Comic book collection no joke

Elia Powers

Michael Leigh said he will adore Superman and Batman forever.

“I used to be a huge comic collector as a kid,” said Leigh, a

Costa Mesa resident. “After I bought enough, I’d sell copies out of

my red wagon, so I could afford a new bike.”

He’s still selling. Just to a different clientele.

Leigh, who values his comic book art collection at about $50,000,

has put original posters, paintings and laminated pages on display at

Dante’s Inferno Art Gallery in Costa Mesa.

The walls of the second floor studio are covered with super-sized

superheroes who flex their muscles in front of blood-red backgrounds.

Mint-condition comic books are shelved inside glass cases and stacked

in boxes, giving the exhibition the look of a niche garage sale.

Which is fitting, seeing as the garage is where a majority of the

memorabilia rested before this showcase.

“My wife wouldn’t let me put everything up in our house,” Leigh

said. “I could only choose a few of my favorites.”

By the looks of his eclectic collection, it would seem Leigh has

been amassing comic art his entire life, but that’s not the case. He

gave up collecting at the age of 7 and didn’t become interested again

until adulthood, when he purchased “Death of Superman” and thousands

of dollars worth of other comic paraphernalia.

“I looked at it as an investment,” said Lee, now a

speech-and-debate coach and professor at Orange Coast College. “I was

fascinated with the characters and the story lines.”

The majority of Leigh’s collection is from the late 1980s and

early 1990s, which he considers the golden years of artistry. Major

comic companies such as DC and Marvel began focusing on

sociologically relevant topics such as alcoholism and infidelity, he

said.

That attracted high quality artists, who painted comic pages on

tabloid-sized paper, using watercolor or oil to illustrate the

superheroes, Leigh said. The paintings were then shrunk down to

actual comic size.

Flipping through glossy pages from comic books of that era, Leigh

noted the attention to detail and artistic ingenuity he said is often

lost in the era of computer-generated images.

He pointed out his most prized possessions -- paintings by artist

Gil Bruvel and a series of Japanese comics -- and noted that many of

the old comic books are now movies, such as Frank Miller’s “Sin City”

and Stan Lee’s “Spider-Man.”

He referred to his habit of comic collecting as “gluttonous” and

admitted to traveling each year to San Diego for serious browsing

time at a major comic convention.

Still, he’s not averse to poking fun at the collector culture.

“It’s a real freak show sometimes,” he said of the convention.

“You’re trying to buy art and are surrounded by Trekkies and grown

men in capes.”

And: “I love the pomposity of the language,” he said of comic book

dialogue. “There are these high-minded comments from guys running

around in tights.”

Leigh, who first displayed his collection at Orange Coast College,

is taking the exhibition to the gallery co-owned by his former speech

student, Trace Kirkpatrick.

“We want to be showing more abstract and eclectic type work,”

Kirkpatrick said. “This falls into the category of something that

isn’t typically displayed.”

Dante’s Inferno, a nearly one-year-old gallery that showcases both

local talents and celebrated artists like Salvador Dali, will host a

wine-and-cheese reception for Leigh’s gallery at 7 tonight.

Leigh said he is providing discounts on artwork and is holding a

raffle for some of the limited-edition prints. The paraphernalia

sells for as little as $50 to a few thousand dollars.

Leigh said between now and the end of summer, when the exhibit

will likely end, he is planning to reread some of his favorite comics

for a final time.

But he said he is ready to part ways with the bulk of his

collection.

“It’s time for someone else to enjoy it,” he said.

* ELIA POWERS is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

He may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or by e-mail at

elia.powers@latimes.com.