Michael Golden-Collecting Comic Books

This is a scan of the book cover to 'Collecting Comic Books' , which my mom, Marcia Leiter, wrote. It was published in 1983 by Little Brown and Co. When they asked for suggestions for a cover artist, my immediate response was to see if they could get Michael Golden. I was overjoyed when they did!

If anyone knows the whereabouts of the original art for this, I would love to know. Little Brown said it had been returned to Michael Golden years ago, so maybe he still owns it.

**UPDATE** I met Michael again at the Big Apple National Comic Con in NYC this past weekend (11/18/06) and asked him if he still did indeed own the artwork for this. Unfortunately, he didn't, said it was never returned to him by Little Brown (as far as he could remember) and that he didn't know where it was - and he'd like to know as well!

I asked him if some of the characters represented only by head shots had in fact been larger size figures, that were cropped, but he said no, that's all that was drawn of them. The art director at Little Brown sent a mock-up of the cover with the type roughed in as is, with indications for where to place just the head shots. The type and color were done on an acetate overlay by someone at Little Brown. (that's the part that makes me think he did own the art at one time...if he had just done the black and white artwork, and hadn't had the art returned to him, it's unlikely he would have seen the production ready color art.

I also asked if it was his idea to include Hellcat, but that also was no, as it was Marvel that wanted her included, as the Defenders were hot at the time..hence the inclusion of a bunch of other Defenders.