Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5, and Shadow Lass by Mike Grell

Wow, where to begin with this piece? It’s truly one of the best in my collection, and it’s significant to me for a lot of reasons. I don’t often look for “meaning” in the ways that an opportunity to buy art comes into my life, but I suppose this piece is an exception to the rule. I had just gotten home from my first date with a very nice guy, hopped on eBay to do my usual round of searches for new art, and lo and behold, there it sat. A genuine, bona fide Mike Grell Legion painting, in colour, featuring some of my absolute favourite Legionnaires. I remember gawking at the eBay listing and saying to myself “What is this, a sign or something??” As it turns out, I think it must have been. That very nice guy is now my very nice boyfriend, and one day he’ll be my very nice husband.

I actually shied away from buying this piece at first, though. It was an auction listing, and the starting bid was far out of what I was comfortable spending on art at the time. The auction end date came and went, with no one bidding on it… but then I got a new job. And I happily spent most of my first two paychecks on winning this piece once it was relisted!

Published Legion art by Grell is decently hard to come by, and rightfully expensive. I might not ever be in a position to add any to my collection, so I’m very glad to have this as a beautiful Grell piece that, while unpublished, is still a phenomenal example of his work! It features three of my favourite Legionnaires, and in terms of the piece’s composition, I love that each of them has a different skin colour. It helps distinguish the characters from each other, and adds some great visual variety to the piece. He also gave each character a very distinct facial structure, which is best seen in how Saturn Girl’s face is a bit taller and squarer, while Shadow Lass’s is much more rounded. I also love the colouring technique Grell used, only really filling in the outlines and letting the viewer’s eye do the rest. It’s a really lovely effect! And every single line of ink is so carefully placed, whether it was made to delineate the characters or to shade them. I really couldn’t ask for a better non-published piece of Grell’s work to call my own.

Apparently, a friend of the eBay seller had commissioned this piece from Grell at a convention, and given it to the seller when he no longer wanted it. I’m very, very glad to be able to give it a good home in my collection.