Bronty

Yeah I harbor zero ill will and in fact Rich was helpful to me once which I appreciated a lot. If you find their prices high, don’t deal with them. If you find them difficult to deal with, don’t deal with. It’s that simple for the most part. The altering of art and or trade dress to me is a disclosure issue. What is done to a piece should be disclosed within reason.

29 did sell at heritage for 20k a while back yes

Yeah. If that’s the case and if I were the seller I’d tell Neal to stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine, to be perfectly honest.

Does the mad 24 final (such as it is) exist? Another component of value is whether the final exists, surely. The prelim is more valuable when the final is not in existence . 41k seems strong to me for that (looks more like 25k to me personally) but as we all know it only takes two .

Unused (but finished ) covers are a whole other discussion, but I’m curious do you have a pic? I don’t remember seeing that

I give one example and now it’s “my 1.4% rule” my point was that all other things being equal percentage will IMO decrease as absolute value increases. There are many other factors including as was noted the degree of finish

Yeah and it’s nit just the percentage, the absolute value comes into it as well. I think the higher the value of the finished piece then generally the more drag on the percentage. Simply put I believe there’s a ceiling to what people want to pay for a comic art prelim because there are so many substitutes (finished pages, other issues etc). As an example the GSX1 cover was I’m sure worth at least 500k when the prelim went for 7. That’s 1.4% only.

I’m no authority on this bu I suspect that the gsx 1 cover prelim would be over 10k now, the hulk 181 for sure if one exists, any significant frazetta prelims etc etc. There would be a few candidates but only top level sruff

Yeah fair enough. I’m just making the related point since the question was asked about what comic prelim would be the record that it’s an interesting thought (anyone know the answer? ) but is probably a pretty small quantum . There’s so many pieces to a given comic book that comic prelims are usually going to be your 24th and up best options for a given comic . i remember the gsx1 cover prelim going for what 7k some years ago? Even though I’m sure it would go higher now, thats not a big number.

Prelims in mtg art, game art etc often go for more than comic prelims often do because there is just one actual final illustration (if that) per piece. So you don’t have a cover and 22 pages before getting down to the prelims. There’s just the one illustration and then maybe a prelim or two and that’s if you’re lucky and if it exists in the first place. I’ve sold some above five figures as a result which is pretty rare for comic prelims I think despite comics being bigger and more established.

Bought ages ago and sitting in black holes?

I think 20, 22, 25, 28, 33, 34, annual 2, all are nice. There’s lots of ones that would be nice but no home runs

I’d take 21 in a nanosecond . Not the best cover as Chris said but the cover to an iconic book is the cover to an iconic book.

Yeah honestly art wise the assistant strips are an improvement

Omg that is priceless!

seems legit.

Yeah fair point. I have to agree that scale wise that's the same thing, roughly. However, ST21 is flat out the best retcon of all time. I guess that's why I want to attach these superlatives to it... because honestly, what a ground breaking, unbelievable book. It deserves every accolade it gets and then some.

Agreed re Oliver. St21 - The scale was unprecedented is the point. He went from an amalgam of human and swamp to pure plant with human memories to, more specifically, elemental force of nature in later issues. He went from amalgam of Alec Holland and some swamp mud to ... godlike creature that could affect the growth pattern of a leaf in Namibia

I get it, but revamping GL to point out that he cares about the purple skins and not the black skins, while an admirable story on its own, is not the same level of reinvention as taking an existing character and revealing he has been dead for over a decade and is just a plant with his memories..... ST21 was next level in every way

that's a nice one

ditto. There's been tons already. Surprisingly the price has been going up not down per my last review but all this supply should change that

The earlier the less ghosted I believe . I grew up with them; I’ll certainly buy one one day

Hm

The swamp thing isn’t super well described but it does to its credit use the word collage. I looked at this in yesterday’s clink and stayed away because I figured the swamp thing faces were mechanical and then coloured overtop with paint. I think that’s what they are trying to convey by ‘painted collage’ although plainer language would be nice

I remember seeing something about this as well. Perhaps the early vertigo issues of swamp thing mentioned that link? There’s something to it in at least a bit of a concrete way IIRc