Early Gallo

Many years ago, I was helping artist Gregory Gallo clean out his studio and we came across this piece (which he told me to throw in the trash!). I convinced him to let me keep it. It's a pretty early example of his work and is dated 6/27/84. The main image with the face seems to be painted on a piece of cardboard, and the background with the pink, white, and green is actually a very thick piece of wood - might have been a cabinet door or something. (click for larger image)

Fantastic Four 253 Pages!!

UPDATE: SOLD IN 2012!

Well, it seems I've come full circle in my collecting life. As outlined in my article for CFA-APA 62, owning a John Byrne Fantastic Four page is what set me down the path of collecting original art. Despite the fact that Byrne worked on over 60 issues, good pages are very scarce!! Over the years, I was able to acquire some nice pages, but all of them were from the later part of the run - the 260's, in which Byrne used marker to ink the pages. For the first time, I've finally been able to get a hold of some earlier pages from 253. These pages are all inked using the traditional "pens" (or crow quill), and they are amazing!! The inking is very crisp and detailed, and the blacks are very solid - a big difference from the later marker pages. Couple that with the great content - all four of the FF in battle, well, I couldn't ask for more.