VISIONS OF AN ICON: SUPERMAN-AUCTION

The following painting is currently being auctioned on ebay along with a bunch of others as part of a fundraising effort for the Joe Shuster Awards. Details below from the Joe Shuster Commitee.


Visions of an Icon Superman art auctions begin tonight on eBay - Sim, McFarlane
Back in June we had a number of different artists submit their version of the Man of Steel in honour of his 70th birthday and to honour his co-creator, Joe Shuster, for whom the Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards have been named.

42 pieces were submitted, and were displayed twice as an art exhibit - once on June 14th on the date of the presentation of the 4th Annual Joe Shuster Awards, and again in early November as part of the Speakeasy Comic Art show in Toronto.

Starting tonight, we will begin auctioning off the pieces on eBay as part of our fundraising efforts for the 2009 Awards.

The 42 pieces can be viewed here: http://comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=66580

11 auctions start tonight (Monday Nov. 24)- artists included are:
Francis Manapul
Scott Chantler
Jeff Lemire
Alexander Perkins
Sam Agro
Eric Kim
Ryan Snook
Colin Upton
Agnes Garbowska
Ed Northcott
Dave Sim

11 auctions start tomorrow night (Tuesday Nov. 25) - artists included are:
Marcus To
Gabriel Morrissette
Fiona Smyth
Dave Ross
Ty Templeton
Michael Cho
Kent Burles
Tom Grummett
Noel Tuazon
Greg Hyland
Todd McFarlane

Except for three pieces, all of the initial offerings are no reserve auctions, with a starting price of $49.99. We'll be doing some more next week as well.

Please note: We have set reserves for the Sim, McFarlane and Grummett contributions that we feel are fair for pieces of this quality.

Please take a look, and hopefully something there will catch your eye.

All monies raised from the sale of these pieces, after fees are paid, goes towards next year's awards.

I will be selling these under my own eBay userid "kevthemev" instead of the low feedback "joe_shuster_awards" id.

Auctions start at 8PM EST (both nights) and finish before 9PM EST.

Here's a link to my store. JSA art will be listed under a new store category "Joe Shuster Awards Art Auctions":

http://Support-the-Collectors-Society.com/Kevthemevs-Comics-and-Comic-Art_W0QQsspagenameZMEQ3aFQ3aSTQQtZkm

Mad Max

The Real Essex County

Last week was Top Shelf week at Portland bookstore "Powell's "website. They periodically have guest authors posting on their blog. Nate Powell, Alex Robinson, James Kolchaka, Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger and myself all contributed posts. This was my entry which went up last Thursday...

All of my stories start with the setting, and even more than that, location totally informs how my characters and plots grow and take shape. The Essex County books (Tales From The Farm, Ghost Stories, The Country Nurse), all started when I decided to do a book set in the tiny Canadian farming town where I grew up.
I’ll admit, the rusted old farm equipment, teetering windmills and concrete grain elevators that littered the wide open fields of Essex County meant little to me growing up there. I couldn’t wait to move to the big city. But, ten years after leaving EC, and living in said Big City, the sparse lonely landscaped of my childhood started to evoke a strong, almost guttural pull inside of me. Moreover, they seemed like a natural fit with the jagged, expressive inking style that had become the earmark of my cartooning. And, as soon as I sat down and started scratching out drawings, all of those lonely roadside power-lines, and rickety old farmhouses quickly became equally lonely and rickety old characters. The “rural decay” of southwestern Ontario became the rural decay at the heart of inhabitants of my fictional Essex County. And from there plot and narrative structure sprung up.


To my surprise, location, or more specifically places where I spent significant parts of my childhood, has continued to inform the work I do, well after the completion of the Essex County Trilogy. My next two projects, while quite different in tone, are both set in the Northern Canadian fishing community where my family has vacationed almost every August of my life. The old bait and tackle shops, lakeside diners, aluminum fishing boats, earthworms and walleye, and the smell of gasoline coming of an outboard motor are my new drug. They have provided an equal amount of inspiration for me as I work on The Nobody, an original, two-color graphic novel for DC’s Vertigo imprint. That tale takes The Bandaged Stranger from H.G. Wells’ classic “The Invisible Man”, and recasts him as an oddball drifter taking up residence in a tiny northern lakeside Motel in 1994. And, my next Top Shelf GN (sorry too early to spill the beans on that one) will be equally entrenched in a tiny Canadian fishing village.


For me, as a storyteller, it all starts with the place, once I have that, the characters and story all come easily. Which poses the question: I wonder what I’ll do when I run out of places that I lived as a kid? Probably go back home to Essex County again for another round I suppose.

Friends with Blogs...

My friends, and fellow Canadian ink-slingers Zach Warton andDiana Tamblyn both have blogs that I have yet to link to.

They are both amazing cartoonists, Zach has a book coming next year from Drawn and Quarterly about the Klondike gold rush that will be a beauty.

And Diana is working on a Graphic Novel about Canadian Scientist Gerald Bull. In her own words " Bull was considered by many to be one of the most brilliant scientists of the twentieth century. His research led him across the globe, from Canada, to the Pentagon in the U.S., to Barbados, South Africa and Iraq – where he developed the “Supergun” for Saddam Hussein, and ultimately to Brussels, where he was assassinated in 1990."

Can't wait for both!

Jim Mooney

Thanks to one of my blog readers for pointing out that the Supergirl pose I swiped was from this Jim Mooney pic! Great stuff.

Supergirl and The Doom Patrol

A couple more recent pieces I did, the first was a gift for my new comics pal Sterling Gates, who also happens to be the current writer of DC's monthly Supergirl title. The pose itself was swiped from an awsome bronze-aged pic, but I can't figure out who the original artist was?

Anyways the other is just a fun piece I did as I read The Doom Patrol Archives Vol. 1 this week.