I've got a confession to make. I've got a sick, weird and twisted hobby! It's called "Collecting original comic art".
Brrr... Makes you feel quite uncomfortable, uh?
Anyhoo, since I'm a rather strange mammal by nature I enjoy it. I get excited when packages filled with long forgotten dailies arrives in the mail. And I feel the adrenaline pulsing in my body those few seconds before an eBay aution ends. Can you think of a better way to spend a few hundred bucks? No, I didn't think so.
Here's what I won yesterday on eBay:
A panel/strip cut in half from "Scorchy Smith" drawn by Bert Christman who followed legendary artist Noel Sickles on the strip in 1936. This one is from, I believe, 1938.
More on Christman can be found here:
http://www.warbirdforum.com/scorchy.htm
Here's a photo of Christman taken from the magazine Alter Ego. Take a close look at the strips on his drawingboard...
And here's the other piece of Christman art I own. Yes, ta-da, it's the very same art as in the photo. Unfortunately cut, but still a beautiful mood piece by this master of light and shadow.
I know of at least one other full, possibly unpublished Scorchy and maybe one or two more.
I can't help wonder what happened to the rest of Christmans Scorchy Smith dailies, and the rest of the two strips I got.
Do you have one or know about one? Please let me know. I just want to know if they are out there somewhere.
That would make me happy. No joke.
That is amazing! What an awesome piece of history. Bert Christman was the best!
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