MISSING: Denys Cowan Art "Lost" by UPS

In advance of the gala opening of the exhibit Milestones: African Americans in Comics, Pop Culture & Beyond at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (GEM) in Baltimore on Friday, December 13, 2013, artist Denys Cowan packed and shipped 29 pieces of art in one package via UPS on Thursday, December 5.

At the same time, exhibit curator Michael Davis shipped another set of pieces to be shown in the exhibit.

As they were preparing their shipments, Cowan and Davis were aware of the winter storms hitting the east coast, so they took this into account. The art was wrapped in plastic, sealed with tape, then placed in oversized cardboard boxes, and again sealed with at least three layers of packing tape.

Neither gentleman is a stranger to shipping original comic book artwork.

Both packages were shipped for overnight delivery. As it turned out, they had been given the wrong cut-off time for the UPS location they had chosen, but the work would still arrive by Saturday, leaving enough time to have the pieces readied for presentation.

Both arrived at UPS in Louisville, Kentucky on Friday, December 6. At that point, though, their destinies diverge.

The artwork shipped by Davis left the Louisville hub and was delivered to GEM on Saturday, December 7.

Cowan’s package sat at the Louisville location for two more days, and to date UPS has not explained why.

When the package was delivered to GEM on Tuesday, December 10, it contained only one of the 29 pages of original comic art that had been packaged by Cowan (UPS did try to deliver the package on Monday, December 9, but GEM is closed on Mondays).

Only an 11” x 17” pen and Ink Wolverine #125 interior page by Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz was still in the package, and even it was partially sticking out.

Missing were covers and pages and concept pieces, impossible to replace items ranging from character turnarounds for Static, Rocket and Hardware to covers and interior pages from Hardware to pieces featuring Batman, Steel and more.

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