Bart Sears - Film & Television STAR!!!!

Howdy Searsians! Yes, I'm still alive, fear not. I've just been through another rather busy stint of work on other projects, but I'm here now with some more cool Bart Sears goodies. This time, to be a little different, I thought it might be fun to showcase some Bart Sears items that have appeared on both the small & silver screen.
Whenever I'm watching a TV show or movie and a scene comes up that may just have a Bart Sears comic, poster, or whatever in it (usually in a comic shop), I pay very close attention to it.

And this is what I've found so far...

This one is from the first series of Lost. Episode 14 has a scene where the kid, Walt, is reading Hurley's Spanish copy of 'Green Lantern/Flash – Faster Friends.' As you can see, a few of the pages Bart pencilled are shown.

Next up are a few frames from Judd Apatow's first big movie, 'The 40 year-old Virgin,' starring Steve Carell and Catherine Keener, both of whom are shown above with action figure boxes featuring Bart's artwork. Catherine Keener's circled one is the Gambit 10-inch figure, whilst Steve Carell's is the Sabretooth 10-inch figure.

Next up is a scene from the great show, The Big Bang Theory. This framegrab is from Season 2, Episode 20. It shows Penny with Bart's comic, The Scream #3, over her left shoulder.

And lastly, I just found this one this morning. It is from Rainn Wilson's recent film, Super. In the background, middle shelf, is that same The Scream cover from the previous one.

Anyway, that's all I've found to date. Anybody seen Bart Sears stuff anywhere else? Let me know if you have!
I'll be doing another post here soon enough, as I want to catch up on all of the things that Bart has been doing over the last little while. I'll show you what has come out and what to expect in the future too. So I'll see you all soon.

It's Captain Amer... no, wait, it's US Agent!

Back again, as promised.
So you know that item I mentioned I would be receiving later this week? Well, it came in a few days early. I don't know what I've done to have the postage and delivery gods shine down on me at the moment, but I hope it sustains itself.
Anyway, here's the item that came in the mail today-

Where's the toy, you say? Well, the toy in question isn't actually one of the ones designed by Bart at Sears Studios. This is an unusual item in that it is the only figure from this particular series that Bart produced the packaging art for. This is unusual because the subsequent Toy Biz series' that Bart was involved with, he not only produced a large amount of packaging art for, but also designed many of the actual figures too. It is probably worthwhile stating that this is the first Marvel action figure, chronologically by release date, that Bart or Sears Studios had anything to do with. It has a copyright date of 1994 on the back of the above card, but I believe it actually came out in 1993.

The artwork for this particular piece is currently in the hands of a Mr. Ronald Hillman. The artwork actually comes in two pieces, the figure and the shield are on separate pieces of paper. But here is a slightly low-res image of said artwork-

So there you are, yet another cool item to tick off the list. I'm hoping to have something a little different for this blog soon, maybe in the next few weeks, so stick around, my dear Searsians!

A Mixed Bag of Bart Sears Goodness

Going along with the theme of the last post, or the lack thereof, I thought I might, this time around, show some Bart Sears art that really doesn't fall into any particular category I've established here. There is some unpublished work, some early work, some commissioned work; yet all have one thing in common - they're all freaking good!
So let's take a dip into the gigantic bag that is my Bart Sears collection and have a look-see what comes out.

First out is a fantastic piece from way back in 1986!

This is one of the many pieces I came across whilst rifling through Bart's boxes while staying with him and the family on my second trip, in 2006. I don't believe it was for anything in particular (Bart?), and I've never seen it published anywhere. Which is a great shame, because I think it is one of Bart's better early pieces, surpassing many of his QC QC covers from a few years later, in my opinion. It is also one of Bart's few forays into pure Science Fiction. And the sword thing is just nifty looking.

Let's see, what else have we got in here? Oh, ever seen this before?

Whilst staying with Bart that time in 2006, Bart was working on Warlord #10. Bart asked me if I'd like to help with the inking of it. I swear I nearly pooped myself when he said that, half out of fear of messing up the inking, the other out of excitement at getting the oppurtunity to do the inking.
I ended up helping out on about half a dozen pages, filling in blacks here and there, sometimes a little more. The pinnacle was probably this page though, where I did most of the detail in the background. Bart first gave me a photocopy of the page to have a go at it first. He gave me a few notes after I'd done that, and then handed me the real page, and this is the result.
I was pretty excited to see our work on the printed paper, but unfortunately, DC pulled Bart's rendition of Warlord #10 and replaced it with another story, so none of the work we did ever made it to the printer.
I'm still mad at DC about that.

But anyway, on to the next item.

Here's another of my favourite pieces of work by Bart. And it's another unpublished item.

Cool huh? Actually, this is probably one of the best things Bart has ever done, in my opinion.
These three pages were originally intended for Marvel Comics' 1997-98 title 'Shadows & Light,' but Bart's work never got past the third page, I don't know why (Bart?). Bart did, however, produce a fantastic Colossus pin-up for issue #3, dated July 1998 which is worth checking out (I'll post it here when I've got it scanned in).

Here is another very early piece, and is probably one of the most unrecognisable pieces of Bart Sears art ever.

I'm sure you'll have noticed that the credited artist is somebody called 'MILO,' but this comic strip is, in fact, an early collaboration of both Bart and Michael J Morrissey. I unfortunately don't know much more about it apart from the fact that there were perhaps four or five more strips completed, and they were published in a local Syracuse newspaper. I'm kinda hoping that as soon as Bart reads this, he'll fill me in with some more details, which I'll obviously post here if forthcoming.

Finally, some of you may know that whilst Sears Studios was open for business back in 1993-94, Bart was commissioned to design the vast majority of Marvel & Toy Biz's X-Men and X-Force lines for those years (he also designed several Fantastic Four figures and some packaging art too). Whilst there is an interesting story to go along with these designs and that deal, I'll leave that for another post, but give you a taste of the sort of designs he was producing for them.


The first piece is a character called Quark, often associated with Mojo and Longshot. He's a lesser character (Toy Biz produced quite a few lesser characters for these series'), but its a cool design image.


Next is packaging art for the Spider-Man 'Web of Steel' series of figures. Unfortunately, the final artwork looks to have been slightly altered from this art, but I still consider it a Bart Sears item, in spite of this.

On a different note, those of you who are friends of mine on Facebook will know that I recently purchased an item that I hoped would contain some new Bart Sears artwork for me. Well, true to form, it didn't have any new Bart in it. The item in question is the 'Essential Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Master Edition Volume 1 (is it just me or is that just stupidly long for a title?).

This Handbook reprints entries from the (take a deep breath) Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Master Edition series from 1990-93. It has entries for both Captain Universe and Caliban, and I, perhaps a bit optimistically, hoped that it would have these images for those entries.




But alas, it wasn't to be. But fear not, I am on the trail of another possible location for these images, and I'll bring any news to you as soon as I have any.

And finally, I just came across this cool T-Shirt, which takes the art from Bart's 'Contract #1 Solo Missions: Panzer' cover for A First Salvo.


I'm back at work tomorrow after a blissful week off, but I'll try and do another post next weekend.
Until then...

A boy and his Bart Sears toys

It has been a very long time since I've posted here, but that is not to say that I haven't maintained my vigilance in collecting Bart's work. I've bought many comics from Mile High Comics since last I posted, and I'm in the process of ordering 17 more.

But anyway, this post is about Bart Sears action figures (not of the man himself [Mike], but toys he either designed or did packaging art for, or both).

Bart's action figures has been an area that I must confess I have neglected over the years, both in actual buying, and gathering information. But I can happily say that I'm back on the trail. I've fleshed out The Bart Sears Checklist to list every Bart action figure I could find, which stands at a whopping 146 including re-issues and such at the time of writing this.

And I've been buying.

In the last month I've bought 3 different items, bringing my total up to 14. Yep, a long way to go, I know.

The first item I bought was the Sentinel Playset from 1994. I didn't even know of its existence until about 2 months ago, though I've had copies of the artwork for years now.



Next up I got these bad boys. Yes, the condition isn't great, but they were cheap enough. Bart designed the Cyclops figure, and did the Cyclops headshot.



And just the other day, I got this guy, Spy Wolverine. Bart designed the figure, did the Wolverine & Omega Red headshots and the packaging art. Cool stuff.



So there you go... I obviously plan on collecting all of Bart's action figures, but it will take a while. I'd ideally like to get two sets of them, one in mint condition, the other loose. But as it stands, here's what I've got. Most of them are designed by Bart, but the likes of Magneto, Gambit and Mr. Sinister aren't, but have packaging art by Bart.