Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bryan lee o'malley, Comics, entertainment, oni, original art, scott pilgrim

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Ink And Paper

Published Thu, 03 Apr 2014 17:30:25 -0500

Last updated Fri, 04 Apr 2014 04:46:18 -0500

If you've ever collected anything, you know that the process of collecting something is a multiverse full of Roads Not Taken. That thing you had the chance to buy but didn't. That thing you shouldn't have spent money on but did anyway. That thing you could have gotten, if only you'd been there an hour earlier.

That time in 1986 at SDCC with Frank Miller sitting in artist's alley selling Dark Knight Returns pages. Did you stop or did you walk on by? That time your local shop had that Dave Gibbons Watchmen page for sale that you thought about buying a hundred times. That time in the early 90s that a Miller Daredevil cover sold via a usenet post for a few hundred bucks. If only you'd seen that in time.

When I mentioned Nick Pitarra's original splash page from The Manhattan Projects #18 recently, and noted the increasing interest among collectors in a range of modern comic art from important titles outside the superhero mainstream, it came to my attention that a large batch of Bryan Lee O'Malley Scott Pilgrim original art pages from all six volumes were about to come to market. Scott Pilgrim is the kind of cultural marker that original art collectors tend to cherish: the meaning of it goes beyond the page, and encompasses a fandom which has pushed well outside the boundaries of the mainstream comics audience.

There has been a little Scott Pilgrim art on the market before, but nothing in this kind of quantity. When last we spoke of Scott Pilgrim art here, it was in 2010 to note the offering of the cover of Scott Pilgrim Volume One, which ended up going for just north of $5000.

But forget about that number for a moment, and I see most of the pages available are far less expensive anyway. If you're a Scott Pilgrim fan, if you think it's important and you like original art, the question becomes whether this will seem like a Road Not Taken moment, with the benefit of hindsight a few years down the road. I can't answer that question for you, but I will note this: I'd asked artist rep Felix Lu to let me know when he was going to post these pages for sale, and he left me a message a couple hours ago. By the time I got back to him, he seemed… very busy.