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Welcome to the seventeenth Mother's Day issue of The Neon BoneYard, the comic art comedy club. In this particular episode, I will draw upon many topics covered in previous issues to tell the story of how I ended up with this issues featured page. It is a tale that stretches from the swealtering deserts of Texas, to the icy tundras of Canada, from the mystic Slayers of Sunnydale, to the Southern Bells of Atlanta. Unfortunately, it begins in 2002 in the somber halls of a Nashville hospital. My Mother had just been diganosed as having a massive a brain tumor. This would be some of her last few weeks on Earth, and I still can't believe she is gone. During her stay, my brothers and I would take turns sleeping in her hospital room. On one of my late night shifts, I went to a nearby Books-a-Million to find some suitable reading material. While there, I happened upon a comic book rack containing almost a dozen copies of "Willow and Tara, WannaBlessedbe #1". This was during the start of my "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" phase, and I happened to know that this particular issue like wildfire online. I purchased all of them, and started selling a few on Ebay. This was actually my first foreway into Ebay, and these things were selling for up to $50.00 each. Some I sold as far Germany, Australia, and Taiwan (leave it to Ebay to turn the world into a global yardsale). Besides Buffymania being at a peak during this time (these issue no longer command such a premium), I believe there were two other reasons it was selling so well. First, it featured the very special relationship between Willow and Tara (you know...they were witches). Second, this issue was drawn by Terry Moore, famed for his independent "Strangers in Paradise" comic (which ironically, had its last issue publised as I am writing this). I know everyone reading this (ok, only me), are saying "Wait, this isn't the cover to WannaBlessedbe #1." Well, hold your horses, I'm just getting warmed up. This period was also soon after I had begun to collect original comic art again after an almost two decade hiatus. After selling several of these comics on Ebay for such a high price, I began to wonder what the original art from this issue might bring. After all, while the comic might be rare, the art was one of a kind in the universe. After scanning the internet for a few days, I located a comic store in Houston, Texas called Bedrock City Comics which sold Terry Moore art. Pages from this particular issue were not listed, but after a few inquires, I learned they were available, and bought the following page:
This page even has a little "easter egg" associated with it, as you can tell from this panel extracted from the page. Read the water bottle. Due to the final size of the text on this page in the published comic, I (and you), may be one of the blessed few to get the joke.
I sold this page on Ebay for a little profit, and purchased two or three more pages from this issue. I had sold a second page, when Tara was killed off on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. After that, the market pretty much crashed for both the comic and the original art (gotta strike while the iron is moderatley warm), so I just held on to the few pages I had remaining. It was a year or two later while attended my first Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia, that I found the following comic in one of the quarter bins: 
Frankly, nothing spetacular about the story inside, but it did have an "eye catching cover". I noticed it was drawn by Terry Moore, but at that point in time, I didn't think anything else about it. Sometime later, I added the few remaining Terry Moore pages from "Willow and Tara - WannaBlessedBe #1" to my recently opened Ebay Store. At some point, I received an email from a Ms.Whitney L'Esperance of Ontario, Canada (what a cool name...being from Ontario, I assume its dutch) about purchasing one of these pages. She also inquired about another page I did not own, so I went back to my "dealers" in Texas. This and several other pages were still available from WannaBlessedBe #1. I worked out a deal to buy all remaining pages (at what I though was a great price). I also made an offhand comment that I was interested in the above cover from "Lady Supreme #1" as well, not thinking much about it. Turns out it was available, and due to the other pages I had purchased, got it at a great price. You can see the entire email trascript for this transaction here if you want to see how Donald Trump (or in my case, Donald Rump) does "The Art of the Deal when Making the Deal for the Art." The rest, as the dutch say, is "historie'". And that's the multi-year, global spanning, life altering story of how this page became a prize piece in my collection. Unfortunatley, it begins with me becoming a 39 year old orphan. So, in honor of my Mother on Mother's Day: M is for the Many things you Gave Me... O is for the Other things you Gave Me... T is for the Things you Gave Me... H is for Hey, all the Things you Gave Me... E is for the Everything you Gave Me... R is for the Returning Everthing you Gave Me...re-write and singing lessons already in progress.  Grail Page Original Comic Art Store
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