More pieces added to my Comic Art gallery!

You know how much I love The Authority, right? The series was to comics what summer blockbusters are to Hollywood – filled with over-the-top action sequences, superheroes facing apocalyptic, planet-threatening problems and dealing with them the simplest way possible – maximum violence. You might argue that the premise of such a series has as much substance as a Michael Bay film, but therein lies the difference. The writers in the first 29-issue run of The Authority were Warren Ellis and Mark Millar, two writers who know how to use comicbook ( I nearly said ‘cinematic’ just now) violence to maximum effect, AND write a worthy cerebral story. The first twelve issues that Ellis wrote were illustrated by Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. Millar took over on issue 13, after a major change in the status quo, and along with Frank Quitely, Gary Erskine, Chris Weston and Art Adams, set to make his run a worthy successor to Ellis’s.

Enough with the blabber already. Those of you following my art collection avidly know that my Quitely Authority page kickstarted Mark two of my collecting phase, the phase where I spiralled downward towards complete art addiction. Recently I got my hands on a Bryan Hitch Authority page, from issue 11, a page that features the whole team. Love it! Then there is a Gary Erskine page from the last issue of the run, #29, which features Angie, the character we know as The Engineer brought back to take her rightful place in the team.

I picked up a page inked by Gary Erskine, over Chris Weston’s pencils. The series is called The Filth, and it’s one of Grant Morrison’s most convoluted storylines. Chris Weston is a highly-underrated British artist whose eye for detail and realistic penmanship brings to mind the works of Brian Bolland. The page features the first appearance of Dimitri, who is a talking chimpanzee, and an assassin, and a staunch communist to boot. Dimitri, needless to say, is a character whose coolness levels will make you weep. There was also a splash page from the second volume of Invisibles, also by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston, that I added to my gallery. I love Weston’s work more and more everytime I see his blog. He’s currently doing a series called The Twelve, which I will pick up once it’s complete.

There’s also a Starman page by Gene Ha, one of those classic pages from a classic story that lands in your lap when you’re least expecting it. It’s a piece I had been eyeing for the better part of a year, and suddenly was put for sale at nearly half its original offer price. Needless to say, I jumped on it faster than you can say “bundolo!”.

There’s also a neat Warrior woman pinup by Ernie Chan, that I picked up last year at Super-con, and got around to scanning just a couple of weeks ago. Three sequential Daredevil pages by the wonderful Gene Colan, again picked up sometime back, but these took quite some time to wend their way to India.

Last, for now at least, is a cover from Boneyard, a horror-comedy series written and drawn by Richard Moore. It’s a light-hearted comedy series, not too well-known, but featuring witty writing and engaging characters. This cover, incidentally, is that of the first issue of the series, which means that it features first appearances of all the characters.

Whaddya think?