Back in the 80's, we used to have artists come and visit the local comic shows in the Washington DC area. Rich Rankin and Neil Vokes were frequent visitors as they lived in Pennsylvania. On one of their visits in 1985, I started picking through Rich's pages and found this splash page. OK, there were no characters on it, but I liked the composition and it was a splash page! Rich had it marked for $20, but being a 14 year old kid, he let me have it for the paltry sum of $5! (Thanks again Rich if you're out there somewhere.)

After that, I started picking up pages from other artists that stopped by the area. I bought a few pages from the new Amazing Spider-man artist Ron Frenz and then a few months later, I ran into a guy named Mike Zeck! That was the beginning of the end!

A few years later, tragedy struck... being a budding artist in the late 80's, I was working on drawing a poster at my drawing table, when a bottle of purple ink spilled into my art drawer. Unfortunately, that was where I was keeping my original art stash at the time and most of the pieces in the drawer were splashed with purple ink. A page from X-Men #14 (the first Sentinels) took the brunt of it - the bottom third of the page was covered in ink. This page only got a little splatter at the bottom. I was so angered that I ended up giving all those pages away to Jim Warden who was starting up a budding art business at the time. Those pages including an X-Men #14 page (Kirby/Roth/Colletta), the ASM #268 splash, the Belasco Marvel Universe pin-up, a Magik page, and a Marvel Saga splash (all by Frenz). I thought this page was part of the pile I gave away, but low and behold, 20 years later, I find it again! I know where the X-Men #14 page went - I'd be interested where those other pages went).

Here it is now, for all to enjoy... Even though it's not one of the most valuable pieces in my collection, it still brings me joy every time I look at it. That's what art should be all about.

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