Q&A with Sean Clarke

Which piece in your gallery is your favorite and why?

Hard to beat Mike Ploog's Werewolf By Night #13 splash page. I copied this art incessantly as a kid, and it was very influential to my nascent development as a fledgling artist. Every page in this story (as well as WBN #2) is like pure, uncut catnip to me.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Pre-cataclysmic Atlantis c. 20,000 BC. At the time Atlantis was ruled by barbarian tribes. I was native to a tribe settled in the Tiger Valley of Atlantis. However, the valley and my tribe were destroyed by a flood while I was still a toddler. I managed to survive and spend a few years as a feral child.    I was eventually captured by the Sea-Monkey tribe and was adopted into it. However, as an adolescent I attempted to prevent an execution and was consequently exiled from Atlantis.   Following a couple of years as a galley slave, I tried the life of a pirate between my late adolescence and my early twenties. My fighting skills and courage allowed me to become captain of my own ship. I set out creating a fearsome reputation for myself in the seas surrounding Atlantis and Thuria. Married with two college-aged daughters, I lost my ship and crew in a naval battle off the coast of Valusia but once again survived. I settled in Massachusetts as a human service wage slave. In 2006, I launched twice weekly, year round open-participation life drawing sessions at Amherst College. My figurative art hobby proved short-lived, as I was soon captured by the Valusians and imprisoned in a dungeon. My captors soon offered me a choice: execution or service as a gladiator. I chose the latter. A lifelong collector of comics, music and art, I proved an effective combatant and gained fame in the arenas of the capital. Tuzun Thune the Enabler helped me in regaining my freedom… freedom I wasted by squandering all available (and unavailable) meager funds on comic art like a damn fool.

How long have you been collecting comic art and what prompted you to start?

I purchased my first comic art, a mundane Barry Smith Kazar page, from cartoonist Peter Laird at his comics shop (actually a jerry-rigged janitor's closet) "The Little Used Book Store" in Northampton, MA, when I was probably around thirteen years old. I think I paid $40, which was a substantial hill of cash back then. Little did I realize what other comic art $40 could buy in 1977! I was making my own comics at the time, and the idea of owning any original art by Barry Smith, who I worshipped as a god, was very compelling! Sadly, it was many years before I bought any more comic art, as I was focused on completing runs of the Marvel comics I liked.

How do you display/store your collection at home?

I store my comic art in a cool, dry and dark place in order to maintain its efficacy, potency and purity, and to protect it from any tangible pleasure that "owning" it might bestow. I use flat files to hide my precious from the yellowface, but a few same-size color xeroxes on card stock migrate from the flat files to the comic room/studio walls.

What are your top five most wanted original pages or commissions?

1. My ultimate grail quest and the unruly passion of my collecting hobby is to reunite Gene Colan and Bill Everett's "And To All A Good Night" Black Widow story from Amazing Adventures #5.
2. I am also seeking any/all Colan/Everett pages from their two other Black Widow ten-pagers, Amazing Adventures #'s 3 and 4.
3. Hell yeah! Colan/Everett romance art from from My Love #13, 15 and 16, and any pages from Captain America #136 and 137, and pages from Tales To Astonish #79 and 85 (Sub-mariner stories). Let's go all in on this madness!
4. Bill Everett Black Widow pin-up from Daredevil #81, and ANY Everett inked Black Widow (DD #83, Amazing Adventures 3-8)
5. Only five? Let's go with any/all pages from Mike Ploog's Werewolf By Night #13 (but anything from his other issues I like, too).
Truthfully, I like all kinds of art, but if I had to narrow it down, those are my most desired pages.