this specific case.

In light of recent controversies it might be worthwhile for other prominent Sandman artists to pursue a similar avenue. I would love to see Marc Hempel and Mark Wheatley take-on a 45° alternate view of The Kindly Ones. 

When I was first hitting the three-for-a-dollar bins, it was Bernie Wrightson and Mike Kaluta House of Mystery comic covers that grabbed my eye and became my first favorites. But the Joker Fish stories in Detective set me off on a massive Marshall Rogers quest and he was definitely my favorite interior artist in comics for years -especially that 1970s DC work, which seems to have established the industry standard that saw a high-water mark with Byrne's X-Men run in the late 70s. 

This page is from the 4th issue in the Englehart-Rogers run, and released the same month (Feb 1978) as X-Men #109. Rogers Detecetive run began in December 1976, and seems plausible that would have been a contemporary influence on Byrne  - if not on his X-Men, certainly his Alpha Flight. 

This is a beauty. 

A visual feast

I'd heard in the 80s that lot of JCJ's work was supposedly severely damaged, so I'm very happy to see that this survived. This era of Wonder Woman (perhaps because of low circulation) was allowed to experiment in way not possible today. Those Jones covers were dark fantasy masterpieces even if they lacked any connection to the interiors, but the stories within them are quite unconventional as well. 

Beautiful piece. 

I'm not seeing that age range at all —especially not in the face. If Karen Dió actually was the model for this drawing of Death she would have been 33 at the time this was drawn, albeit looking perhaps a decade younger than that. 

In the color print (which I've also now added), the pink added as a highlight to her toes in combination with the grey-blue of their overall skin tones lends a Krishna-esque aspect to it all.

Matthew the Raven is also somewhat more visible in the colorized version.  

I didn't expect such a fast turnaround so I think Mark must have really enjoyed the concept and prioritized this over other pending commissions.

But it was not without complication.

I was never notified that my commission idea was accepted, and so there was no downpayment nor due date. That put me on the spot to get it paid-in-full within three days — with no prior notice —when I got a text on Wednesday advising that the piece was complete and ready for pick-up at SDCC that weekend. I was able to convince Joseph to accept a paypal payment since I wasn't in San Diego, and thereafter arrange the complicated hand-off process described above. 

Stressful but worth it.

Incredible

Nice separation of textures

I see a little Barbara Steele in Nick's take here. 

This is bananas in all the right ways.

Hot damn!

We caught-on to the turtles at the same time. I think I first saw them mentioned in the editorial column of Heavy Metal and within days was vending next to them at a convention in Boston. That Raphael one-shot is still my favorite TMNT book of all time. 

Almost every page by Frollo makes the reader want to know more. 

I like the girdle —it makes me wonder what DWJ's version of Liefield's Captain America cover would look like!

Always fun to see Cap givin' Frank a little tune up!

This sounds like a great companion to American Vampire

The cover to Jeff's new mixtape!

Love these subdued colors!

One of the hreat things about CAF is that the vastness continues to deliver treasire 16 years after it was first posted. This is deep in my wheelhouse and yet I'm seeing this for the first time today. Stunning. Maybe my favorite work by Dringenberg that I've ever seen. 

Someone else inquired if this was published —I may be wrong, but this might have been reproduced in the Sandman or Vertigo trading card deck. It definitely has an air of familiarity, but I can't quite place it. 

That was wild!

Chrissie's style is unmistakable, and her blend of cute and empowered are a reminder that comics can appeal to all ages. Fantastic pick-up!

Great panel page from one of the best that ever did it.