drdroom

On 3/5/2024 at 3:56 AM, Rick2you2 said:

I think you are ignoring price when looking at quality. With comic art, a lot of the value is nostalgia-based. So, work with an aura can be relatively inexpensive if it doesn’t ring someone’s nostalgia bells. One the other hand, people don’t buy Lichtenstein because they recall when he drew it and loved it as a kid (although, even in high school, I had a soft-spot for Mondrian). And even in fine art, there are trends. How’s the market for 19th century landscapes holding up? Some of it is excellent, but, I don’t want it on my walls. The problem is much more severe with comic art where people buy what they loved when they saw it in a floppy.

That’s really one of the problems with OA. Age matters a lot more than with fine art. And as publishers sell to a shrinking market, it will eventually get worse. But yes, as art, it will hold up. 
 

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. 

On 2/29/2024 at 7:16 AM, grapeape said:

Most likely you are correct. Still, I see an opening to the fine art world. It's small, just a crack. I believe some comic art would translate to a small, but influential network of art pimps. It would just take a few well heeled galleries to experiment in "Primitive pop culural expression." I can see that's not likely, but as Lloyd said in Dumb and Dumber, " so you're saying there's a chance."

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. 

On 1/24/2024 at 10:01 AM, Sideshow Bob said:

Going to sound petty, but it should be "IF WE MUST DIE, LET NEW GENESIS LIVE!" That poorly placed first exclamation mark is torture for my grammarian OCD. I don't think I could handle looking at that every day. It is spectacular in every other way. Well, except for the incorrect use of "- -" which should just be a comma; unless there is another double dash -- which there isn't -- you don't put in just one. Uggh. 

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?

On 11/26/2023 at 6:30 PM, alxjhnsn said:

One of the two most commonly mentioned comic art restorers is Robert Dennis. Robert attended the proceedings of January 6th, 2021 in Washington, D. C. and was convicted of attacking officers. He was later sentenced to 36 months in prison and fined. 
 

Classic Alex Johnson just-the-facts post.

On 2/17/2024 at 7:36 PM, Fischb1 said:

My group of friends all put in trackers on CL. We don't do it on HA or CC. I know of many others that are the same. Because of the lack of watchlist. 

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).

On 11/19/2023 at 3:18 PM, Brian Peck said:

I am really surprised by Pablo Marcos Vampirella #80 panel page 2 sold for $4200

I love Pablo Vampirella but that is alot for a panel page of his. What do you think Gene since you used to be the Vampire market? 

 

 

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

On 11/17/2023 at 2:04 PM, KirbyCollector said:

Thor 1/2 face in one panel, 1/8 face in another, two space panels with no Thor + Colletta inks? This price is correct. Colletta does a nicer than normal job (for him) here, but the inks are nowhere close to those by Sinnott or Royer.

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

On 11/17/2023 at 2:20 PM, vodou said:

Nah; just drips of Severin. That’s why it’s palatable.

This is correct.

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

On 11/17/2023 at 11:53 AM, batman_fan said:

Somebody got a smoking deal 

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.

On 11/16/2023 at 6:12 PM, tth2 said:

That was way higher than I was expecting for this cover.  So as far as I'm concerned, BWS Conan is still beating expectations!

I am upgrading my rating of BWS Conan from "Hold" to "Accumulate".

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

On 11/15/2023 at 9:13 PM, adamstrange said:

Lucas has expressed multiple times the influence of Kurosawa on Star Wars to the point that the basic plot for the movie was taken from Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".  The costume for Han Solo was based on Al Williamson's EC sci fi art.  I have not heard him or anyone else involved mention Kirby's Skymasters strip as an influence.

A google search for images of "Japanese armor helmet" will show a multitude of examples that were the inspiration for the shaping of the helmet.

The strip we are discussing is spectacular, and kudos to the new owner regardless of its influence or lack of influence on mass media.

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.

On 11/4/2023 at 6:26 PM, adamstrange said:

Extremely unlikely.  Vader's helmet was based Japanese helmets from the Waring States period (depicted in Jidaigeki films of Akira Kurosawa).

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...

On 11/15/2023 at 7:45 AM, Ecclectica said:

I would be happy to see this one, actually.

Take My Money!!!

On 9/26/2023 at 7:13 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

There are dozens of Kirby covers far worse than the What If 11 cover

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...

On 9/20/2023 at 8:31 AM, NinjaSealed said:

I think in general they would get more separate but in this case maybe not as buyers may hesitate much more bidding on the second page due to it basically being a rejected page. Doesn’t look so good when you title it alone that way.

425k now 

Both pages are rejects, no?

On 9/21/2023 at 9:04 PM, tth2 said:

I'm pretty sure that all those backwards-baseball-cap-wearing Card and Comic/OA Bros have never done a MM/CD/T-bill vs. collectible ROI calculation in their life. 

I don't want to know!

On 9/20/2023 at 2:05 PM, Bronty said:

 

What do you mean by twice as good?   You seem to be implying one went for twice as much as the other, but HA seems to indicate that the 'personal love' panel page and the 'came the dawn' panel went for almost  the same price. 

It seems to me the panel is aesthetically the best single shot, but the personal love is complete and more substantial, and that's how we ended up at the same amount of 'hot girl tax.'

 

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.