I'm in a conundrum. I just got back some original art pages from Marvel, and I REALLY like these pages. But with a mortgage hanging over my head, my urge is to sell them ASAP. There's a lot of artists out there in the same position...we go through periods of feast or famine. We're general contractors, like my next-door neighbor who does landscaping and general handyman work. The time of famine is tough.

   When you hold onto your favorite pages, you far-too-infrequently pull them out of whatever box or portfolio you stash them in, admire them, then misplace them somewhere else amongst your mess. You could frame all of them, but it's costly and takes up a lot of wall space. So you'll sit on them for a year or so, then get tired of looking at these things of beauty that take up space ("You lazy art!! I can make money off 'a you, and you just sit there freeloading!").

   There's a certain attachment to something you've helped create, even if it's just the inking aspect. The pages I keep aren't necessarily the covers or 'money-shot' splash pages. They're usually ones that I feel I nailed dead-on to the best of my ability, and that doesn't come often. Even with the white-out areas, there's a certain three-dimensional quality where the inks are applied when you look waaaaay up close at them. I like pages where I'll add white-out strands of hair in a black area.

   With some pages, there's no internal debate about keeping vs. selling. For example, if it's just minor characters sitting in a movie theater, you know you won't be able to give that page away. I've held onto some pages from The Ray and Route 666 that have had a caricature of me drawn in as a bit player. Most desirous among art collectors are costumed superheroes or 'hot babes'. Being neither of those, the pages featuring my likeness cater to a niche market of one: me. Everything else is highly negotiable.

   There's a lot of great pages I've had the honor of participating in, and it's not easy to let my babies go.
My consolation, if not the validation, is in the final printed product. The tiny pamphlet with bright colors that bears my name. I remember the first time I saw my surname printed on the cover of Image's Freak Force #11, and my full name printed on the inside cover with the credits. I was sitting on the front stoop of our house, opening and closing the comic, almost expecting my name to not be there the next time I checked.

   When I visit the folks in Pittsburgh, I usually hand out a bunch of comics for friends and relatives. My favorite experience occurred at my dad's local Italian-American club. Dad was going to drive Karen and I to the airport, but we had a few hours to kill. I shared stogies with these old Italian men with fascinating Old World features playing Bocce Ball, which, to the uninitiated, is also called lawn bowling. Eventually my dad brings up in conversation that I'm a comic book artist and asks if I have any copies left in my carry-on bag. I pull out a comic. An old man scans it up and down, looking for something as if it were a legal document. My dad points to the Geraci name on the cover. A few seconds of silence, then the old man said "...Dat's CLASS!"

   What's cute is that they all, to a person, say "I'm going to put this in plastic, and in ten years, it's gonna be worth something!" The only one that I can honestly say was a good investment was Birds of Prey # 8, which began the romantic relationship between Nightwing and Oracle. I should have suspected something was up when I'd give books away at conventions, B.O.P. # 8 was snagged up almost immediately. That issue actually peaked a couple years ago at $46.00! Unless DC does another Birds of Prey trade paperback, I won't have a copy of the story for myself! I'm especially proud that issue shot up in value due to the story and art, no particular gimmick, just a love story written by Chuck Dixon, pencilled by Greg Land and inked by me. Even when I worked on that issue, I knew there was something special about it.

   "I'm going to put this in plastic, and in ten years, it's gonna be worth something!" I've never had the heart to break it to anybody in my family that Freak Force #11 is not Blue Chip Stock, although it always will be to me.