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Frankly, I like Rich and I've had no trouble with the guys. Of course, I've never bought anything from them either though I've talked to them off and on.

@grapeape, this is no laughing matter.

Okay, it is a laugh or cry matter, but I'm still going to write it.

I'm going to write a FAQ on the Donnelly's. Topics will include:

1. Their business model
2. Their "unused" covers
3. Their lack of pricing / changing of prices
4. Their general altering of art, e.g., this Superman piece by Curt Swan
5. Deceptive Advertising

I will will use threads from this board for reference - I've built a list.

What other topics should be included?

The threads I've found so far are:

• Business Model
  • A Dealer's Pricing
  • CoolLines Question
• Pricing
  • Cool Lines Art Work Inquiry
• Unused Covers and related art changes
  • Coollines Scam Selling Mark Bagley Ultimate Spider-man 35 Cover Recreation as the original
  • This is why no one likes the Donnelly's
  • Important infofor anyone buying "Unused/Rejected" Covers esp. from Cool Lines 
  • More Cool Lines Deceit - Misrepresented/Modified Art
  • Altered Original Art for Sale
• Deceptive Advertising

What sources have I missed?

So how many of your pages are in the book, Andrew?

14 hours ago, comix4fun said:

Having dealt with Spencer since the late 90's here is my advice:

He's a one man show with tens of thousands of pages in inventory at any given time. If you attempt to purchase items during his famous year-end sales you are in good company. From past discussions with Spencer I know he receives orders from several hundred collectors and those orders amount to several thousand pages. He takes the orders in the order within which they are received. This is where the delay in response will occur.  The reason being, Spencer is an artist's representative, he's not a dealer. The items he sells are not his property. That means various artists may or may not have some or all of the listed inventory in THEIR possession and their availability must be confirmed on a piece by piece basis. Some of these artists are local to him but most are scattered around the globe. For the international artists he tries to keep as much of their inventory on hand as possible, but that is up to the artist to decide. 

Some reps have several employees, and others mandate all their artwork be kept in house. That may speed their response times. Many other reps don't have 50,000-100,000 pages in inventory at all times which also helps speed response times. 

Spencer goes through each order as I noted, confirming availability, invoicing and confirming the order, buyer by buyer. The dramatic nature of some of the discounts during his holiday sales are such that a feeding frenzy occurs with several potential buyers for each piece and an enormous order volume. Those discounts, however, are worth the patience they demand from the potential buyer. 

Aside from his annual sales Spencer has also begun, in the last few years, traveling to various conventions across the country and selling artwork there. If you happen to place an order while he's on the road he may not be able to get back to you substantively until he returns, runs inventory, and can confirm the piece(s) in question are still available. 

If you find yourself unable to get a response to an order I'd wager it's a situation of high order volume during the sale, or artwork being in the hands of the artist and its availability needing to be confirmed, or the artwork was part of the inventory taken to a convention and again its availability needing to be confirmed. 

So I wouldn't assume you're getting "roadblocked" by the rep in this situation, there are myriad potential reasons for any delay. 

When it comes to Spencer I always know he's someone I can trust explicitly in every single dealing I've ever had with him and that, in and of itself, in invaluable in this hobby. 

 

This!

I've dealt with Spencer a few times over the years - he's slow, but faithful. His answers are terse and, some may feel, unfriendly, but he is not. He's honest, works hard for his artists, and is very straight-forward.

I enjoy working with him, but I understand that the situation is as comix4fun describes it.

I can't answer your question, but I know that Curt Swan had a Superman pose that he used at least twice.

From Eddy Zeno's biography     From Richard Pini to me by way of Heritage

I've often wondered how many are "out there." Click to read more about it.

On 2/20/2020 at 2:57 PM, NC101 said:

You have an amazing collection, I think I'll be drooling the rest of the day

Thanks, I like Michael's collection, too.   There are a lot of commisisons there!

7 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Especially for Romita Jr?

how so? 

I think JRjr tells a good story, but it takes a strong inker to make his work attractive to me. Bob Layton's inking over him in Iron Man was wonderful. The recent Superman stuff - not so much, IMHO.

34 minutes ago, grapeape said:

Actually a terrific choice. 

And an obvious one to me.

Tom Scioli does a great Kirby.

Here's Tom's My Little Pony comic as Jack would have done it.

Here's the one he did for me at the late, lamented Amazing! Houston Comic Con.

He also has a very early series that you can get on Comixology called American Barbarian and a newer one called GØDLAND that both are clearly inspired by Jack.

Here's my list: 

Davy Jones    $1 per month for January
Local to me (Houston) cartoonist for Charmy's Army

Richard Cox   $2 per month for January
NC cartoonist doing his own strip - Highjump

Ross Pearsall $1 per month for January
Does one of the best comic blogs on the internet - SuperTeam Family

Steve Lightle  $1 per month for January
Former Legion and Flash artist creating his own story - Justin Zane.

Yale Stewart   $2 per month for January
Creator of JL8, the JLA heroes as 8 year olds. Wonderful strip. Almost 350 episodes. Now working on his own story.

Steve Conley $2 per month for February*
The creator of The Middle Age found on WebToon and GoComics.

Katie Cook     $1 per month for January
Famous for Gronk, MLP, and now Nothing Special which is quite special

Joe Eisma      $1 per month for January
Hoping and praying for Morning Glories to restart.

Bill Willingham $1 per month for February*
I like his writing, but the Patreon is pretty silent.

J.V. Jones       $1 per month for January
Love her writing. She has a terrific fantasy series, Sword of Shadows series, that was  on hiatus for a long time because of tough life events, but she's back to writing and I really like what she has shown.

Colleen Doran $3 per month for February*
A creator that I really enjoy. I support her hoping that she'll be able to finish A Distant Soil before I pass away and complete the (re) collection of it in remastered TBP. She's making progress. Surprisingly, I really enjoy the essays that she puts on her Patreon. They are easily worth the paltry amount I pay.

Grim Wilkins    $2 per month for January
A creator that I found on Kickstarter and decided to support. Mirenda - a wordless story - is where I started with him.

Jeremy Bastian $5 per month for January
Jeremy's Cursed Pirate Girl is astounding. I support him because I want more and I hate having artists starve before they finish their stories!

I also support Nick Pitarra, but he's suspended his because he doesn't have time for it now.
 

7 hours ago, Blastaar said:

Can you provide a link to your OML gallery

https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=9834

+1

The relisting can be seen here. The original "sale" here. The seller is the same in both cases.

It's been there for a long time; can't say that its been there forever though. 

I wish he'd add publish/unpublished to the set of standard sorts, along with by year and by type and by impressions/comments/likes in our galleries.

@ZimmermanTelegram, you could ask in the Facebook Houston Comic Fandom group. It's full of guys that worked on those cons. If you'd like, PM me with your real name and email and I'll ask on your behalf.

10 hours ago, Fiawol said:

Eventually (hopefully for buyers, anyway) prices will level off and go down for Garfield art, as collectors buy what they want.  You just had the "bad" luck of your perfect date coming early in the auctions.  That being said, it being the "perfect" date to get, I would still go for it, because every year afterwards on your anniversary you'll think about "the one that got away".  I'm keeping an eye out for Garfield strips published on my birthdate.   Haven't seen any yet, but I figure they'll hit someday.

I showed it to Kathy and she said she'd be upset if I spent that much for it. That was good enough for me. I may set a search for one on our anniversary.

I thought a birthday strip for my wife who was a huge Garfield fan when we started dating might be a fun gift so I setup a search for her date. One finally turned up and it was for the year we married. I was about to enter a bid when I decided to check older bids - $1500 and up and up. Nope, too much for a b'day gift. She likes OA, but likes lots of other things for $1.5K.

I figure what I want to pay and bid it. That's it.

I thought I'd post my one example. It's a Legion of Super-Heroes page with pencils by Daniel HDR ($100 from Anthony), the inked over blueline version by Bob Wiacek ($40 from Bob at a signing in New Paltz, NY), and the printed page ($3.99 from Bedrock City Comic Company).
 

There are a couple of interesting points:

1. Daniel inked the faces to keep the look that he wanted
2. Bob thought PG looked a little thick waisted in the 2nd panel so he did a little liposuction. If you look closely on the high resolution image on the CAF, you can see the thin blue line from the original outline.

The second bullet backs my theory that the inker always wins. 

Click to see and learn more and to get a bigger picture.

.
 

21 hours ago, BCarter27 said:

I bet you could easily get a local carpenter you duplicate that same design at a larger size.

 

+1

My local carpenter/cabinet make could do that.

Thor with Tales of Asgard style background and a frost giant or other suitable opponent or something New Gods related like the cover of New Gods 7.

 

56 minutes ago, wurstisart said:

Good article.

What about the „prominent art dealer“ of the other article?

Seems like I've read that name, but I can't remember.

52 minutes ago, wurstisart said:

I still don’t get why nobody puts names to these stories.

Here's an article about it.