Q&A with Brian Keohan

Which piece in your gallery is your favorite and why?

I've got quite a bit of great stuff, but Kitty Pryde by John Byrne is probably my favorite. Kitty is my favorite character, so having a piece of art by her co-creator is pretty cool (especially when the creator is someone as good as John Byrne).

Please tell us a little about yourself.

I'm the manager of a comic shop in Conway AR, Conway Comics. I try to get to at least one big con a year (like C2E2 or ECCC) and a few smaller ones as the come up. I've been reading comics since I was thirteen, beginning with the X-Men and expanding from there as I grew up.

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

I've been collecting art since about 2001 or so. That is roughly when I started going to cons and seeing that people could get sketches from their favorite artists was pretty exciting. I focus mainly on sketches/commissions, but I do have some pages and covers. I enjoy the exclusivity of sketches/commissions. Even if my Marshall Rogers Batman looks just like everyone else's, it's still a bit different and it's the one that he drew for me.

How do you display/store your collection at home?

I live in a decent sized apartment, so a lot of my art is hanging on the walls, but most are just in portfolios.

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

I've been lucky enough to get art from a lot of my favorite artists. There are plenty of unattainable artists out there (like Barry Windsor-Smith), but here are my somewhat reasonable list of artists I would like for commissions. I recently realized that Marc Silvestri is the only major X-Men artist from the Claremont era that I am missing, so he is one for sure. Milo Manara is an amazing artist, and pretty unattainable in the US, but my friend Edd Walker ended up with one, so I'll put Manara on the list. I have always loved Gary Frank's art since the Hulk years. I have a Shazam page, but I would love an actual commission. Sara Pichelli is an artist that I have really come to love in the last few years. One of the Guardians of the Galaxy would be great. I really love Mahmud Asrar's work on the All New X-Men, so I would love to see him at a show.