Rune 1 – Page 1 (colour guide)

There was a news story in March this year about a woman in Pennsylvania who in a local auction had seen a charcoal drawing of a nude she had liked the look of so she got her husband to bid on it. He ended up winning the lot for just $12 and now there is the strong likelihood that the work is an original Renoir. There is the slim possibility that the above picture is my much more modest original comic art version of that incident; although I have to say, and I would guess that a fair few Barry Windsor-Smith fans would feel the same, that given the choice between a BWS drawing and an equivalent French Impressionist sketch then I would go for the BWS every time.

When I was growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s I knew only one other boy who was heavily into comics and although he was a Marvelite and I was more DC-oriented we were in total agreement that there were three artists who were not only head and shoulders but also thorax and abdomen above everyone else: Neal Adams, Berni[e] Wrightson, and Barry[Windsor-]Smith. Although 40+ years have elapsed and the chasing pack, infused with new blood, has narrowed the gap with the three frontrunners I still maintain, and probably always will, that those three are the greatest – each quite different from each other and especially excellent in the genre with which they are most associated but they could turn their hand to any subject matter. Bernie is my favourite, but it is pretty much a photo finish between those three. I mean if I could take one piece away from the stupendous Dawn of the Superheroes OA art exhibition (in which all three artists were represented), and it would not be an easy decision, then it would be the BWS Joker, and I am just sorry that that illustration from the Batman 3-D album and the one cover he did for Batman: Black and White were the only times he worked on DC characters.

Up until the end of January this year I used to look forward to Thursdays – the day that Heritage would release their lots for the Wednesday Comic Art auction which would take place two weeks from then – in the way I used to look forward to Wednesdays in the past because that was the day the bookmakers would take delivery of and then distribute their weekend football betting coupons.

I was scrolling through the lots one Thursday when something in one of the thumbnails caught my eye: a job-lot of 20 items listed under one of the artists who had signed their work. In the bottom left of the thumbnail was a drawing that to me looked like it was by BWS. However, no matter how close I zoomed in on it it remained stubbornly low-res; too low-res to make out the text that had been written directly onto the drawing in the top right. I would check in to see the listing – I won’t lie – several times a day to see if it had been updated with info about BWS at which point the bidding would then spike. However, the description was not amended and so the price remained resolutely low three-figured. I began to wonder what was going on; what was I seeing that no one else could? And then I realised that everyone was keeping their cards close to their chest; like me, they were not even putting a bid in as that would inflate the number of bidders and draw unwanted attention to the lot. I expected this to be the case until the live bidding on the item started and then the price would explode.

When Legion fan and CAF member Margaret Leigh posted her Phil Jimenez Guy Gardner/Legion page recently she said that she was happy to snag it and “the auction stayed sensible”. I like that expression and I can echo it because the job-lot of drawings were won by me for exactly the same figure as she paid for the Phil Jimenez. I could stretch the comparison even further when I say the auction was overly sensible as if you divide the final price by the number of (20) lots then the above drawing was about twenty bucks – less than the cost of the first convention sketch I was ever charged for which was that of Garrett and Elektra by Bill Sienkiewicz back at UKCAC ’87. How insane is that? Conversely, you could say that my final bid was an act of stupid, reckless abandon because it was a three-figure bet on my “expertise”.

[Some of you will know that back in 2021 I paid what I thought was an eye-watering sum of money for a convention sketch, and I was so convinced of its authenticity (the listing had a photo of the artist midway through drawing the sketch) that even when the auction house contacted me to say that I had a forgery and that I was going to be refunded I replied that if it was alright with them I was going to keep the drawing and they could keep the payment. It was only after I contacted the official rep for the artist who in turn got in touch with the artist of the drawing and they confirmed it was a fake (thanks again Mr M and Mr D) that I conceded that I had been hoodwinked, bad and improper. I mention this to stress only that my “eye” is far from infallible.]

(cont)