Gallery Comments by Eli Schwab

This commission by Mike Allred is just pure, unfiltered pop-cosmic brain explosion—in the best possible way.

It feels like someone took every corner of Eli’s fan favorites —Star Trek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the surreal linework of Jean Giraud, the wild sonic energy of Frank Zappa, and the cosmic melancholy of the Silver Surfer—and slammed it all together into one perfectly composed fever dream.

Allred’s signature style—clean, retro, and deceptively simple—somehow holds this insane mashup together. 

What really makes it sing is how joyful it feels. This isn’t just a checklist of cool stuff—it’s a love letter. Every element looks like it belongs because it’s filtered through Allred’s unmistakable lens: bold lines and a kind of cosmic optimism that turns chaos into harmony.

End result: totally bonkers, deeply personal, and ridiculously awesome—like flipping through someone’s entire fandom history in one perfectly “Allred” hallucination.

Something very pure about this page, with it's four symetrical panels atop that chaos of blades at the bottom. Kirby's prose, as well, is gorgeous and far-ranging. The king, in full control, at the top of his game. Superb. Incidentally, this page was once owned by the conceptual artist Steve Roden (RIP), a very discerning Kirby collector. So you did good!

Great to see this cover show up on CAF. Huge congrats and you beat me at auction, so you wanted the cover badly and that's cool.

Ah Hah! So you were the other Grendel maniac I was bidding against in the Kevin Smith auction!! Great pickup Eli - this is probably the best page in the series. Love those predator-esque dreadlocks that Prime has. Congrats, and love the Devil in Detail series - always a highlight of the day when you guys put out a new episode.

Great piece.