Grell, Mike - Jon Sable #1!

It's all Mike Grell's fault. Rather, it's Grell's fault about art. I've been collecting comics since 1969, when I was a mere 4 years old. Never gave the art much thought, it was just part of the overall fun of comics. Then I bought Superboy & The Legion of Super-Heroes #203 when I was probably 7 or 8 years old, and it changed everything for me. Grell's amazing work made me actually *notice* the artwork and I began to pay attention to creative teams after that. I started trying to learn to draw comics from his example, then graduating to the likes of Byrne, Perez and Cockrum. But Grell's the guy that got the art bug going in me initially. For me, his seminal work was on Jon Sable, Freelance. While I've enjoyed his other works, this is the one that spoke to me the most, and it still stands as one of my absolute favorite comics of all time. I'd dreamed for many years of commissioning a Sable sketch from him, and I came close back in 1987, but he wound up cancelling at the last minute. Luckily for me, good ol' ebay provided just what I wanted back in 2001 - a fantastic full-figure of Sable himself! And the seller also had a different one, fully inked! I was in heaven! Acquiring these two pieces was almost Grail-like for me... This is pencil on 11x17 Bristol.