When I began making money from book sales in the early noughties, I decided to spend a good chunk of ot on art. The first art I collected -- and the art that went on to form the bulk of my collection -- was comic art, from comics and graphic novels which I'd loved reading as a child, teenager and adult. It was a brilliant time to be a collector -- the internet had made it easier than ever to track down pages from my favourites comics, but the market for such works was fairly small, so the prices were very reasonable. I picked up bargains galore, and quickly built up a, frankly, quite astonishing collection -- I've been to a few comic art galleries over the last couple of decades, and in truth, they tended to pale in comparison with what I had at home!!

BUT at least the galleries had their works up on display -- most of mine were stored away in folders, because I simply didn't have anywhere near enough wall space to hang them all. Over the last few years, as the prices for comic art have risesn and risen, my thoughts turned to my collection, and I asked myself a simple, honest question -- "Do I REALLY need so much of it?!?"

The answer was no, so I undertook the task of going through everything, with a view to whittling it down to a much more manageable size. I started with almost 350(!!!!) works, and by the end I had that down to just under 100.

The works I'm letting go are being sold by Heritage in the USA, and the first 72 of those are coming up for auction this month, from June 16th. Those are three of the pieces attached to this post, and you can find the rest of them here: https://comics.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=52+793+794+791+1893+792+2088+4294942114+4294966901&type=friend-consignorlive-notice

Being completely honest, almost all of these are going to go for BIG bucks!! The market is stronger than it's ever been (in large part, I think, thanks to the Marvel movies), and collectors are paying WAY more than they did back when I was in the game. So I'm not sharing the link in the hope of drumming up more bidders (although if any of you are seriously minted, and wish to join in the bidding, please feel free!!) -- I'm sharing it because the works on the Heritage page go a long way to answering a question that, like every other writer, I get asked all the time...

"Where do your ideas come from???"

Now, while there's never any simple, complete answer to that, I think every writer is in large part shaped by the works that they read. I often talk about writers and books that have influenced me (Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, The Secret Garden, The Machine Gunners), and you can check out a list of every book I've read since I was a teenager, and see the marks I've given them, over on GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4643841

But I've also been hugely influenced by comics, starting with the likes of Eagle and 2000AD when I was a child and into my teens, and then more adult, challenging fare, when I began reading graphic novels and adult-orientated series, like Watchmen and Love & Rockets and Sandman.

When I glance through the 72 pages on sale in this auction, I see so much of my work in them. Alan Moore is a mountain of a writer, and much of my work strives to capture some of the wonders he weaved in Miracleman, V For Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke, and so many other titles. Dave McKean is one of my all-time favourite artists, and also a skilled story-teller, whose Cages mesmerised me, and whose Arkham Asylum (written by Grant Morrison) probably did more than any other comic to launch Batman in the darker directions that he's been taken ever since, and perhaps helped convince me that it was OK to explore the darkness through the medium of what is normally considered children's literature. The scope of Dave Sim's Cerebus astonished me -- 300 issues?!? -- and made me want to work on a broader, bigger scale -- I very likely wouldn't have launched myself at 10 and 12 book series without it.

Yeah... I look through these 72 thumbnails, and I see so many echoes of Darren Shan the writer in there. So I thought I'd share them with you guys, so that you can see me, where I've come from and where I'm hoping to go with my stories, too.

And, hey, if you DO decide to bid on any of the pieces... good luck!! You're gonna need it!!!! :-) :-) :-)