Strikeforce Morituri #13 Cover Art

To say I am well beyond pleased to own this particular cover art for Strikeforce Morituri #13 by Brent Anderson would be an epic understatement.. I love it for a multitude of reasons - one of which will sound absolutely unbelievable when I tell the story below.

But first, the image itself is great - featuring a fun 'old vs. new/hero vs hero' clash between all of the then-current living members of the team, half of which are making their very first appearances in this issue. There is only one other cover from the series that features as many or more team characters in one single image as this one [see issue #20 - wouldn't I just love to own that cover art too, haha!].

The character 'Wildcard' in the very centre of the image was instantly my most favourite of the new Morituri team when I first read this comic back in 1987, and I was quite devastated when he was also the first to die in his very first outing this issue. It was a gruesome death too, a vivid scene which has always stuck with me. It is a real joy to have at least one image of him in my art collection.

Now for the unbelievable part. This cover art is extra special to me because of a crazy experience I had with this issue back in the day. Not a word of a lie, I saw this exact cover in a dream - about a week before it was out for sale.

I was already a huge fan of the series when this issue came out in late August of 1987 but I mostly had just a smattering of issues found in random convenience store newsstands around town at that point. At the time I had only just discovered a used book store in my hometown that had a dedicated direct market comic book section in it a few months earlier that year. I was still just as likely to buy my comics from other stores as from that comic shop, as it was pretty far away from my home and I was only around 13 at the time. I did not even know you could see advance previews of comics in flyers or order catalogues or the like yet.

So one night in August of '87 I had a very vivid dream that I went into a convenience store in my neighbourhood & looked at their magazine rack, and saw the latest issue of Strikeforce Morituri sitting on the shelf. In my dream I picked it up and looked closely at the cover, and saw an image of a whole bunch of super hero characters facing off against each other, and it was against a black background. I didn't recognize half of them on the right side but I did note little details like the black lady in the green dress & the guy with the skull on his chest. I picked out all the ones I knew that were [mostly] on the left, and I had the very strong impression of it being an image of 'Morituri vs Morituri'. I might have even seen that large tagline below the title in my dream because I also still remember having the equally strong impression that it was a double-sized issue. When I woke up the image stuck with me and I thought it was cool and wouldn't it be neat if they did an issue like that...

About a week later I went into that local convenience store looking for comics to buy and saw THE VERY SAME IMAGE from my dream sitting there on the shelf. I was absolutely shocked as I picked up the issue and saw all the same details as I dreamt about, but crystal clear in reality in my hands! I could not get home fast enough to read the issue and the reason why I didn't recognize half of the characters in my dream became obvious as they were all new.

Because of that particularly unbelievable experience, this cover art is absolutely a grail piece in my collection. For it to have found its way into my hands nearly 40 years after that happened feels like the closing of a loop. Of all the people in the world who could possibly own it, I am its custodian now. I'm certainly not the first to own it but I'm quite possibly the only person on earth who saw it in a prescient dream before it was available in public.