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I added two images of Kitty Ravencraft from the Kickstarter Die Kitty Die. As part of my perks, I received a sketch card (featured image) and a remarque (Additional Images).

Click the image to check it out:

I have some standard advice on autographs that might be of interest.

We attended Wizard World Austin so that Rebecca could add Matt Smith to her Dr. Who piece. We achieved that goal as you can see here:

While waiting for our slot with Matt, we stopped by Guy Gilchrist’s table. I had a nice conversation with him, but Rebecca succumbed to his charms and bought a Muppets Sunday featuring Miss Piggy as she campaigns for Vice President. It’s cute. Check it out:

Thanks for sharing.

Years ago (2013), I pledge to support Clint Hilinski's Superiors comic book on Kickstarter.

This week (about 33 months late), I received the package. Two comics and one page of the art.

I can say that I'm pleased. It's a fun book featuring parallel universes, super-heroes, super-villain dopplegangers, and a snappy pace. Good stuff reminiscent of the first comic I ever read - JLA 29, the first JLA/JSA/CSA meeting. No wonder I liked it with that as my starting point.

The art has a Perez/Crisis vibe to it. I really enjoyed it.

Anyway, I think the page I received is a delight and it's perfect for me since it features the bad guys.

Check it out and, if it interests you, contact Clint and get a copy.

As usual, click to embiggen:

You are welcome. Of course, my free advice is worth what you pay for it.

Nope. I think it's fine. Well so long as you follow my standard advice.

As a perk for my VIP badge, I was entitled to get a head shot on a 4x6 pre-printed card by Steve. Unlike most folks, I didn’t go for Cap or Wolverine. Nope, I went for the obscure - Sephie and Ilahn from Crossgen’s Meridian.

While he was drawing, I cruised his portfolio. I blew right past the $4 Uncanny Inhumans cover of Black Bolt and the other spectacular pieces and went straight to the last page which was one from Meridian. $50 later and I’m quite happy.

Enjoy.

Sephie and Ilahn:

Meridian 15 pg 5:

Yes, it certainly is!

I like Odin's hat here, too. Odin always has the best chapeaus.

As someone who collects mostly early 90s art I love this topic, and having gotten into the hobby in 1998 I'll chime in on my experiences collecting early 90s art since then. It likely overlaps with many other eras and the same experiences as others, but is at least a little more specific to the early 90s guys...

 

When I started collecting I wanted examples of the Marvel work by the Image founders and their ilk - McFarlane, Liefeld, Portacio, Lee, Larsen, Kieth, Keown, etc. This was around 1998-2000 and even then it was shockingly difficult to find some of it. Back then an average page was probably $200 or less for most guys not named McFarlane.

 

McFarlane surfaced here and there, but the great stuff seemed to jump by leaps and bounds constantly. A piece I saw for $500 in 1999 would sell for $2k a year later and then $3.5k a year after that. If you waited for the perfect piece or tried to be picky the market left you behind. That's continued to this day, with the best art leaping again and again at ever higher prices. When I first started collecting I recall seeing two McFarlane full page Spidey splashes sell for $1k/each on ebay.

 

I found only one decent Liefeld X-Force page in the first few years for ~$200. I'd been told that dealers had sold it all in the 90s at higher prices and the market tanked, so most people were underwater on that art and holding it hoping for a rebound. The NM98 cover popped up on eBay and sold for like $7k. I heard the NM87 cover popped up and sold for $10k. The XF4 cover I remember finding only after an ebay auction ended for $500.

 

Jim Lee UXM art was always tough to find and never seemed to appear. For years I was after a solid UXM page and didn't even see them for sale. A handful of the same pages seemed to keep recycling. Nobody wanted a DPS of Deathbird it seemed. If a handful of pieces emerged in a year it was amazing, and it seemed that more XM appeared than UXM.

 

Some artists like Kieth held onto almost all their art, but guys like Keown sold off all their Hulk art long ago. When Keown pages appeared, one guy always outbid everyone.

 

On the flip side, Whilce Portacio art was readily available and consistently less than $200/page. XF and UXM covers were listed for $600-800. I remember the UXM282 cover selling on eBay twice for $1k. So it was around, just nobody was really buying it and pushing prices. Whilce had complete Punisher issues 8-9 that he broke up in the early 2000s. Scott had the complete #10 interiors still, that I believe are still owned complete by the buyer. Whilce still had lots of his art on hand.

 

So it depended on each artist where their art was and how tough it was to find. What I also soon started to learn though was that a lot of these artists had big volume collectors that hoarded like mad. A lot of those 90s guys did not produce that much work in the first place, so someone could stockpile pages of art by an artist and in effect own 25%+ of an artist's entire run very easily.

 

There was one guy who bought every Keown page that came out. There was someone who bought all of Mark Bright's Iron Man art. There was someone that got all the best Liefeld art. There were a couple of guys who loaded up on McFarlane art. And generally, these weren't huge pocket collectors with thousands of pieces, just a serious focus on one artist. I suspect a dozen guys ended up owning the majority of memorable and iconic 90s pieces broken nicely into 1 artist collections. Some of those collections are still on CAF to this day and never updated. Who hasn't run across Scott Wingo's 2005-updated McFarlane pile and not drooled a bit? http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=4548

 

So that was a serious part of the problem - guys that loaded up and had no incentive to sell. People that almost seemed to view collecting art the same as collecting comics - you want a complete run.

 

Some of those guys still have it all. Others though slowly started selling and moving on in life. A few of those collectors went from buying everything to buying nothing to selling. A huge Liefeld collector unloaded everything he had over a few years and the market was suddenly flooded with Liefeld around 2005-2010. There was a point you could look on Burkey's site and see 20 vintage Liefelds from NM and XF to choose from at $500/page.

 

In the case of McFarlane and Lee things really changed when huge sales happened and the market shifted up. The Shamus Collection had a huge impact on McFarlane and Liefeld art at the time, and Jim Lee selling off a lot of his art the last few years has pushed his market up as well, and in both cases freeing a lot of hidden art from people that now found it worth selling. There seems to be a McFarlane ASM page in every major auction now, albeit not always top tier ones.

 

Some guys, like Kieth, continued to hold onto everything, but what little they had parted with - Maxx 1/2 - filtered out through the Shamus Collection on Heritage. In that case, it was a few auctions into the process, meaning many people were tapped out and may not have even noticed it since there wasn't a Maxx market to look to for comparisons.

 

Over those 15 years I kept finding pieces a few at a time, through all different ways, on all different cycles. There was a time where Portacio was easy to find, and another when Liefeld was, and another when McFarlane was. Some artists have never had one of those surges. Others have had multiples.

 

Patience was certainly the biggest part of the puzzle, as well as the luck of being at the right place and/or paying attention to auctions and dealers to spot the rare art, and most importantly knowing when to drop serious money on something special and either take on some debt or sell off some lesser pieces to fund it.

 

The biggest thing I often stress to 90s collectors is that they need to understand how little of this art there really was. This isn't like Kirby or Romita or Byrne where there are long runs and thousands of pages of art. For many, they did a small number of issues, 10-30, of which there were a lot of talking head pages and strange inkers or any number of reasons why there isn't a constant stream of A-list pages filtering out - they simply don't exist.

 

 

Great post.

My Gigantor/Astro Boy vs. Big Guy/Rusty piece is unfromed, but way to large to scan so I took a picture with my iPhone. I think it looks okay.

One tip, there a programs (GraphicConverter for Mac, for example) that can unskew a photo. Just make sure to have all four corners in the frame. Such apps exist for iPhone and Android as well.

Very happy with what just arrived at my door.

 

 

 

Unpublished cover to ROM Spaceknight #1

ROM showed up at your door? That's bad, very bad. Nice art though.

I think I make an excellent villain!

From Nick Pitarra, a portrait of yours truly. I think it is awesome. Everyone should get a portrait done by Nick.

Beats me. I really can't decide.

This is actually a difficult question to answer.

Convention sketch - something drawn quickly in your presence during a con. Chad drew this in front of me.

You can see more con sketches collected by my wife for the greatest present ever - a complete sketch book for my 60th birthday. Only a couple were done outside of her presence (Adams and Jusko).

Commission - something drawn at "home" This is clearly a commission. Done by Russ from home.

Click here to see more commissions in my collection.

And then there are things like this

Jeremy did this over a period of time (Friday early through Sunday afternoon) at Heroes Con. How should it be classified - con sketch or commission? I vacillate on this all the time. I've even changed it from one to the other in my CAF a couple of times.

I don't know if this is helpful, but at least you have some examples.

I saw it live and in person. It's cool, but I'll take the Action #15 cover.

(What can I say? I've always preferred Superman to Spider-man. )

It's my wife's birthday tomorrow and we celebrated tonight.

She has two new pieces of art.

Purrmoine (her favorite cat) by Agnes Garbowska

The Evil Queen from Snow While by Aaron Lopresti

After seeing Captain Canucks post on the Nick Cardy sketches from Anthony Snyder, it reminded me of this quick story...

 

A couple/few (don't remember now) years ago I was fortunate enough to buy some of my own Nick Cardy sketches that I bought directly from his great niece who lives about 2 hours from me. It was interesting because she was the person handling the estate for the art and when I first got there all of the different art was still sealed in huge plastic bins, and we actually were the first ones to remove the tape...it was like Christmas time opening gifts..If you don't mind I would like to share those with you guys.

 

I am pretty sure these sketches are a little older then what Anthony has on his sight.

 

Steve

I have dreams like that!

One or two of those are prelims for pieces on the CAF - pretty sure that the Black Canary is.

What a treat and what an artist.

A new-ish art day today.

 

Years ago, I commissioned a Bat Lash piece from Nick Cardy. It remains one of my favorite pieces.

 

Recently, I found a preliminary piece by Nick for that commission on Anthony Snyder’s page. I grabbed it and it’s no in my Additional Images.

It must feel good knowing that he kept it all these years.

Yes. I think he was proud of it. He called me after he did it to be sure that I like it. I'm afraid that I was a semi-coherent fanboy when I answered. Sigh... I really wish I'd told him how much I appreciated his work all these years. I'm sure I stammered out something stupid though.

It was fun finding it. I wonder if my Teen Titan's commission prelim is "out there."

A new-ish art day today.

Years ago, I commissioned a Bat Lash piece from Nick Cardy. It remains one of my favorite pieces.

Recently, I found a preliminary piece by Nick for that commission on Anthony Snyder’s page. I grabbed it and it’s no in my Additional Images.

I have others, but I'm on vacation and can't post the book covers. Here's the list:

Adam Strange.................................................Carmine Infantino..........Amazing World of Carmine Infantino

Allie from Imagination Station...........................Agnes Garbowska.........Mymisiu Gazette Vol. 1

Austin Briggs..................................................Jamal Igle....................Molly Danger Vol. 1

Autograph & Sketch.........................................Marcus To....................Hacktivist

Autograph & Sketch.........................................Mike Kunkel................Timmy and the Moon Piece

Batman...........................................................Arlen Schumer.............The Silver Age of Comic Art

Batman...........................................................Mike Zeck.....................Raw Fury – The Art of Mike Zeck

Brain...............................................................Maris Wicks.................Human Body Theater

Cat.................................................................Benjamin Dewey.............I Was the Cat

Cleopatra........................................................Mike Maihack...............Cleopatra in Space Book One

Cleopatra........................................................Mike Maihack...............Cleopatra in Space Book Three

Farlaine the Goblin and others (in Additional Images).........Anonymous..................Farlaine the Goblin 1 (1st print), 1, 2, 3, 4

Flip....................................................................Farel Dalrymple............Dream Another Dream

Golem.............................................................Dave Wachter..............Breath of Bones

Hawkman.......................................................Joe Kubert...................Tex – The Lonesome Rider

Henry Lyme....................................................Matt Kindt.....................Mind Mgmt

Hero (in Additional Images)............................Mark Texeira.................Nightmares and Daydreams

Hero...............................................................Mark Texeira.................A Hero’s Death

Khensu...........................................................Mike Maihack...............Cleopatra in Space Book Two

Mary Jane Watson...........................................John Romita.................John Romita’s The Amazing Spider-man Artist’s Edition

Morning Glories Cast Headshots – Part 1..........Joe Eisma.....................Morning Glories Deluxe Collection Vol. 1

Morning Glories Cast Headshots – Part 2..........Joe Eisma.....................Morning Glories Deluxe Collection Vol. 2

Morning Glories Cast Headshots – Part 3..........Joe Eisma.....................Morning Glories Deluxe Collection Vol. 3

Robot.............................................................Ben Hatke....................Zita - Zita the Spacegirl

Scribbly and S&S.............................................Fred Hembeck.............The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archive Omnibus

Self-Portrait.....................................................Craig Yoe.....................Comics about Cartoonists

Sgt. Rock.............................................Billy Tuchi............. Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion

Superhero Girl.................................................Faith Erin Hicks............The Adventures of Superhero Girl

Thor................................................................Walt Simonson.............Ragnarök th

Trekker...........................................................Ron Randall.................Trekker (head sketch)

Winchell............................................................Ryan Fisher.................Torchlight Lullaby

Wrenchies Villain………………………………………….Farel Dalrymple…………The Wrenchies

I'm firmly convinced that Scott Dunbier hates me.

I posted what I had recorded but looks like it was before a more current thread, edited it away from my original post and will update my Excel file - the difference was DD 181 and DD183. I don't have pages from those issues...

Thanks. I really, really want to make sure everyone knows the best that we know so long after the fact. I believe that our results are well documented on the thread and in my summary so I appreciate your changing your reply.

My Daredevil 181 page definitely has Miller pencils underneath the Janson inks.

Michael, would you mind clarifying how you know that pencils were on your board? Did Klaus not erase them? I'd like to add this nugget to the summary that I keep (and to the thread cited above).

I'm glad it was cleared up that Miller did put pencil to the board and then those pencils were inked by Janson on DD 181.

Me, too.

I thought that 183 was Miller art at it's prime,

It is.

Yeah, where did those comments (posts 2 and 3) about DD 181 not being touched by Miller resurface? I thought we'd successfully refuted that idea, no?

 

(here we go again...)

We did. I wish mtlevy and carlo would take down the posts between mine and the original one.

I've cited the original thread and provided the correct summary.

Sigh...