‘Of Dust and Blood (NBM Cover)” (2018)
by Val Mayerik (1950 -)
9 x 11 in., oil on panel
Coppola Collection

“Of Dust and Blood” is a historically accurate graphic novel about the Battle of Little Big Horn, written by Jim Berry and illustrate by veteran comics artist Val Mayerik. They developed the book, which is formatted in landscape mode, through a Kickstarter campaign a few years ago.

In addition to some of the illustrations I picked up as Kickstart premiums, a likeness of me was integrated into one of the panels and I have that original page. I also picked up the original painting used as the artwork for the dust cover of the graphic novel, and I bought the three-quarters done artwork for the original cover, which was rejected. Search on “Mayerik” to see those.

The book has been reformatted to portrait mode and will be made more widely available by NBM publishers. Val reached out to me and offered me the painting that is being used as the cover to the NBM edition (the actual cover is shown below).