Michael Turner - Black Cat

First off, a big thanks to Frank for getting my collection started. Two signatures you say? Well here’s the story...Back in 8th grade (around 1997-98), I got my first glimpse of Michael Turner artwork. I spent many a following summers flipping through different issues of Witchblade and Fathom, drooling over the images inside. It wasn’t just the babes, muscular dudes, or cool villains. It was the whole page. Everything. I was hooked. During one of my drool sessions, I made a promise to myself that I would one day meet Michael Turner. Fast-forward a year to SDCC 99’. My main mission...meet Michael Turner. Unfortunately, I was oblivious to the whole “schedule” thing and missed Mike by only an hour or so. When I got into high-school, the whole art thing was placed on the back burner. School was my main focus. I would periodically look for Michael’s stuff in the “Another Universe” catalog that came in the mail, but I was never serious. Fast-forward (again) to 2004. For some reason I decided to drag my pops to SDCC, with 500 bucks in my pocket. I had no REAL intentions of buying a piece of Michael’s artwork, just a fools hope that something would fall into my price range. Needless to say, it did. I ran into this piece while looking through Franks portfolio’s. I also saw the layout page from Superman/Batman #10, but I couldn’t afford it with my part time Target salary. The artwork already had the pencil signature on it, but I was asked if I wanted Michael to sign it in pen, and of course I said yes (remember, I wanted to meet Mike). I waited in line for a bit, but when Michael cruised into the Aspen booth, I was escorted inside and handed it off to him. He looked at the piece and said, “this is already signed”. Too tell you the truth, I can’t remember if I played it like I really didn’t know or if I said, “I just wanted to met you”. I do, however, remember telling Michael “good luck with everything” (it was the only thing that came to mind that encompassed all the things I wanted to say, like: thanks for being an inspiration, can’t wait to see your next project, hows everything going health wise, and just THANK YOU). He looked up at me and the simple “thank you” he gave sounded so sincere and honest that is was as if he had never heard those words before. In that moment, I felt like the special one. So, THANK YOU Michael.