I first met Shelton Drum at one of the comic book mini-cons he put on in Charlotte, NC back in the day. Some time later, he opened Heroes Aren't Hard to Find and I started buying my comics there. I did not visit his shop every week, as I lived outside the city, but, nevertheless, I became a regular customer as the years went by.
One day, I walked into his store, and after he greeted me by name, I asked for the books on my pull list. As he was looking them over before he handed them to me, he asked me if I was reading Daredevil. I read it off and on back in the Gene Colan days but, having limited funds, I had to choose my books carefully, and so I told him Daredevil was one of the books I weeded out for subscription purposes. He said there's this new artist drawing it named Frank Miller and I should give it a try. (It's funny how I can remember stuff like this)
Anyway, I took him up on his recommendation. While my memory isn't good enough to remember the exact issue, I do remember that Shelton had not steered me wrong. Daredevil quickly rose up to the top of my reading pile, and Frank Miller became one of my all-time favorite artists.
So, how did I end up with a great page like this one from one of the seminal American comic books of the 1980s? Well, one day, back in 1990, I left America and comics behind to teach English in Japan. I thought this would be a brief respite as I tried to figure out what I was going to do with my life after giving up a position as a reporter for a not so large and not so metropolitan newspaper, but, as fate would have it, I ended up getting married to a wonderful lady from Japan and staying here.
The thing was, I had a whole bunch of comic books that I had collected over practically my entire lifetime located in my childhood home back in the States, and there was no way to bring them back to Japan with me and store them in the small places I was living in back in those days. What to do?
I didn't have much time to sell them individually, so, on a trip back to NC, I called up Shelton and asked if he'd be interested in buying my collection. He was, and we got to a certain point in the negotiations that he did not want to go beyond but that I thought was not far enough, so, first, he offered to include comic books as part of a cash and trade deal. This did not make sense to me as I was selling my collection so, unless we were talking about Action Comics Number 1, why would I take comic books. At some point in the negotiations, however, original art was mentioned as a possible substitute for the comics.
One of the pages offered was this action page from Daredevil 165. I looked at it and thought, "What a page!" These are full Miller pencils (as opposed to the breakdowns he would do later), and at this point in his run, he was starting to get a real handle on the style he was developing. Further, Janson's inks were meshing with it perfectly. It quickly became part of the deal.
I love the Kubertesque silhouettes in the first panel and how the action just flows from one panel to the next. If that weren't enough, one of the titular "Arms of the Octopus" shows up in the last two panels. It's the kind of quality page a collector like me is, quite frankly, lucky to own. Thanks, Shelton!
That first panel is incredible and the rest is "just" a perfect choreography of a fight as only Miller can do. I love it !!! Congrats and thanks for sharing this beauty. If you ever wonder about letting it go, please contact me !
Forgive my lateness commenting on this awesome piece. I too have been a huge fan of Miller's work on this title. And this is a fine example of it. Daredevil in battle. That, and the arms of Octopus to boot. This rocks!
My word is this awesome!! Some of my best memories of buying/reading art is from this era. Still have them all, too! HUGE congrats and thanx for sharing.
