K-Mace

Thanks! It was my pleasure. I'd wanted to write something that did this incredible book justice. These Artist's Editions can be pricey, but I do believe that they offer great value. With the Miracleman Artifact Edition, after looking at only the cover and opening endpaper illustration of MM and Winter I kind of thought that I'd already gotten my money's worth. IMO, the designer(s) of this book ought to be nominated for an Eisner Award next year. Hopefully in another year or two we'll be discussing a Mark Buckingham Miracleman Artist's Edition...!

I got my copy of the Artifact Edition the week it came out, and it is truly a thing of beauty. It's an oversized book, about 15 x 20 inches, so it reproduces at full size the twice-up pages drawn by Garry Leach, Alan Davis and John Ridgway. The book's cover features John Totleben's artwork to the cover of Miracleman #14, framed in the MM colours of blue, red and gold, and the opening endpapers of the book are a breathtaking illustration by Totleben of Miracleman and Winter, one composed of hundreds of tiny little dots rather than a series of brushstrokes. The book is an Artifact Edition, so that means that there aren't complete stories within; only the pages that could be tracked down are included. The number of pages by Garry Leach that could be found don't fully represent his massive contribution to the early days of the Marvelman revival, but I'm still glad that they were included. For his interior pages, there are three from "And Johnny Comes Marching Home..." along with two from the Warpsmith story in Warrior #10. Also included are two of Leach's covers for Warrior, #2 and #10. (There is also a nice selection of Leach's artwork in the Gallery section at the back of the book, showcasing early colour designs and layouts, as well as the cover to the first Eclipse TPB and his gorgeous variant cover to Marvel's MM #16.) There's a larger selection of Alan Davis' work, 19 pages in total, including several splash pages: the first shot of the Zarathustra project, Gargunza's arrival at the crashed Qys ship, and the opening and closing splashes of "And Every Dog Its Day...". The pages are beautiful, and it made me wish all over again that Davis could have continued with the series, even for a little while, when it relaunched under Eclipse (although I'm well aware of the reasons why that didn't happen). I was also very pleased to see a few pages from John Ridgway's contribution to the series, "The Red King Syndrome", as well as two of Mick Austin's amazing covers for Warrior. Facing each other, Austin's covers make for a very impressive two-page spread. There are no Chuck Beckum pages in the book. Rick Veitch's two issues of Miracleman are well-represented by 18 pages of original art, including ten pages from the "controversial" birth issue. With that many pages in sequence, it's very easy to "read" almost the entire two issues in original art form. (Note that Veitch's art was done at the modern size of about 11x16, and Totleben's pages were about 12x17, so these sections of the book have a larger surrounding margin of white space around them, but even that extra space serves to present the pages nicely.) And for me, the star of this book is John Totleben, despite the illustrious company he keeps. His section contains sixty interior pages, six covers (but not #15) and a house ad, and the Gallery section at the back contains some of his pencil preliminaries, alternate cover designs, and a couple of commissions from about twelve years ago that were used as covers by Marvel for their reprints earlier this year. Totleben's pages are beautiful, nightmarish and haunting, and it's wonderful to have such a large selection of his original art collected here, showcasing the title's transition from science fiction into horror. I own quite a few Artist/Artifact Editions, but this Miracleman book is easily my favourite. Collecting a huge array of pages from the series' electrifying beginning in Warrior to that final, wonder-filled view from the top of Olympus, the Miracleman Artifact Edition is a true objet d'art.

So, what's the experts' opinion on the three copies of TMNT #1 that are up for auction tonight on ComicLink? Are their scans large enough to confirm that none of the books are second printings? I've been going cross-eyed staring at those scans trying to determine if that artifact is there...