Friday 23 February 2007

Bert Christman

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I know of at least one other full, possibly unpublished Scorchy and maybe one or two more.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.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is amazing! What an awesome piece of history. Bert Christman was the best!