A quickie John Cassidy Captain America sketch:

P Craig Russell Sandman sketch (sorry for poor scan)

And just to be different, a sketch from Mark Oakley of character from Thieves and Kings whose name I'm blanking on.

Nice Kubert Batman, Ari.

And nice Kubert woman, Dave.

It aint quite over yet. The people at the Kubert School were extremely angry about UPS' negligence and filed a claim. Joe is apparently going on vacation soon, but agreed to do another piece for me once the claim is successfully closed.

Curiousity got the better of me and I inquired about the sketch in the original book. They keep photocopies at the office and I asked if a copy could be sent to me when this is resolved as well. Once they looked up #66, I was told that it may make me more angry, since it was apparently a stunning Sgt. Rock piece...... I'll post more when I have the book in hand.

Ari - if you want my penny worth of in-put on the issue, I'd say keep it in the book. It makes the whole of the volume that bit more special I think.

As an aside, I recently realised that I do own a couple of pieces of original art (though I rarely think about it in those terms, which I guess is silly). Unfortunately you probably would not be familar with many if any of the artists though.

The pieces in question, most of which are situated in albums or books, include a small sketch by Swedish cartoonist Max Andersson, I do believe his amazing Pixy is available in English (with a small blurb by Gaiman if I don't misremember), some doodles by another Swedish cartoonist Johan Wanloo in various of his comics (mostly "Örn Blammo" and "De äventyrslystna karlakarlarna"*), and (while possibly missing something) the main pride of the collection would 4 or 5 of my Valhall albums with a personalised illustration (made before my very eyes at the Gothenburg Book Fair on different occasions) by Peter Madsen himself (those I really wish I could show you guys.

I also do have two pieces I got on my 20th b-day from two friends who went to art high school. They actually had some comics stories published in an anthology comicbook here in Sweden (and it was nice enough stuff). Lost track of one of them, but have noticed that the other one went on to make a career as an actor, (mostly for TV and for kids). At any rate, when they arrived at my party they apologised for the lack of any proper present and then presented me with one drawing from each of them – one a more "realistically" depicted Viking in gray tones and the other a more "cartoony" weird stone creature in more garrish colours. I was awed by it, and couldn't understand why the heck they'd want to apologise for that very cool and unique gift.

Once more, having realised that I actually already have a small collection started, I feel all the more sad that I lack a scanner and the general means to show them to you. Maybe if I get to borrow a digital camera at some point I could manage that... If you all think it'd be suitable.

* "Örn Blammo" while a name would loosely translate as Eagle Blammo, the character's named after the majestic Eagle and the sound of an explosion. "De äventyrslystna karlakarlarna" would loosely translate into "The Adventurous Manly Men".

Fred,

I'm so happy that the Kubert School is working with you on this.  I know that they care deeply about what happens to Joe's art, so much so that they photocopy the pieces and keep an addres on file of where they sold the art.  Each piece done by Joe is precious.  I hope someone manges to find your piece, but if they don't, it is nice to know that you will still get your Kubert

Fred - good to hear that the Kubert School is really working with you to fix the whole thing as best as possible. :)

Joe - crikey, don't even say that!!! The thought of one unique piece of Kubert beauty going to such waste makes me feel somewhat nauseous. The thought it might not be a too unlikely scenario makes it all the worse, of course.  :(