Rocks And Bones... Cool

I think that Topps has done an amazing job with the various Mars Attacks releases. After 2015 Mars Attacks Occupation came out I was on the hunt for the Woodcut Art cards because of how distinct they are compared to other inserts from the set.

What makes these Woodcut Art cards different is how they are printed and the ink that is used to print them. Instead of a modern day printing press they use a Heidelberg Windmill Platen press which literally presses the paper against the printing plates so only a couple of cards can be printed at a time instead of an entire sheet. Second the Mars Attacks cards are printed using ink that is made up of fragments from the Martian Shergotty meteorite that struck Earth in 1865, Topps misspelled the name on the back of the card. The Dinosaur Attack cards are printed using ink that is made up of fragments from a T-Rex fossil.

The insert set uses image from the base set and was made up 8 cards in the Mars Attacks woodcut cards, which are all red, and 4 Dinosaur Attack woodcut cards, which are all green. When I purchased the cards in 2015 they were about $10 each.

Jason Crosby's Awesomeness

Yesterday the Kickstarter campaign for Topps upcoming Mars Attacks: Occupation ended not only topping their initial goal of $50,000 but actually topping all of their stretch goals, finally closing out at $198,002 in pledges.

The way that Topps went about it is pretty interesting, it gave them the ability to help fund a project through the collectors but additionally they were able to add on to the initial set through the stretch goals, some which are quite cool like Dinosaur Attack Vs Mars Attacks, metal cards, additional cards and (my favorite) adding Martian sand and T-Rex fossil dust in to the ink used for the woodcut cards.

While this is all interesting what I want to talk about today is the artist Jason Crosby. Crosby is still kind of new in the world of trading cards, though still quite accomplished in his short time, having done sketch cards for Breygent, Upper Deck and Topps over the last couple of years. He has now worked as a base card illustrator for Topps with the last two Star Wars Illustrated releases (New Hope & Empire Strikes Back) plus the two recent Mars Attacks releases Invasion and Occupation.

What I love about his work is that he is does a variety of styles and he likes to work a sports theme in to some of the cards. He did it with the recent Star Wars Illustrated: Empire Strikes Back sketch cards and Topps is giving him a complete subset in the Mars Attacks release. Here are the cards that he has posted so far but one of the stretch goals was to increase the size of the sports subset.

 

Last year he worked on a personal project when he put together a dual-autograph Freddy vs. Jason booklet card. I think this card is so awesome, I wish it would have been packed out.

 

The Martians Are Back

Today Topps releases information regarding their newest Mars Attacks release, Mars Attacks Occupation. Unlike the previous Topps Mars Attack releases this one will be crowd funded, Topps is taking the project to Kickstarter. The project began today and is already 80% of the way to its $50,000 goal.

This will be Topps fourth Mars Attacks release dating back to 1962 with the original Mars Attacks, followed by the 50^th Anniversary release with the 2012 Mars Attacks Heritage and then the 2013 Mars Attacks: Invasion. The Heritage release was a straight connection to the 1962 set while Invasion and Occupation are an on-going sci-fi storyline.

Mars Attacks: Occupation will be made up of a 72-card base checklist and contain a 45-card storyline plus two subsets: Art Gallery (18 cards) and Factions (9 cards). There will be three parallels for the 45-card storyline with Heritage parallels being printed on vintage card stock, Concept will show early sketches of the 45-cards and then a foil version.

Inserts will be made up of five different sketch cards (Red Logo, Green Logo, Creator Sketches, Dual Artist Sketches and Throwback Sketch Cards), Autographs, Metal Cards and Woodcut Letter-Press cards. There will also be three base inserts that have not been announced yet. The set is scheduled for a December 2015 release.