Hi all!

Welcome to the Original Comic Art thread! A (hopefully!) friendly kind of place to kick back and share info about this fascinating part of the wider comic book community.

I’ve been collecting (bagging and boarding) comics (mainly DC and Marvel) for over 30 years, however I only became aware of the accessibility of buying original comic art relatively late. I bought my first published page (a Wolverine full page splash) in 2005 and was carried forward by the sheer exhilaration of this to acquire more art that was meaningful and inspirational to me. There has been a ‘through put’ of art for me: I have sold on art, sometimes with a financial profit, but sometimes with a financial loss. Through this process my own collecting ‘focus’ has clarified, and I have been fortunate enough to acquire art that does seem to rightfully ‘belong’ in my collection. A few years ago it became clear that I had to change my buying habits. Now I’ve reduced my buying to a couple of small commissions or ‘con-sketches’ a year (if that). I still check out comic art ‘on-line’ though most days!

My favourite website for doing this? That’s easy: www.comicartfans.com

Comic Art Fans is a great website, however I must emphasise a WARNING! It’s NOT (in my opinion) a family-friendly website, due to the substantial amount of nudity and sexist art on display there. The web-site host team, led by the web-site owner Bill Cox, do a great job of trying to police this as best they can: mainly by encouraging gallery posters to display adult-themed art as NWS (Not Work Safe) meaning that you have to be a member and ‘logged in’ if you wish to view it, HOWEVER, clearly not all posters do this, meaning for example that if you click on the ‘New Comic Art’ button it really is Russian roulette what you’ll see, meaning that perusing the site is definitely not for kids. I think this is a shame, and I’ve asked Bill a couple of times during on-line communication whether he’d consider setting up a ‘kids’ or ‘family friendly’ sister site, a bit like Netflix/Netflix Kids, but it sounds like this would be too big an undertaking and maybe it’s not clear there’d be a demand for it (I think there would!).

Like I say though, MOST of the art on CAF IS amazing AND family friendly, such as these GEMS here:

An AMAZING Sal Buscema Commission, featuring Sal himself:
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryP...35&GSub=117767

This Fabok Batman Eternal #1 cover:
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryP...55&GSub=155061

Final Crisis #6 Cover:
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryP...20&GSub=154560

Fantastic Batman and Robin commission by Tony Daniel:
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryP...59&GSub=151525

and so many AWESOME historic covers such as this King Kirby and Joe Simon 1942 (!!!) Adventure Comics cover featuring Manhunter:
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryP...141&GSub=46261

These are just a few random goodies from CAF!

Anybody else out there love perusing original comic art?? Either on-line, in conventions, or your own collections, or any which way but loose? What types of comic art are you most attracted to? What’s been your most fun/inspiring/etc interaction with a comic artist about comic art? So many things to discuss…..!

:-)