:Smug: It wasn't HIM that pissed the people off, it was someone else who was RIPPING people off. There is a lot more to the story than you know so please give Derek the benefit of the doubt.
I personally love my book! I love that the collection is right there all together like it is.
Yeah, I know about the extra hardbounds that made it out there and all that biz but I was referring to the signing of the softbounds, A dozen of us ordering copies, then having him saying he wasn't signing them, having Riggs reply to my email, bluntly saying he wasn't signing ANY books, Puck being told to leave our copies at home, THEN Riggs goes right ahead and signs copies for people at your show...Its all water under the bridge now but it really chapped my ass bigtime.
If he would of given all this some thought in today's society where Capitalism is King, he would of had a case of books available for sale at your show and on his site months ago, not suddenly start selling them to people when he apparently needs the bread. That way my friend wouldn't be out $160 and stuck with an unsigned hardbound and Derek would have
his money instead of some Ebay guy.
Bud Plant doesn't even carry this book and I'm sure they would if someone with the publishers would of sold them some copies wholesale.
As for the book itself, I've been pleading for a Riggs artbook for a dozen years or more, which might explain my disappointment in the overall finished product. For instance, the writing, as artbooks go, was anemic at best and lacked, at times, even a modicum of research (Hey Martin, the first Spielberg film was DUEL, not JEWEL ! Granted, some books have type-O's, but to to get the name of a movie wrong, not once, but TWICE and in BOLD type no less is unforgivable.
) . Granted, some of it was interesting and a bit funny at times , but I got tired of all the ego stroking of guys in bands I never heard of.
A few comments about paints, airbrushes, etc. etc. made no sense to me whatsoever.
As for the contents, there was quite a bit of Maiden art left out including countless tour shirt and program illustrations, that awesome 5' ft tall Halloween display (that I once had
) and more sketches or whatnot. To have only 5-6 unpublished pieces from a
25 year span was pretty pathetic from an artbook collectors point of view.
The quality of some of the pieces,
Killers in particular, was downright shameful. Anyone can do a Google search or hit a Maiden site like Maidenfans.com and get better quality images than some of the horrible reproductions that ended up in the book.
Personally, I'd like to see a revised edition down the road (Like Frazetta's ICON) after more stuff has been uncovered and really do a quality product for the mainstream consumer.
Maybe Maiden will eventually do their version of Kiss's "Kisstory" and include this book in its entirety with bonus images or whatnot.
It's a great book - loads of wonderful pictures of Eddie and his other works with Stratovarious, Gamma Ray etc and loads of interesting titbits from the man himself. 
