Alex Ross. Truly one of the Modern Masters in the comic game. Creating beautiful art for decades now, painting our favorite heroes with his realistic style. You can always tell a Ross piece immediately. One of my goals was to one day have a beautiful Alex Ross Spidey painting hanging up in the gallery. Only problem...his work fetches MeGa BaNk!!!
Yeah, covers of his Amazing Spider-Man can start at 15k (if you are lucky) and moon up to 30k. Not chump change and more than I can swing at this point in my life. That’s why I had to jump all over the opportunity to snag the cover art to Universe X Spidey when it popped up for sale a few months back.
This sucka is still costing me a disgusting amount. By far the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought myself outside of my house and car...but it’s still a bargain when looking at the bigger picture of what his work typically goes for.
I do not have this beauty yet as I still am in the process of paying it off, but I should have it first quarter of next year. The painting itself depicts a split face of 1/2 Spider-Man & 1/2 Spiders-Man from the Earth X storyline. With the painted area taking up a 10x15 area, this really striking image that will look beautiful displayed on my wall in a few months.
When I actually receive it, I’ll go into some more details on the painting itself, but there’s a bit more to the story of this book that I’d like to share with ya as it’s a rather interesting story.
This comic was initially released in January of 2001 and was part of the First Look Program that both Marvel & DC were a part of through distributor Diamond Comics. This program basically cost retailers a few extra bucks each week and in return, retailers received a smattering of books to show off as a preview to their customers for the following week. It was basically an assortment of preview books fir the following week. This book was part of that program and the reason it was, is the only reason that copies exist of the recalled edition.
Ya see...this book was sent out to the hundreds of retailers that participated in that First Look Program. It was immediately after these were received by retailers that a discovery was made which had Marvel & Diamond destroy and pulp all the copies slated to be sent for the following week before reprinting with a “corrected” version for the masses.
The Recalled Version sent out in the preview program had a little shade thrown towards the most recent Editor in Chief Bob Harras who had just been fired by Marvel. The artist Al Milgrom, threw a hidden message for readers...voicing his displeasure with the recently fired editor.
It’s so minor that most folks would have missed it, but on one specific page...in the background...on the bindings of the books on a bookshelf...that’s where the trouble started.
The spines read...
“HARRAS HA HA, HE'S GONE, GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH HE WAS A NASTY S.O.B”
Turns out Harris was not well liked at Marvel as apparently...he was kinda an all around doucher. Regardless, the “slander” was noticed before the supply was released to shops, copies were destroyed and replaced, and a small handful of a few hundred of the originals are still floating out there to this day as they become a bit harder and harder to find.
Milgrom was fired for the petty yet hilarious antics...then quietly rehired a few weeks later once the smoke cleared. What was left...was a genuinely cool Spidey collectible! I still have my copy of this book somewhere in the abyss as I was part of that program and just kept all those books. I gotta try and dig it out sometime soon.
It’s a really tough book to come across....the recalled copy at least. As of this moment there are a handful up for sale on eBay. Average prices seem to see raw decent looking copies commanding $100-$150 bucks with high grade slabs bringing in several times that. All in all, a really interesting and fun story about a cool snippet in comic book history. Can’t wait to get that art!!!
Thanks for reading along!
Blewitt