Blighted Eye, The: Original Comic Art from the Glen Bray Collection
by: Bray, Glenn

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Over 400 pages of original art collected over 50 years. In the mid-sixties, Glenn Bray was a kid with a lot of money -- his family owned a very successful hardware store chain -- and an appreciation for obscure art that was prescient to the point of being visionary; he was a fanboy-turned-tastemaker who elevated his private collecting into something that would influence the evolution of the comic medium. He became a loyal and passionate patron of artists who went largely ignored, like some mellow, SoCal Medici. It seems crazy today, but original comic art pages were still considered 'by-products' of printing and publication when Bray began purchasing the black-&-white illustration-boards from EC greats like Wolverton, Kurtzman, Davis, Feldstein, Wood and Elder. More importantly, his original art purchases and private commissions were key in fostering the careers of unknown artists in his own age bracket, particularly now legendary Underground greats like R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, and Gilbert Shelton. With a collection of original comic art and illustration spanning 6 decades, Bray has become vital to the work of establishing the official histories of comic art.