furthur

Here is one of my James Jean preliminaries. I have several and they are all pretty cool

A few thoughts. First, a couple of folks talked about a perfect Kaluta piece-wondering what that means to those looking. Is it a Shadow piece, one of his Vertigo covers, a fantasy painting or drawing? Me, I am going on a bit of an art diet after a busy couple of months to start the year with several direct buys from artists and a few holes filled in the collection. I wonder if the current stock market crash is going to impact pricing in the hobby too. Clearly some wealthy people woke up a bit less wealthy today. I may try and concentrate on doing a bit of trading as part of my 2020 strategy-I would love to do some straight up trades with other collectors, but even with all the social media outlets its never easy to figure out who has what I want and wants what I have at the same time. Lastly, I am going to continue to work on building community in the art collecting cohort down here in Atlanta. I have made some great friends in the past few years among collectors and I hope to both deepen some of those ties and widen my knowledge of local artists and collectors here. I can't own it all-but I want to see as much as I can and meet like minded folks who enjoy sharing their knowledge and their art with other collectors.

I am going with Michael Kaluta on this one. I have work from him from the early 70's that is amazing and I have work from him done in the last two years that is amazing. Go take a look at Michael Ingram's CAF gallery and you can see even more incredible work done in the past year. I don't think every piece he does is incredible-I just think he still does a lot of work that is top notch, and he has done work that I think is at the highest level in 5 different decades (He did work in the 1960's, but I don't think he hit his stride until the 70's) and I am pretty confident he will make that 6 decades very soon.

Well, being the self absorbed guy that I am, I have already done this a few times. In fact, I have a commission theme that is a riff on Little Nemo with a bunch of pieces that will be worth approximately nothing someday except maybe to my kid when I am gone. Still, its been a fun exercise. Here is one of them.

I own one Lichtenstein. I didn't buy it at Heritage, but here is a link to one they sold. (Hmmm, looks like the link didn't print-go look for Lichtenstein's "This must be the Place") It was a poster for the Reuben awards in 1965. While I understand the vehemence with which folks like Brian Peck want to call out Lichtenstein as a hack etc,, I think otherwise and pretty clearly the folks at the National Cartoonist Society felt differently at the very moment that Lichtenstein was doing a lot of his more comic book centric artwork (and while that was perhaps what made him most famous, its clearly only a fraction of the work he did in his career) If you are thinking about jumping into these waters though, I think just looking at Heritage and at this image in particular, will give you an idea of how difficult it is to really gauge pricing for multiples (lithographs, prints etc) The copy I have, like the one I linked to, was pencil signed by Lichtenstein. The ones that were not seem to be selling for under 1000 and mostly under 750. With the pencil signature, however, the prices start jumping around and these are for pieces sold within months of each other. Some went as low as 1700 or so, others went as high as 4000. In a sense, these are like buying vintage comics. Condition plays a stronger role than with original art, as does rarity since these are by definition not one of a kind, most still have some limitation on the total number available. This image was released in an un-numbered edition so I have no idea how many were printed-and some clearly were pencil signed and some were not-but often with lithographs the editions are numbered so you can at least have an idea of the total produced. When I bought mine, I was actually searching for this specific image. It hit several sweet spots for me. Unlike others here, I like Lichtenstein and respect what he was doing at that time (and like later stuff too after he had given up comic images and moved on to other types of work) It also was clearly connected directly to comics, but I don't know if the image is taken from somewhere else (and don't really care) Lichtenstein released this lithograph as a poster for the Reuben awards, but he also did a "fine art" release of the image without any of the type at the bottom in a numbered edition. As it so happens, that image was purchased by the parents of my college roommate and it hung in his bedroom at home. I loved it when I first saw it in 1977 and had no idea of its connection to the Reuben awards. When I later found out what it had been originally produced for (some 40 years later!) I looked around and saw that there were both pencil signed and unsigned copies around. I immediately decided to get a hand signed version and pounced when I found one at what I thought (and still think ) was a good price. Based on the Heritage results over the past year I have been proven correct.

I don't know that I would pay a bundle for such a piece, but it clearly depends on the artist and the cover you are talking about, how much the cost of the recreation would be and whether that person plans to do a lot of the same piece. There are recreations by numerous artists that are pretty valuable and certainly more valuable than what was originally paid for them. I only have one in my collection, but it was a Silver Surfer Cover that Buscema did and it is certainly worth more than the original price of the piece-and even if I overpaid a bit to get it from the guy who commissioned it, I am glad to have it at a fraction of the cost of the original piece. I think my basic advice on commissions is that they are almost always worth less than what you pay when you buy them, but over time, some will appreciate and some will not. They will rarely, however, appreciate faster or to a greater extent than original published pieces by the same artist though.

I purchased this Sam Keith commission piece 5 or 6 years ago from a friend.

I have a lot of preliminary art in my collection. Here is a Blue Beetle cover from Cully Hamner. I own the final for this one, but I have a lot that I only have prelims for .

here is one from my collection that isn't up anywhere. Jason Schacter had this preliminary piece in pencil at Heroes Con at Tim's table a few years ago and rather than getting one of Tim's fast pass pieces, I bought this and had him ink it as my "convention sketch". I thought it was pretty darn cool and super close to the cover, just smaller size.

Every artist has antecedents. Eisner certainly built on what had come before and the earliest comic strips drew on humorous work by people like Hogarth (William, not Burne) but that doesn't mean the earliest antecedent is the Master. The exhibit was titled Masters of American Comics. As Glen noted starting this thread, it may have been an attempt to create a Canon-and certainly I don't think it completely succeeded in that-but mostly because the scope was too big to begin with. If it had been Masters of American Comic Strips and only had the comic strip guys they included it would clearly have been a bad job-and the same with American Comic Book Artists-but to have an exhibit with more than 15 artists and actually show a representative sample of their work would also have been a difficult task. My 15 would have certainly been different-but I think we all could probably pick 15 strip artists and 15 comic artists and then we would still be fighting over who got left out and why someone was included over someone else.

In general, I loved the original show-and made it a point to see both exhibits in LA during a lucky visit to LA while it was up, but I will admit that I was surprised by the inclusion of Feininger, for whom comics was a tiny part of a much larger career in art, and Panter, who I just didn't think belonged in the pantheon. I would absolutely have subbed in Foster, or more likely Raymond, on the strip side and though I am not the Carl Barks fan that some are, I think he probably deserved inclusion-but if the point was to include that "punk" sensibility that Panter brought in and to show contemporary cartoonists deserved a place at the table, I would have gone with Lynda Barry and killed two birds with one stone by making the show both more inclusive and having someone I thought was a better and more interesting comic artist. I really like Chris Ware's work and could certainly see why he was included, but I could absolutely make the argument that the show was way too short on mainstream cartoonists and that Neal Adams might better have been added (or Jack Davis if I was in charge-the sheer breadth of his cartooning talent still amazes me)

In that "inevitable person I forgot and will feel stupid I didn't mention" category let me put in colorist extraordinaire Laura Martin. I think Trina or Colleen may deserve a place, but neither of them are people I would be anxious to add to my collection, whereas I would be happy to add anyone on my original list and already have nearly half. If anyone has a Shary Flenniken or Roz Chast in particular, I would be very interested.

I think the nature of the industry has meant that many of the women on the list would be outside the mainstream, but I would certainly include Marie Severin, Ramona Fradon, Lynda Barry, Shary Flenniken, Jill Thompson, Dale Messick, June Brigman, Roz Chast, Lily Renee, Wendy Pini, Aline Kominski, Fiona Staples and Mary Fleener in my top fifteen with a few spots left for the inevitable person I forgot and will feel stupid I didn't mention. .

In case I didn't have your address or somehow forgot to send you an invitation, I am having a comic art brunch at my house on March 30. Please email me if you haven't gotten an invitation and you are interested in attending at benno119@gmail.com. Look forward to seeing lots of friends and lots of art (and eating lots of food!) Benno

I am always amused to come back to this thread and read all the overblown outrage about Lichtenstein on here. I love his stuff and was thinking about this thread on a recent visit to the High Museum in Atlanta where this piece is a highlight of the art that is outside on their plaza. Impossible to see from a photo, but the construction of the piece as three dimensional rather than flat makes it appear to rotate as you move around it, though of course it remains still. I also love the shadow it casts on the wall of the museum behind it. Presumably, no ones tender feelings were trampled upon in the creation of this art-but given the propensity for pointless flame wars here, I guess I may be speaking too soon.

How about Mignola with Kelley Jones inks?

Mitch Itkowitz has always been his rep as far as I know.

I answered above with the good kickstarter stories, but of course there are some bad ones too. Overall, I like Kickstarter-I have gotten books that I never would have seen otherwise(The Little Nemo "Dream another Dream" in particular was simply outstanding) and art that I am very happy with. On the other hand, I have absolutely been disappointed by a couple of the artists that have crapped out on projects-especially since the two items that I haven't gotten have been from people that I know personally and see at least a couple of times a year. I am not going to cry about being out 2 or 300 dollars though-the fact is that I have purchased commissions for far more than that which have been disappointing. I am actually pretty confident that Michael Kaluta will do all of the sketches he owes backers, including me. The other project, which was actually my first kickstarter, is clearly a write off and it wasn't even an art reward-just a book that will probably never be finished. I am super excited about getting my book from JM Dragunas as it is done and ready to ship and I know the art reward will be worth every penny. I am also excited about the new Scout book from Tim Truman , the Halloween kids book from Mike Hoffman and the three book set of classic novels and short stories illustrated by Paul Pope, Bill Sienkewicz and Yuko Shimizu-those look amazing. I am going with the cup is 90% full, not 10% empty.

P. Craig Russell did a great job and the art I got was awesome. I am also super excited about getting my art reward from JM Dragunas as that book looks really lovely. I have art rewards coming on Tim Truman's new Scout book and Mike Hoffman's new Halloween book, so for those, the proof will be in the pudding, but I am confident both will be to my liking.

This seemed like a whole lot of talk about an issue that clearly cannot be rationally determined. A and B level art are basically the comic art equivalent of the old saw about Pornography "You know it when you see it" and even more so, because even when you do see it, you may have a completely different opinion than the next guy. I think there are some indisputable A level pieces out there, but even that is at least debatable, as the Trimpe Wolverine Splash made abundantly clear to anyone who was watching the reaction to that sale. I have to just go with "I know what I like and if not many others do, then I guess that means I am lucky cause I will get it for less". I have a lot of things in my collection that are A level to me, but I suppose my heirs will discover if I was just fooling myself and that is ok as I don't see it as a major part of my estate planning anyway.

About a dozen years ago, I wrote an article in the CFA-apa about the proliferation of sketchbooks at shows. At that time, they were starting to really take off. I had intended to interview Bill Stout, who I think was really the first guy to popularize the idea. He was doing what were essentially homemade sketchbooks that he had printed himself and sold at shows so fans could have a low price point item with lots of art if they didn't want to buy an original or perhaps more expensive books he had for sale. He actually took the idea and rather than do an interview he wrote a blog about the genesis of the idea and let me just publish that verbatim and then I added stuff about how it really blew up (in my opinion) when Adam Hughes, Art Adams, Frank Cho and a few others jumped in with their own versions. I remember chatting with Adam about it and his amazement that he (actually, it was Allison who put them together) could get them done at Kinko's before going to San Diego, make a thousand copies and sell out at the show for 10 bucks apiece, which was a nice chuck of change back when he sold sketches for 50.00 bucks a pop!! For a while I was pretty gaga about them myself and bought a bunch-they are inexpensive and the quality kept improving and it was fun! Then, of course, like with comics, I ended up with a whoooooole lot of them and storage became an issue, especially since there was no standard size like with comics-some where just folded over 8 1/2 x 11 chapbooks so they were closer to 4 x 5 , some were full 8 1/2 by 11 and others were something different altogether. I still have a lot from that period of 2005-2008 or 9 and I still occasionally buy one from someone I admire if I am not buying art-or more importantly, if I buy a sketch or commission and its in the sketchbook! I just couldn't get my arms around being a completist though.

I should have made a run at that Creaturebox piece. I was probably still goggle eyed over the Calvin & Hobbes Remarqued book going for 11K.

Anyone feel free to offer me 25% of that for my Mummy puzzle missing two pieces!! ;-) Benno

Well, I know most foiks here already know who everyone else here is based on their screen names, but I don't post that much so I am still in the dark. If anyone is planning to bring any art and wants to do a late night bit of show and tell after the obligatory dinners out and drinking email me at benno119@gmail.com and maybe we can put something together. I am bringing a few things and its always more fun to see stuff in person than online in my opinion. Benno

are you selling (or at least bringing) any art along?