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MATT MARRIOTT - ORIGINAL ART DAILY #79--TONY WEARE ART. This long standing British comic, quite probably the best western strip ever created, is a true classic.....Unlike it's tame 10-gallon hat, "awww, shucks ma'am" American cousins, the Matt Marriott tales were brutal and realistic. The stories were creative, compelling, cut close to the bone and served as a perfect backdrop for Weare's art. ...........Original Tony Weare art for Matt Marriott was some of the most difficult art to find in comics. Well, I'm offering some here..............................This is an late section daily from the story sometimes titled "Widow's Mine" and at other times "The Zincville Story" --depending on who is publishing it. The tale involves Nils Ericsson, the owner of a failed silver mine in Zincville, Colorado, what happens to him and the fate of his wife Ruth. After a posse chase has resulted in Nils' death in a landslide, Matt and Powder have remained in the town to help Ruth. At this point in the story, Matt and mining magnate Rudolf Carson are involved in negotiations. The daily opens with the two main characters, Matt and Carson, continues with a pair of overlapping woodcut style portraits of them and ends with a brooding depiction of Carson in the final panel.....................................................For those of you unfamiliar with either the strip or Weare's art, here's what David Lloyd wrote: "The late Tony Weare drew Matt Marriott in the London Evening News from 1957 to 1977. Written by Jim Edgar, it was the finest and most atmospheric newspaper strip about the American Wild West that has ever been produced. Tony, as one of just a very few strip artists here and in the US whose creative identities owed nothing to the heritage of stylization which influenced many other newspaper adventure strip creators - he was primarily an illustrator who just happened to love drawing strips. His style on Marriott was that of a sketch artist - a portrayer of the instant. It was naturalistic, raw, and unsophisticated - perfect for depicting the primitive quality of a realistic-looking Wild West. One of his major strengths as a strip artist lay in his consistently creative compositions. If we look through the three-frame strips that make up the Matt Marriott stories we see no evidence of the repeated formulas of picture design which some strip artists use. Because of the sheer weight of material most of these craftsmen have to produce , easy options in picture composition are often sought by them and repeated to ease the burden of emitting a constant stream of new layouts; but when we look at Tony's work it's as if we're just watching people going about their business through a lens that he has cleverly positioned for us, not viewing figures which are overtly posed for appropriate effect. The way he rendered his drawings reflected this 'realistic' approach to portraying the action, with almost lazily handled brush work and pen cross-hatching. He also had a superb command of light and shade, which promoted the impression that he was drawing something he could see in front of him, rather than something he'd built up from his imagination.The only things Tony ever hated drawing were mechanical objects of any kind, though this antipathy is very difficult for any viewer to detect. As a lifelong nature lover he preferred to draw the organic. This passion for depicting living things above all else, is what gives Tony's work the energy which shines from almost everything he put his brush to. Like all the best artists, he sought to draw only what he loved to draw."...................Lloyd put his money where his mouth was, coaxing Weare out of retirement to work on V for Vendetta. The Weare art for Matt Marriott is powerful and brusque, his brush describing fully formed, complicated images in quick, direct brush strokes

There is white out use, mainly in word balloons as well as a word balloon paste up and a small smudge marks at the edge of the bottom border (see scans). Otherwise, both the art and the board is in excellent condition.

Shipping and handling with the USA is $14 and shipping to Great Britain and Europe is $27.00 for First Class (no tracking) or $50.00 for Global Priority (with tracking). My apologies for the high price for Global Priority, but cost for that service have risen significantly. And I've gotten a lot of good feedback about packaging. To my mind, artwork should be shipped with respect. So included in the shipping cost: each piece of art is first sealed in a waterproof bag, then secured to $3.25 worth of reinforced cardboard bound by professional packing tape..................Payment is to be made within 7 days of the conclusion of the auction....Good luck bidding!