Buy Dave's house, get a free painting!

Eisner-award winning artist Dave Dorman is making home buyers in Florida an offer they can't refuse:

If you could choose the painting above your fireplace, would you prefer to see your favorite pet battling Alien and Predator? Your son as a G.I. Joe character? A famous scene from Star Wars or Batman? A family portrait? World-renowned, Eisner Award-winning artist Dave Dorman will paint it for you, three feet by six feet -- a $50,000 value. The catch? First, you must buy his Florida home.

Dorman, who moved to Chicagoland in December, has played the double mortgage dance for five months now. He's had enough. The reclusive artist, dubbed by colleagues as the "nicest guy in comics," finally got frustrated enough this week to post his highly unusual offer to his fans on his Web site, DaveDorman.com. "I have plenty of fans with money, George Lucas among them. Surely one of them will want to bask in the vibes of the studio where all of my most famous work was created," he said. Dorman wishes he were basking there as well. The home and enormous studio, designed by Dorman were an artist's haven. Today his "studio" consists of a spare bedroom in his Chicagoland home, as he waits for his Florida home to sell. Once it sells, a new studio will be erected above his garage, with all of the windows and natural lighting he once enjoyed in Florida.

"I realize my offer is unorthodox, but desperate times call for desperate measures," he added. The executive digs Dorman used to call home went on the market in July of 2005 at $950,000. Today the price is reduced to a mere $725,000. The 3,800 square foot home sits on the 17th fairway in the gated Shalimar Pointe community near Destin, Florida and has been the backdrop for Dorman's TV interviews on ABC, Turner Broadcast Network and the Sci Fi Channel. "If it takes two paintings to get it sold, I might have to up the ante," he confided.