Elmer Alyn Craft convention drawing

[continued from the previous post]

Fast forward now to the end of 2011 and someone is putting batches of original Journey comic art on eBay. The auction-end prices vary wildly but I am happy to pick up anything and in those first couple of drops I pick up pages 5 and 7 of issue 20. It turns out the seller is Rod Schroeter, a long-time friend of Bill’s, who is selling the artwork on Bill’s behalf. Apparently Rod has saved the artwork from a storage locker Bill was on the verge of losing because he was unable to keep up the rental payments. Rod stepped in just in time but the thought of all that artwork being sold off to someone completely unaware of its artistic and cultural value, a random “storage hunter”, does not bear thinking about. For anyone interested in a more detailed account of what Rod did and his relationship with Bill then they might like to know that Rod has produced a magazine-sized book called Mission of Benevolent Greed which is comprehensive and lavishly illustrated. The oxymoronic title of the book owes something to the philosophy of Ayn Rand who Rod studies. One should not dismiss anything out of hand and if her beliefs have been instrumental in the retrieval of Journey original art which would otherwise have been lost then there is something to be said for them.

However, the prime pieces, the earliest pages and covers, from the Journey title were understandably being held back and at the beginning of 2014 they are listed on Heritage Auctions where It is assumed they can realise a better price than they could on eBay. Up to this point I had been vaguely aware of Heritage Auctions but never felt any need to sign up to it. I am told by people who know me that I can have a very addictive behaviour and that when I do something I can do it compulsively. I was concerned that by signing up to Heritage then the temptation to overindulge would be impossible for me to resist. Yet, if I was to have any chance of owning the A+ pages from Journey then I would have no recourse but to register with Heritage. As it turned out I was soundly beaten in the auctions for the cover to Journey 1 and the 15-page opening chapter which features the classic Bear Chase sequence, but luckily for me the winners of both of those items are CAF members who have uploaded them to the site so that they can be enjoyed by anyone with an internet connection.

[continued in the following post]