Dr. Balls

100%. I got beat up on a book awhile back with that very notation and while it was encased, I seriously could. not. see. it. I cracked it and sure enough, it was there.

I predict that this brand of tools will surely set someone's house on fire.

And there is also the condition of the hologram. Even bagged and boarded, rubbing against the comic in front of it in a long box for years would result in faint surface scratches.

Gonna put that one in my personal lexicon of female body part colloquialisms.

Excellent suggestions. An alternative to the hair dryer is to put your oven at about 160-180 degrees and warm it up in there for 40 minutes or an hour. You may experience some slight bowing to the paper, which can be flattened out with weight easy enough. That low of a temp won't damage or discolor the paper. I've used this method to eliminate mildew smell in paper and had no problems with heat, other than a light bowing of the paper.

I did not read the initial comment, but I would seriously question how one collector could verbally "bully" another collector who does not have any sort of advantage or financial position whatsoever on an original piece of art. There is literally nothing at stake other than - perhaps - a few bucks, personal pride or enjoyment. And who among us doesn't undertake a challenge to our perspective from time to time? People say stuff all the time, and then change their viewpoint - that's the discussion element in all of this. Hell, I did it right here myself in this thread. I mean, I have to admit that a guy named 'Shemp' bested me in reading into the description in a more detailed fashion than I did. Sometimes discussions start heated until they are worked out. To me, I believe that's how we communicate professionally as well as personally.

I was just happy to see all these survivors of that era - I can't even imagine what this auction will look like with Roger Hill's collection. I read a bit about him - he was an "art detective" - how awesome would it have been to be tracking these pieces down in the 70's and 80's: sending letters, making phone calls, meeting people for dinner. All that old hard-boiled collector detective stuff...

Couple of interesting links here: Most of the editorial commentary by "Molly" posted in one place. and One week later, the people called out in Ed's suicide note speak up. Leaving aside the conservative slant of the website, the statements of others are all compiled in one article.

If he's smart, he'll get drafted by an NFL team and he'll never have to worry about punishment again.

Honestly, this seems like the movie Hemsworth was training for during the first four Thor movies. Can't wait for this to hit streaming.

Yeah, I was probably being a little too presumptive. Like @JadeGiant said, he might just be stinging a little bit in having to look at that piece in a different light now that more information has come out on it. Not everyone processes that as immediately as other people might expect them to.

Oh yeah, no kidding. I have a couple pieces that sellers, dealers, auction houses played a little fast-and-loose with the provenance only to find out that they were not published as claimed or alluded to. And you're right - you just shrug your shoulders and move on. Everyone is different, but for me - If I truly like a piece enough to buy it, it doesn't make it any less cool when you find out the true history behind it. Sure, when you find out it's unpublished and you paid published price for it, that's the part that burns - but in the end, you still have a great piece of artwork.

He has - what I would refer to as - a remarked preliminary an inked preliminary. If he is holding steady to saying things like “no one really knows”, he is likely trying to angle in for a future sale to someone who wouldn’t know yours (Malvin’s) is out there. There is unequivocal, obvious and viewable proof to which one is the original artwork - above and beyond the artists statement on the backside.

Seriously? He thinks that? They are two different pieces, and yours is a direct representation of the final piece. His piece has a bunch of extra linework in the shoulders/chest and has different brush strokes on the face.

Gotcha - I see it is still on there - I'll have to rewatch.

Very true. Being open outside of goals or focus actually allows me to be very discerning about something special that doesn't fit into my collecting "theme", but those pieces are some of my more cherished items because I generally gave them a lot more scrutiny. I have a lot more pieces that fit into my focus that just aren't as superior - I like them for what they are, but looking back - I'd probably have passed on them if I didn't have a focus that justified having them.

IT’S HAPPENING, PEOPLE!!! Bad Girls are BACK!

This is where I am at. He has chosen a permanent solution to a temporary problem. She will likely never be able to move on knowing that her actions had so much influence on him. Yes, it's "her story" and all that, but somewhere out there there is a woman defending herself by building up a psychological wall over all of this - which is not good for your brain or your soul. I sure as Hell wouldn't feel terribly good about someone doing something drastic like that over the result of something I said - even if I was right. Sucks all around.

The one who posted his conversations via DM and added commentary after-the-fact. Obviously, can't post it here - but that's the link.

Correct. There are mature, structured and organizational ways to resolve situations in life that allows for closure, recompense or forgiveness should someone want to forgive. That is how you function in adult society. Posting 200 word screeds with F-bombs, repeated editorializing and slang works against the the gravity of seriousness of her story. So back to my original point of "...given some time, I'm sure Molly would have seen that she grossly over-reacted." - she would have realized at some future point in time that the way she handled it could have been better and more articulate in a way that might have produced a better, healthier outcome than what happened here.

Don't be obtuse. The way she shared her "experience" is not really how you get things resolved with people. I've read the posts. They sound absolutely vacuous and inane. She's free to share her experience, but man - her way of doing it was absolutely idiotic.

I don't necessarily disagree with any of your points - the big picture here (for me) is that the situation is a car crash of two very bad personality traits: 1. 40-something dude not "reading the room" and understanding he shouldn't be talking to a teenager. 2. A 20-something girl who is wound up into a social justice fueled frenzy. Smash those two things together, and you have what has happened here. It's not s|ut shaming, it's not defending the man - it's identifying two personalities and seeing what drove the results. The sad part about all of this is that Ed clearly identified that he royally screwed up - but didn't give himself the chance to come back from it. And, given some time, I'm sure Molly would have seen that she grossly over-reacted. These are the things we all learn in life. How many of us did stupid, embarrassing things that we are ashamed of? Everyone. And we're probably better people for it as we were given enough time to learn the lesson, feel the shame and make corrections to be better functioning members of society. This is why I absolutely hate cancel culture. Cancelling someone over something said 10-20 years ago is absolutely insane. People change viewpoints. People learn from experience and interaction. Cancel culture eliminates those learning opportunities by creating a fear-filled, toxic environment where nothing can be said, done, or shown. These two will never have that chance, Ed obviously won't and if Molly pushes aside her defense mechanism of what she's done to realize her mistake, her potential guilt may not ever allow her to accept that mistake - publicly or privately.

From this article, it sounds as if tons of artwork had been stolen over a long period of time, and not a single purchaser ever brought a page to a convention where they appeared to be signed or ever sent an email about an inquiry regarding a page years before the HA auction was discovered. The 6 month timeline wouldn't work here, because it was years before these two guys discovered things were missing. There has always been a criminal element to the hobby (as with all hobbies), but man - the frequency of things happening is really a downer.