Unity 2000 #5 page 13 (unpublished)

"Comic books, even rare ones, exists in multiple copies. But there's only one of each page of original artwork. If comic books are like cocaine, artwork is like crack."
Mike Gold - Playboy (December 2004)

Like the man said, comics are a dime a dozen, but art is one of a kind. It's quite the rush after hunting down a particular piece, to know you are the only person/thing/carbon based life form in the universe (hell, the MULTIVERSE...THE OMNIVERSVE...CANADA)!!! that owns that particular page of art. It can even go beyond that, when you make a discovery of the great unknown. This splash page was from the unfinished mini-series Unity 2000. This had been an attempt to revive the Valiant Universe after it had been purchased by Acclaim (ie the game company). Jim Shooter was hired by Acclaim to write this 6-issue mini-series only, his first story with Valiant characters since 1992. The purpose of Unity 2000 was to tie together the storylines and characters from the original Valiant Universe (VH1, 1991 - 1996) to the characters and storylines from the Acclaim Comics Valiant Heroes characters (VH2, 1997 - 2000...sort of a Crisis on Infinite Earths for the Valiant Universe). Future Acclaim comics would continue where Unity 2000 ends, explaining the relationship between VH1, VH2, and future stories. Unity 2000 and all other Acclaim comics were cancelled in December 2000 after Unity 2000 #3 was published. Besides being a great splash page from a noted artist showing all the characters from the last unfinished series of a once great but now bankrupt company, check who that is in the middle of the page. It's Jim Starlin's Marvel creation Thanos!!! And, if you check on the back upper right, you'll see the rest of the Marvel gang, and on the upper left, a few visitors from the DC universe come to wish the Valiant Universe farewell!!!