Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 5 #2 pg 1

Barry Kitson is one of my very favourite comic artists, and this page here is pretty significant to me when it comes to my experience with his work. This is the first page of the first issue I ever read that featured his art! Within the first few pages of this issue, I had started to love his artstyle - the clean lines, the abundance of hatching and crosshatching, and the sheer amount of detail that he was able to fit into every panel. Now that I'm much more familiar with his art, I can also say that this page shows another staple of his work: his ability to draw alien creatures with a complexity that really emphasizes their otherworldliness. (It's a shame I missed out on posting this to the CAF monthly sketchbook with the tentacle theme!)

Neatly enough, my history with this page doesn't stop with it being the first example of Barry's art that I ever saw. Back in the fall of 2020, when I first discovered comic art, this page was listed on eBay. At the time, being young, foolish, and never having spent a lot of money on anything, I looked at the price and thought I could never justify spending "so much" on a piece of paper. It sold shortly afterwards, and once I properly began collecting art, you can bet I kicked myself more than once for letting this page pass me by.

Thankfully, it worked out in the end! The page made it to Heritage in 2021, and the guy who won it reached out to me a little while ago. He said he'd been asking around to see who might be interested in picking up a Kitson Legion page, and had been directed to me! I was so, so happy to have the chance to finally bring this page home. I think it served as a good - and very important - lesson for me, especially as a new collector. Even though it can be awful to miss out on a piece you really love, you can still very well get another chance at it, somewhere down the line.

Apart from the excellent alien and robot in the first panel, this page also features Cosmic Boy and Brainiac 5, bickering in the way that would become a staple of the Threeboot Legion. For anyone familiar with the L.E.G.I.O.N. series, which Barry was the main penciller on, you can see that Brainy bears a very clear resemblance to his ancestor Vril Dox, L.E.G.I.O.N.'s primary founder. I've always liked that Barry made them look so similar - not only because it makes sense, in-universe, but also because it's an appreciative nod to his older work on L.E.G.I.O.N.