My second acquisition from Jesus Merino at the Wizard World Toronto show.  We discussed at length the input an inker has with a finished piece and afterwards he gave me a fantastic price for this cover.  Merino told me he filled in the details below Superman; Pacheco had put in a few lines.  Bob McLeod recently said in a Q & A at Toronto ComiCON that in his day the penciller handled the page layout, composition and character positioning while the inker fleshed those out.

Another great item from Wizard World Toronto.  Leonard Kirk had a crazy stack of pages for sale at a deep discount and I spotted this one.  The style seems softer and not his usual superhero work: I really like this piece.  Kirk said it wasn’t published: he was trying out new paper and a new blue pencil.  It doesn’t come out in his published work but he has a naugthy sense of humour.

My first piece from Wizard World Toronto 2011 came from Jesus Merino.  This was his first trip to Canada and wasn’t sure about sketch and page pricing, convention set up and such.  We had a great chat and I was able to post the main points.  As a thank you he gave me this sketch!

Jeff Lemire visited my local comic shop Big B Comics for their anniversary sale.  He was doing signings and free sketches.  I requested Dr. Fate and offered reference material but he said he didn’t need it; very nice indeed.

My last purchase from Fan Expo 2010 in Toronto this past weekend.  Chris had a giant stack of pages at his table that he was selling for $40 each: I flipped through and spotted this one featuring Tom Strong.

Much to my dismay Darwyn Cooke was not sketching at this year’s Fan Expo; luckily he did bring along some finished pieces.  He had an amazing full colour Superman that I would have loved to own but it would have taken my entire show budget so it was a no go.  The next best piece was purchased by the person just ahead of me: it was a great full colour torso shot of Powergirl.

I flipped through the art portfolio and spotted this beauty; while I’m not a huge Powergirl fan the single colour work grabbed my attention.  A welcome addition to my collection.

My star piece from Fan Expo 2010 in Toronto.  Paolo Rivera made his first appearance and was doing water colour headshots.  I loved his recent Marvel 70th Anniversary work and requested Golden Age Namor.  The water was a great touch.

Chris Sprouse was at Fan Expo again this year and I was able to get a great sketch from him; this time I remembered to request he leave the pencils on the page so his process is visible.  He continues to keep his rates incredibly low for both sketches and comic pages.

Here’s my second patch of Joe Palooka pages.  Another cute two page story with vintage art.

Some more items from my recent comic shop purchase.  They’re clearly labeled Joe Palooka issue 52 pages 29 and 30, but no creator credits.  A bunch of internet searching didn’t get me closer to that information, but Comic Book Database shows this issue drawn by Joe Certa.  Unfortunately I can’t confirm if that’s the entire issue including backup features like Little Max.  These caught my eye because they were “twice up” art pages, common before the seventies when most comic art switched to size we’re used to now.  Page 29 is missing the masthead or logo for Little Max which would have been nice to have.