drdroom

That's right, the whole buyer motivation matrix is different in the two markets. Nostalgia in particular is highly suspect in the fine art world, which prefers innovation and "importance" (YMMV). So demand would have to be created in acceptable fine art standards, like GrapeApe suggested with his "Primitive pop cultural expression." But it's a heavy lift, and IMHO it would have happened by now if it was going to.

As a jaded art world habitué, the problem I see with this is that no one in the art world thinks comics are primitive. Sixty years ago, when Lichtenstein was treating comic panels as essentially factory-made artifacts, you had some of that attitude, but even those same people held Krazy Kat in high regard. Nowadays comics are revered and referenced all the time. They (we, I guess) just believe that comic original art is made primarily for reproduction, and even if it looks pretty good on a gallery wall, no one is ever convinced that it was purpose built to be on that wall. There's a word you hear sometimes, "auratic," meaning the object itself has an aura, a presence and sense of wholeness that reproduction can't capture. In fine art, that's what you want in the single object. In comics, it's the published comic that is auratic, potentially. A page from it is just a production artifact, and this can be deeply cool, expensive, and even beautiful, but it's fundamentally a different category, and not the business that the art world is in. All that said, I've seen Kirby double splashes hold their own, auratically, on a wall with a Leon Golub, so it's not impossible.

I had to stay out of this convo, because for me to argue with people who believe Kirby was a BAD writer and Lee was a GOOD writer would be like debating vintages of Cabernet Franc with a tribe of Cro-Magnons or something, ...but I just happened to discover something pertinent to your complaint: the published version added a "--" after the offending exclamation point. This might be even more aggravatingly improper, but it does, I think, address the problem inasmuch as it tends to re-connect the two phrases as a single sentence. What do you think, better?

Classic Alex Johnson just-the-facts post.

Yeah, me and my group as well. And let me take this opportunity to remind everyone that the first couple of days are JUST for tracking bids. Please just place the minimum bid (up one increment). You are NOT trying to win the piece at this early stage. There have been times the bids went up so fast I was nervous to place a tracking bid that might actually win (this being a piece I didn't actually want or couldn't afford at that price, but still wanted to track what it went for).

Peter Rabbit is the Wolverine of rabbit characters.

That is classic girl-under-glass sci-fi content. I think babe tax came into play even more than the average Vampi page.

I would go back in time and murder Colletta in the crib, but I also thought this went low. Two space panels? That's a PLUS

This is correct.

What's the deal with this "Invincible" thing? It's a popular comic?

smoking what?

WildC.A.T.s: Covert Action Teams #8 Voodoo cheesecake DPS. Auctioneer: "That doesn't look very covert." I laughed!

Liefeld Cap coming up soon. The greatest superhero drawing ever drawned.

Exactly. Imagine what one of the covers where you can see Conan will go for?

No one is suggesting the Sky Masters strip as an influence! The Doom connection would be in two areas: not the Japanese helmet shape, but the robotic face covering; and more importantly the persona of the scarred, face-concealing noble villain with mystical training. Lucas never acknowledged Kirby at all, despite the overwhelming similarities to the Fourth World. I could speculate on the psychology of this, but I'll just note that it's not unknown for artists to underplay their nearest influences.

There can be more than one influence. We can be pretty sure that Lucas knew (& ransacked!) Kirby's Fourth World material, so knowing Doom is not a stretch. Who was the costume designer?

Bro, I got no idea what you have there...

Take My Money!!!

Should we do this in it's own thread?

I'm prepared to nominate What If... 11 for the bottom ten Kirby covers. [apologies if the consignor is onboard]

Aw man, not another Colletta thread...

Both pages are rejects, no?

I don't want to know!

I think Philip is saying there are two red hot girl panels on the Personal Love page vs. only one Came the Dawn panel, so therefore the single panel should be twice as good, i.e. worth two PL panels, to sell for the same price.

I believe you're referring to this? Perhaps I can be of assistance. It's neither unpublished or a sketch, though it went unpublished at the time. It's a panel from the legendary unfinished EC story, "Came the Dawn," a remake of an earlier Wally Wood story, set to be published in Shock Illustrated 3 before that title was cancelled. Shock Illustrated was one of the black & white adult magazines EC briefly published after the comics code wiped out their classic line. This would have been only the second solo story by Frazetta for EC and the sex and violence quotient is absolutely off the charts. Someone, maybe Frank himself, cut the pages up, had him sign all the panels, in whatever state of completion, from pencils only to a couple with full inks, and sold them into the market. The story has many owners! This panel is one of the two most finished panels of the heroine, and I would say one of the top three most desirable panels in the story. It's three years later, and more subtle, than the Personal Love panels, and it's earlier and more finished than the ink sketch that went for half the price. In short, it's peak Fritz for collectors of his comics work. It might not seem like all that to you, but as a collector of a certain vintage, this is a grail.