ACQUISITION DATE: 2016
SOURCE: auction
OWNER HISTORY: unknown
DIMENSIONS: 22 x 30
STOCK: bristol
CREATION DATE: 3/14/08
SIGNATURE: Arthur Adams
PUBLICATION: 4/9/08
An epic auction win! But also a bit odd. This is one of those scores where, after you win, you spend the first five minutes jumping up and down, then spend the next twenty minutes scratching your head at why nobody else even bid. The fact that a piece of this caliber (and price) would go uncontested is beyond me. I know people who have gotten 20 x 30 commissions from Arthur that cost 3 to 5 times what I paid for this. And those are unpublished. This piece is 22 x 30 AND published. Go figure.
About the art. I believe this piece was featured in Wizard #200. Not sure if it was just a stand alone pinup or accompanied some article in the magazine, but I’ve included a couple of shots in the ADDITIONAL IMAGES to show you what it looked like as published. It’s entitled LAST MAN STANDING and features 20 different characters from six different publishers. Pretty damn cool, if I do say so myself. Also interesting to note that this is the second week in a row that I’ve posted a piece from an overseas seller. International transactions always make me nervous and I usually try to avoid them if I can help it, but here I am posting back to back pieces from France and Japan.
Anyway, what’s most interesting to me about the piece is the roster of characters. As Arthur is prone to do, he avoided featuring most of the A-list characters (well, except for Wolverine of course) in favor of their lesser know versions. You’ve got Super Patriot (US Agent) instead of Captain America, War Machine instead of Iron Man, Scarlet Spider instead of Spider-man, Superman Red instead of Superman, and Azrael Batman instead of Batman. Again, I just can’t get over how cool this piece is. Not to mention how big it is and how little it cost me.
My thanks, first and foremost, to my buddy Jonathan for handling everything again. Big thanks also to the seller from Japan, Atsushi Yokoyama (that was the name on the package). As I said, international transactions always make me nervous, and even more so because the piece was so big and of course I worried about something of this size being packaged securely. But the artwork was packaged extremely well, arrived safe and sound, PLUS I might add, a lot sooner than I had anticipated. Finally, my thanks to all the people who thought about bidding and didn’t. I probably saved enough money to buy you all lunch. It’s just too bad that I don’t know who any of you are. LOL!
By the way, if anyone has a spare copy of Wizard #200, let me know.
