drdroom

Hi Ferran, congratulations and thank you. Your name will be emblazoned on the Source Wall for the service you have done. On the blog it still says to Paypal $55, but should it now be $45?

13 hours ago, glendgold said:

Because they kept a stat of it the way they kept stats of the unused FF Annual 1, FF 3, ASM 10, etc.  They reprinted the AF 15 (unused) stat in the 50 Years of Marvel book.  The OA isn't known to exist. 

I interviewed the guys who ran the printing presses in the 1960s.  That cover art isn't under Stan's bed.  It's either a) under someone else's bed or b) put into a landfill in 1964 to make more room on the shelves. 

 

 

Glen, you are one of the few people on this thread who has done any actual research, so I don't mean any disrespect, but how do the pressmen know that Stan didn't end up with the covers? Does that mean the covers were sitting around the printing plant, no one from Marvel ever came around for them, and so the "someone else" is the janitor or something?

Those Luke Cage covers were the best Marvel covers of their era, IMHO. I really can't congratulate you enough.

To anyone from the outside world, Frazetta's content is cheesy and ridiculous. However, if they know about drawing, they can see that there's an authentic pulp energy there that is unmatched. Boris lacks that inspired quality entirely, and only ever had the cheese. That's how I saw it as a young fan in the seventies, and my view hasn't changed at all, except for that beautifully perverted Tom-of-Finland looking Daredevil piece, which ranks with that amazing Liefeld Captain America. Boris should go more in that direction. He might even crack the fine art world if he took that a step further.

I went to the link but it said the page was taken down by owner...?

Wrightson is a great example, but any pro inker can do the basics of tonal range. It's line thickness and hatching basically. To Rick2You2's point above, yeah, it's a translation not an exact reproduction. 

To address the topic: I think there are three categories of great ink job. Number 1, most often committed by the penciller, perfectly expresses the vibe of the pencils. That is, as close as possible, considering that, as Erik Larson once commented, "ink KILLS pencils." Examples of this category of great inks include John Buscema (and his master, Hal Foster), Neal Adams, Barry Smith, and R. Crumb inking themselves, and Mike Royer inking Kirby. Number 2 are inks that even transcend this standard, inks that outdo the nuance of the pencils, art that truly comes into it's glory as ink laid down on paper. Again, this will almost always be the same artist who did the pencils, but here the greater genius shows itself in the inks: Frazetta, Toth, Booth, Ketcham, Caniff, Godwin, Wrightson, Jeff Jones. Finally, the third kind of great ink job, IMHO, is the ink job that improves on the pencils, or adds another value to the pencils without losing anything they already had. So maybe Wood over Kirby, certainly Wood over Bob Brown. P. Craig Russell did some remarkable work over very minimal, late Ditko pencils.  I have an Infantino page with remarkable Nino inks. Wrightson over Adams or Kaluta is nearly as good, yet different, as those artists inking themselves.

3 hours ago, malvin said:

saw that, was getting ready to make an offer then was told it was gone

Malvin

OK, so what do you think this page could resell for today?

14 hours ago, lobrac said:

To me, that's basically an Alcala page. There's very little of John Buscema left. Here's an example of Buscema pencils. Direct and clean, not fussy, not baroque.

12 hours ago, delekkerste said:

DrDroom (IIRC, this is longtime collector w/initials A.S.) posited to me that John Buscema is "so obviously his own best inker" in another thread:

My question to the Boards is:  do you agree?  I know other longtime collector B.P. has been a leading proponent of this notion, but, I have never been on board with this.  Personally, I prefer Palmer over Buscema the most, but, also Sinnott, Giacoia, Sal B., Klein, Adkins, Alcala...well, I guess I'm just not a fan of JB's own inks.  To me, his line just did not have enough weight to it - it was often very loose and wispy and just not strong enough.  This is very evident in much of his '80s era Conan work, but, you can also see it in his '70s work as well, such as the Conan #94 (1978) cover that was at auction not long ago - that cover desperately needed stronger, bolder inks to really make the image pop.  

My take on it is that this idea that "pencillers are almost always their own best inkers" is largely a romantic notion that is often not grounded in reality.  I don't see what "obvious reasons" there are for this to be true.  Just because they may have a particular vision of what the art should look like, doesn't mean that they are the best one to execute all aspects of it.  Some inkers are just better at that job. 

As I said in the Neal Adams thread, it is true that the penciller is sometimes his own best inker (there are also many artists who were never/rarely inked by anyone else, so, by default, I guess you would lump them all in this category, even though we wouldn't really know if their work could be improved upon by someone else).  But, in many other cases, it is the case that this notion is not so.  Almost no one would argue that John Byrne was his own best inker.  Jim Lee, though a very good inker, was/is not his own best inker in the minds of most (that honor goes to Scott Williams, despite his protestations to the contrary).  Jack Kirby, not his own best inker.  Gil Kane, not his own best inker. 

Personally, I think one can admire other aspects of John Buscema's artistry (composition, storytelling ability, character design, etc.) without necessarily being a big fan of his inking. 

So, what sayest thou??

Sorry to be late to a party I unwittingly started! I'm not the collector you're thinking of, I'm a medium-time collector, CAF gallery Aaron N. The obvious reason for a penciller to be their own best inker is that the penciller has the best understanding of their own artistic intent and can ink accurately OR continue to develop the work creatively as they ink. In the case of a mediocre artist maybe this doesn't matter, and in that case by all means get Wood or someone to ink it and make it better. But John Buscema was a truly talented penciller, and his own inks best reflect the way the pencils look. Look at his inks on the Conan sketch at bottom right  (I didn't search a long time for this example, I know I've seen better ones). Compare the inked arm to the un-inked arm: the inks have as much of the character of the pencils as ink CAN. Yes, the pencils are a bit light and the inks reflect that. I'll take accurate inks over the wispy pencils of the later stuff any day over  Alcala's gross over-inking.

A note on Kirby: he was absolutely his own best inker prior to about 1960. Then he stopped inking almost entirely, and never really took it up again, so we don't know for certain. Royer is my pick for his best post-1960 inker, and I also like the later Sinnott. 

10 hours ago, Nexus said:

The big qualifier is, of course, “public auction”.

The other big qualifier is "Silver or Bronze"

The maximum value of the piece to the buyer, at the time of purchase, is what the underbidder bid. You, the buyer, were the ONLY person willing to pay what you paid, so that's not really a reasonable basis for setting FMV. 

On 2/18/2018 at 10:25 AM, stinkininkin said:

It's hard to disagree with most of what you write here Mike, even though we might differ slightly on Adams peak years and evolution of ink styles.  Those differences are subtle, and subjective for the most part.  I will agree with you however, that your bolded quote above is spot on--Adams was a magician with his pencil line.  Best I've ever seen.  Bold and subtle at the same time, with the "edge of the pencil" approach creating a range in nuance, precision and emotion that must have been a real challenge for any who tried their hand at inking him.  I wish more of Neal's pencils had been saved in some format, like those Avengers 93 pencil Xerox's that are reproduced from time to time.  Almost none of his Xmen pencils were saved, and I can't say I've seen much Batman or Green Lantern pencils either.  The Kirby collector was such a great resource of raw Kirby pencils for art aficionado's to experience the King's work in new ways.  Too bad for us Adams enthusiast's that we will never have that same type of resource.

 

This looks like the perfect moment to post my Heritage win --it's my first Adams piece and I'm so happy:

On 2/16/2018 at 5:48 AM, delekkerste said:

Palmer made everyone look their best.   

I think there is a certain romance to believing that top pencillers are also their own best inkers.  In some cases, it is true.  In others, it is not.  I'm not convinced that Adams was his own best inker, though, there's certainly a better case for it than, say, John Buscema being his own best inker (IMO, Big John would struggle to make the top 5 list of his best inkers).  

Romance, shmo-mance. Pencillers are almost always their own best inkers, for obvious reasons, unless they just don't bother to ink. John Buscema is so obviously his own best inker to me that I would have to think you just don't really like Buscema's drawing that much, if you prefer it modified by someone else.

There was also a pretty nice page from Howard the Duck 1 in the same auction. Went for 5K. The AA7 page went for 15.5K.

I also did a double take on this one. Last time I recall something similar was a Mazz Born Again page, but the values of those were a bit less well established at the time.

On 12/29/2017 at 9:48 AM, NicoV said:

If you guess on items no one else had, you'll be 1st for each of them... but it won't change anything to the top ranking, which is solely based on the differences between your guesses and the final prices. 

Ah, you've outsmarted me already...

Not all that interesting of an article to me. It's a way of reviewing the Omnibus Edition of the Fourth World, which I'm sure is not a very congenial way to read the Fourth World. His left-handed-compliment notion that reading comics is "reading irresponsibly" doesn't seem to produce any interesting openings into the text. I did leave a little comment in response to his vague assertion that Lee kept Kirby "on the page" at Marvel.

13 hours ago, NicoV said:

Just numbers. The currency will be the auction currency, and I did not consider decimals as really useful. No thousands separator.

I thought I tried that, but I guess not! Guesses entered. I resisted the temptation to run up a huge score by only guessing on items no one else had bothered with

Anybody know what the requested format is for the numbers? I've tried multiple times to save my guesses, but I keep getting a "match requested format" message. I've tried with & without dollar sign, with and without decimal. Using Safari, if that means anything.

Early Kirby Human Torch for $2250, just a few days ago. Not bad.

On 12/16/2017 at 11:37 AM, RYEBABY said:

Hello all, 

just noticed this thread. I saw a gallery near me selling this horse manure for crazy money about 18months ago. I just checked and they are now selling more at even crazier prices , have a look if you fancy a laugh:

https://www.castlegalleries.com/artists/stan-lee#collection

unbelievable that people pay these prices for this stuff !

WTF

"hand-signed by legendary comic artist Stan Lee" --anybody notice something wrong with that sentence?

I'm almost sure it is this one.

4 hours ago, aokartman said:

Here is a modest snapshot of a Jack Kirby piece which might convince the OP to go to original art.  My only Kirby, upgraded from Captain Victory, here is KAMANDI.

Not intending to demean Captain Victory, there was a nostalgic component on the swap, an upgrade for me.  Best, David

It sounds like the OP values primarily images of covers featuring major Marvel heroes, and signed by Stan, so, as nice as I think that Kamandi page is, it's not likely to outshine these giclees in his eyes. Perhaps someone has a piece of Marvel cover OA in the under-20K range they'd like to post? Doesn't have to be Kirby, just be Avengers or something & with a Stan signature. 

18 hours ago, Paris_Fred said:

The art on this page is by Gérald Forton, a Belgium artist born in 1931, who worked for the French TV Magazine "Télé-Junior"

Regarding American Material for France he also illustrated, Hulk, Captain America, Battlestar Galactica, The Wild Wild West and many other licenses.

High five, Fred!