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Sideshow Bob

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Posts posted by Sideshow Bob

    Comic Art Live - anyone buying?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    On 11/15/2022 at 1:39 PM, J.Sid said:

    Are there any pricing restrictions in place for sellers? What's to stop me from listing my Chas Truog Animal Man panel page in the event at $5m?

    During the recap, Bill quoted the total amount of art that was on offer by collectors, and also in total with dealers. He'll use that to compare to other CAF Live events and likely in advertising sales decks, but now we've established that the quoted number is effectively inflated by the $5m. So now Bill has to put a caveat on the offered amounts by carving out "joke offers".

    Anything that makes Bill have to do more work when not absolutely necessary isn't very cool in my book.

    -Bob

    Anyone watching Dueling Dealers tonight?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    On 11/4/2022 at 6:42 PM, Dr. Balls said:

    Haunches, gaps and now bricks? I have no idea what bricks are. :ohnoez:

    Unironically, it's just that. Two-dimensional drawings of three-dimensional bricks used to construct human shelter. No double entendres needed. Just drawings of actual bricks, but sometimes used as a measure of value in terms of how much work that artist put into the background construction, which is itself a false equivalency.

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    HERITAGE November comic and art auction

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    On 10/22/2022 at 11:17 AM, malvin said:

    Hi Yoram,

    Thank you for the detailed explanation.  I get the One Punch and that this page was two pages before it (and I am lucky enough to own the one page after it).

    The pages were high, but everything is high so it was more of a pleasant surprise.  I'm more surprised that:

    1. Page 7 was valued almost the same as the cover and issue 5 page 5

    2. The cover was not valued more than the 2 panel pages (and I get than one was an A+ panel page, and that the cover didn't have Batman like the 2 panels).

    Then again, many prices confuse most of us these days :P

    Malvin

    Hey Malvin.  I was the winning bidder on the JL #5 page. All your comments are correct. In a perfect world, a cover should be worth more than an interior page from the same title and same artist. But alas, the cover had no Batman, and we're attempting to compare a somewhat famous moment in comics (albeit an interior page) versus what is essentially a great gag cover but with B-List characters... and this is why a price guide for OA was a losing battle. You are also spot-on, that there isn't any rational reason that I know of for the JLI #7 page to have done so well. Its definitely a great Maguire group shot, but past that, I have no idea why that is a $19k page.  Really, no idea.
     
    So why go to the mat for the JL #5 page, which is two pages before the One Punch page? I have a hit-list of moments/images in comics that I have committed myself to trying my hardest to get if/when they pop up at auction. This sequence of pages (plus the cover) is on that list, so I tried hard to snag it and succeeded. Overpaid? Oh, very likely. But it is a perfectly constructed narrative page, with a huge Batman, great Maguire figures and facial expressions, outstanding humor, and a singular moment in comics that burns bright for me. It was always going to go high, and this market is a little screwy at the moment, so I just had to go a little more screwier than the next guy. 
     
    Just found out what black hole the cover fell into...doh!  
     
    Bob

    Your collecting style: Eras? Artists? Titles? A mix?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    It has taken more than a decade, of buying and selling and upgrading and curating. But at this point, my collecting style is essentially a barbell. On one side is a super-focused collection dripping with nostalgia (heavy DC with a little Marvel, covering 1986-1991), and the other is a combination of new and older art from artists/titles that I have grown to appreciate as I've grown as a collector. 

    I have a veritable graveyard of bad decisions made along the way, some which I was able to escape without pain (and sometimes a profit), others where it still hurts when I think about how expensive the lesson learned was. 

    Lessons and scars providing some much needed perspective, over the last two years, I went through another OA selling/upgrading phase, but with some serious guardrails on what I would let myself buy going forward. I went through a theoretical exercise of what my dream portfolio would look like, and found images from the Internet and CAF to drop into a huge powerpoint slideshow. It was a great exercise and I got to crack open a bunch of floppies and trades that hadn't seen the light of day in 30 years, but one that fully violates the commandment of "thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house or possessions". It isn't just the super high-end stuff, but arguably every piece is A+ for its category (I thank my lucky stars for never getting into mutant titles...) So now, I only look for pieces that are in that dream portfolio, hence the guardrails. Maybe they'll turn up from whatever black hole they are in, or the people that have them will be amenable to selling, but taking the noise out of the hunt has been incredibly fulfilling as a collector. 

    -Bob

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    punisher 1 limited series cover by zeck

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    On 8/30/2022 at 5:52 PM, malvin said:

    I think he consignor is a regular boardie (unless the pieces have changed hands a couple of times already since he got it)

    and Yes, you would be lucky to get a sketch out of Zeck, definitely no commissions and even when he did recreations he limited them (and insisted on changes, so no exact ones)

    Malvin

    Hey Malvin. Yes, the consignment is mine. I'm always transparent, so I'll give my rationale on pricing.

    On the SDCC Dueling Dealers show, Burkey sold the Zeck recreation of Punisher Limited Series #2 for $18k, and said he should have priced it at $20k. This is superior in many ways to that image, so it is priced at a premium to that sale from two months ago. That same #2 cover sold in 2018 for $4,560, just to point out how much the market has in fact moved on these recreations.

    Zeck doesn't do cover recreations at all, except for this run of one-time recreations that he executed in 2000; this is arguably one of his most famous images. The original for this in Mandel's collection...there isn't going to be an opportunity for any collector to get this Punisher cover by Zeck, except in this instance. And it's one of the best Punisher images ever. 

    This recreation as a display piece is gorgeous and presents amazingly well. Everything that I loved about the original cover is right there, but you get to see all of Mike's work instead of the Zimmelman airbrushed colors. I had the overlay with the logo made about a year ago (all archival).

    There aren't going to be any more of these put out into the world, so this is a rare chance for a Zeck or Punisher collector to secure one of the best covers on the best titles by the one of the best artists of the late 1980s. I've been selling and consigning quite a lot this last year, but I recently hit my cash raise target. If this piece don't sell at $25k, I'll be taking it back into my collection.  No drama from me. -Bob

    Walking dead - did this end too low?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    On 8/20/2022 at 12:32 PM, Dirtcheap31 said:

    Yes it did I don’t think it’s a trend as other later pages have gone for much higher recently… think it just slipped through the cracks

    The Walking Dead is all about zombies. This had no zombies, just a not-great Rick pointing a gun in someone's mouth. Along with that, it's early Adlard art before he found his trademark style later in the series.

    Just because it's a splash doesn't make it worth more. Those recent sales of later panel pages all had zombies getting taken apart by Rick or Michonne. Those pages, if you chose to display them, would look good on a wall. This one? Not so much. Maybe what you're seeing in the price isn't weakness in the market, it's just a really weak page. At $780, it's worth buying to flip later for $1k? Not for me, but obviously someone saw value in it.

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    C-Link and Heritage auctions a flop tonight?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    On 7/13/2022 at 11:35 PM, Michael Browning said:

    I am shocked at some of the bargains there were in the two auctions ending tonight. I really hope the sellers in both auctions only had pennies in the art they sold, because everything but a Steve Ditko Fly page sold low.

    I predicted the Michael Golden Star Wars 38 end page with Luke and Leia and the next-issue tease for the Empire Strikes Back at the bottom would hit at least $15,000 in the C-link. It ended up being a major bargain at $7,900 - about the price of a page from The Nam. Clearly, this page was either overlooked or bidders thought - like I did - that it would go much higher and didn’t bid. Maybe those “back-off” bids really do work…

    The other bargain in the C-link was the Batman 357 page by Don Newton with the first appearance of Jason Todd that sold for $5,988. I figured the first appearance collectors would push that into at least five digits. I mean, in a day and age where every first appearance page is worth five digits, this page underperformed big time.

    Over at HA, the Frank Thorne Red Sonja market appears to definitely be very saturated and it showed when the Marvel Feature 5 page sold for just $1020 with the BP. The seller had to have paid more than that for it.

    The Ross Andru Fantastic Four 146 DPS sold for an incredibly low $720 with BP. I know it’s a DPS on an 11x17 board, but you can’t buy a Paul Ryan common page for that. Heck, a Vigilante Annual 2 page by Andru sold at ComicLink for $1,600.

    There we’re a few surprises, like the very faded Green Lantern 20 cover by Pat Broderick that sold for what I think is high at $2,400 and the Ty Templeton Batman Adventures 2 page 17 (featuring the first appearance of BTAS Catwoman) selling for $2,750. It is a first appearance page, so maybe that was very low.

    Except for the Kirby animation drawings, there really weren’t any major highlights for C-link and the Ditko Fly 8 page selling for $10K was, in my opinion, the highlight of the HA.

    Michael,

    I was the seller of the Batman 357 page. I thought it did fine at just under $6k. It was the first issue for Jason Todd, but not the “birth page”. Plus they ret-conned his origin (and hair color) in #408, so it’s status as a birth page has got a little hair on it since the Flying Todd’s never existed in continuity. Nonetheless, it’s an important page to the Jason Todd fan.  I didn’t think it was a soft result, but right in line for an early appearance. However, it certainly didn’t outperform, which would have been much appreciated!

    For what it’s worth, people seemed to enjoy seeing Jason Todd leaving the DC universe  way more than being brought into it.

    The Golden SW most definitely underperformed. Kicking myself for not bidding too, as I expected it well over $10k.

    Bob

    Death in Family - house ad issues from Aug 1988

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    I am going to frame my Aparo house ad art from the advertisements that led up to the sticky end for Jason Todd in Batman’s Death in the Family. I could use some help identifying the back issues that have the actual ads so I can frame the published art with the OA. Ideally, I’d like to use the Baxter paper that became popular right about then because of the crispness over newsprint, maybe “New Titans”?. Unfortunately, the digital copies skip the ads and I don’t have a store that has back issues of this depth, so am asking for help to determine which issues would have the published ads. Can anyone flip through some DC back issues from right before or after August 1988 they might have handy?

    Ad #3 is the “Someone will die because the joker wants revenge but you can prevent it.“ advertising Batman 426/427. I have a copy of the ad, but need a better cut…

    Ad #4 is the 1-900 ad, which predated Batman 427. 


    Thanks! I’ll be happy to show the finished piece.

    Bob

    FECD571C-D09A-46A8-ADFA-A83E56224C2E.jpeg

    why do they cut the corners off OA pages?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    On 6/14/2022 at 2:14 AM, John E. said:

    As I understand it, the B&W inked art was photographed for printing. In order to be photographed it was taped down. Because the photographer had to photograph 22 pages with a large queue of 22-page books behind them, it was faster and more efficient to take a box cutter and cut the art free then it was to peel off the tape. So the photographer’s assistant would slash it and quickly tape down the next one and repeat. 
     

    What I find funny is that the title, page # and artist name (if any of those were present) were kept intact, I’m sure for future reference but I always thought of it as disinfecting the needle or razor before self-harm. What I find weird is that you never find covers slashed like that. So how was the process different for covers? Or were they treated with more dignity because they were covers?

    Maybe the covers were untouched because they had title stats that might be reused later. Just speculation...

    (attempted) Flip of the Day!

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    On 5/7/2022 at 11:46 AM, lobrac said:

    FRAUD OF THE DAY courtesy of the Donnellys AKA Coollines:

    This Michael Bair Alpha Flight/Wolverine piece was traded to them as unpublished. The Donnellys then added fake stats and word balloons from the real title page to Alpha Flight #87 to give it the appearance of a published piece...

    https://www.comicartfans.com/ForSaleDetails.asp?ArtId=7719402&fbclid=IwAR24pnTZoqLLV_DuzFdifNrYwfiCErcv2ylm8CzZaBtJcVmv2IegOc6q-48

    The best part about this is the title on the for-sale listing, which says "first version 1990"... caveat emptor, indeed. 

    *CLOSED* WTB Batman Timm sketch

    in Original Comic Art Marketplace

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    On 4/25/2022 at 9:09 AM, Sideshow Bob said:

    Easily broken up into three separate and sold that way, but went to the trouble of professionally framing them and they look great together. 

    F9ED541D-7EAD-4229-9EEE-25054BC016BD.jpeg

    Asking $5k on this professionally framed set (UV, museum plexiglass). That price is retail (which sell out in minutes), with the professional framing thrown in. Shipping is on you, or pickup in NYC. Please only PM me, no replies here. And thanks to Frank for permission to hijack his WTB thread with this one-and-only post... Bob

    *CLOSED* WTB Batman Timm sketch

    in Original Comic Art Marketplace

    Posted

    On 4/24/2022 at 2:31 PM, Sideshow Bob said:

    I might have just what you're looking for, as my oldest just went off the deep into emo bands, and wants to swap out My Chemical Romance tour posters for our framed Timm head sketches (Batman, Joker, Harley, framed together). I might keep it for myself, but it might work for you... I'll take a picture when I get home tonight. 

    Bob

     

    Easily broken up into three separate and sold that way, but went to the trouble of professionally framing them and they look great together. 

    F9ED541D-7EAD-4229-9EEE-25054BC016BD.jpeg

    *CLOSED* WTB Batman Timm sketch

    in Original Comic Art Marketplace

    Posted

    I might have just what you're looking for, as my oldest just went off the deep into emo bands, and wants to swap out My Chemical Romance tour posters for our framed Timm head sketches (Batman, Joker, Harley, framed together). I might keep it for myself, but it might work for you... I'll take a picture when I get home tonight. 

    Bob

     

    Batman OA keys at CL (ending Wednesday)

    in Original Comic Art Marketplace

    Posted · Edited by Sideshow Bob

    These are my lots in ComicLink's auction ending tomorrow. Two incredible Batman keys:

    1) Detective Comics #19, wrap-around cover by Jason Fabok.  LINK HERE

                900th appearance of Batman in Detective Comics (adding forward 19 issues from the end of Detective pre-New 52; DC later reinstated numbering). This pencil-only wrap-around is on two boards, 22x17 total. Jason did the inks digitally, making this the only original art for this anniversary issue's cover. With all the "Man-Bats" filling the sky on the bat-serum infected "900 block" (also incorporated into the cover image...cute editorial move there!) and the huge image of Batman in battle-mode, this is a legit frame-able original cover of a key issue. Fabok originals are not cheap, let alone on a title, character and event of this magnitude with art edge-to-edge on two boards!!!...this is currently a bargain.

    2) Batman #368, 1/2 splash with Rogue's Gallery, by Don Newton/Afredo Alcala with the first naming of the new Robin  LINK HERE

                Marking Jason Todd's first official night out as Robin, Batman conveys what donning the Robin costume means as they head out for their first patrol night in the Batmobile. More importantly, it's Batman's actual acknowledgement that there is a new Robin! This is THE MOMENT! Hits me with all the feels! Features beautiful depictions by Don Newton of most of the Gotham Rogue's Gallery (Joker, Penguin, Crazy Quilt, Killer Moth, Two-Face, Scarecrow and Penguin). Newton purists will appreciate the non-overpowering Alcala inks, making this one of the easiest ways to appreciate Newton's command of character. A key page from a key issue with all the trappings you would hope for. Pains me to let this go; this will be someone's new grail. 

    Happy Hunting! - Bob

     

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    Heritage April Auction

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    On 2/9/2022 at 11:59 AM, rsonenthal said:

    I think we've always had a great importance on a first appearance.  What seems to be happening now is that some people are trying to place a great emphasis on pages that are close to a first appearance.  And also a second, third, eighth, etc.

    Exactly. This isn't the first appearance page of Death. This is almost the last page of the book after an entire issue of "take your brother to work day" for Death and Dream. The first appearance page is page 3. Hell, this isn't the first appearance page of the Washington Sq. Arch or of Franklin, or even the soccer ball. Its beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it's not Death's birth page.