Carlo M

Like probably most of us I started collecting comic books and gradually shifted all my spending power on OA. In comic collecting I unfortunately missed the grading wave, so I ended up with a decent late silver age and bronze age collection, relatively high grade on average but unslabbed. I am tempted going back buying some slabbed comics whose covers I really like, especially for the colours (XM 50 and Avengers 57 come to mind). But I get discouraged by the cost to get a high grade example. For those kind of books we are talking 1000 dollars at least, and at that price level I can get a good contemporary OA page and several average bronze age pages. But eventually I am sure I will go back to buying some CGC comics.

Byrne over Perez. Sal over Layton. But Perez with Marcos on the Avengers and Layton’s inks on Jr Jr on Iron Man were stellar

Looking for this page that went through HA a few years ago.

$785,000 , assuming the Punisher is not a stat (see other thread)

Vintage Perez Marcos Avengers , mostly due to scarcity in the market Vintage cosmic Starlin , due to recent Thanos premium Early Art Adams X-Men / NM work, due to scarcity

I tend to differentiate between two cases. The first (and most frequent) lot is artists who have more or less kept the same style, but they have evolved it over time: you can clearly recognise it is them at any given point in their career. In this case, you normally have a beginning, a peak and then a plateu or decline. And often times the "decline" is in the eye of the viewer, driven more by nostalgia than by objective artistic merits: Byrne used to insist that his later work was superior to his UXM work technically; I seem to recollect having read somewhere that Silvestri said he "did not know what he was doing when he was doing XM" (but I might be misquoting....apolgies to Marc if that is the case). I include in this category artists like Byrne, Art Adams, Jim Lee, Alan Davis, Marc Silvestri, just to name a few I really like. You look at their early work and late work and you do see a development, but you can't pinpoint a precise moment when they changed style. Even Kirby, different as his late work appears compared to his early work, belongs in my mind to this type of steady and subtle evolution over time. In this case, I normally like the "early peak" work, normally because of nostalgia or simply because that style felt different at the begininng. So in the cases above I would say XM / NM Annuals for Art Adams, UXM for Byrne, UXM and Hush for J Lee, UXM for Silvestri, Captain Britain and Excalibur for Alan Davis. As to Kirby, my preference goes to late silver Age (FF circa 80) to the mid '70s. Then you have cases where the artist has abruptly and conscously changed style: some names that come to mind, of course of very different quality, include Sienkiewickz with NM, Giffen, Trimpe (with his late Image style), Romita Jr . In the case of Romita JR you would be hard pressed to see how his early ASM work comes from the same artist as his late ASM work. In this case, in addition to nostalgia, there might be an objective evolution of quality. JR JR's early work was clearly derivative of his father's style. His last style is definitely his own, like it or not. I would be interested in hearing other examples of artists who belong to this category.

I also think the BWS cover is a bit too crowded for my personal tastes. And Wolverine ends up being almost just sketched, in particular the face. But I can see why people feel this will draw major bids. To me, peak BWS is the two UXM Lifedeath issues and UXM 205 (top 5 cover in Claremont's UXM run?). BTW, am I seem to recollect that 205 is complete? Any chance of it being broken up?

So it looks like you enjoyd that run big time... Seriously from 229 to 251 you have vs the Reavers, vs the Brood round 2, Genosha (great concept!), Inferno (personally I loved it), Master Mold two-parter, introduction of Jubilee, vs Pearce and the Reavers again with the memorable Wolverine crucifixion scene & cover. Great art by Silvestri Green and Leonardi. Oh well I guess you can't please all of the people all of the times.... (but we are in agreement on the P Smith run though!)

I am a bit late to the discussion but still would like to contribute. First off, I think the stories of the Claremont Lee Williams run were quite good and memorable, not only for the amazing art. Lady Mandarin trilogy, WW II issue, Rogue and Magneto in the Savage Land, Shi'ar, Asteroid M. I liked the previous run better (the outback period) but still these stories are anything but boring. Admittedly, things do get a bit blurred in my memory after those issues.... Second thought: in addition to 268 being a very well written, done in issue with beautiful interiors (ahhhh that splash...), I think this is the first time Lee drew Wolverine in costume on a cover (haven't checked...). And that pose, slightly crouched with claws unsheathed, has become a total classic. In fact, isn't the pose on XM1 basically swiped from this one? So maybe some people might be a bit turned off by over-exposure to this rendition of Wolverine. Finally, I find the layout particularly interesting. No action, but having the characters looking away adds a timeless quality to the cover and - intentionally or not - nods to the plot of the issue, as though they were looking from the '40s ahead into what the future reserves to them. So in my mind objectively this is definitely a top 5 J Lee X-Men cover. I personally like some other covers better (for example 258, 269 and 274), but value-wise this is right up there. My prediction is that it will beat 250k.

Totally in disagreement on the 58 splash. I think it is a great piece, moody and different, with great inks. Sure if one only likes battle scenes with lots of characters this is obviously not it. But artistically I find it very accomplished. When I saw it going for 30k at Profiles I regretted not participating, 90k might be an outlier, but I thought 30 was a steal.

Absolutely that is the real surprise of the auction. It will be interesting to see if future Finch auctions confirm this level, which places him firmly in A list (at least among contemporary artists)

Absolutely! Two beautiful interiors from Jae Lee's run on Inhumas, and I was hooked forever. I doubt I will ever part with these two pages

Agreed Paul Smith is right up there when it comes to quality : availability ratio. Going to less pedigreed artists, I would love to get some more Captain Marvel by Chris Cross but quality pieces appear to be very rare.

Done it! Seems easy enough! Thanks a million!

Hi, is there a way to see final auction prices without having bid on one item?

Wow that was quick! Anybody cares to write to me privately what the price was?

The dialogue on the Machine Man splash is a fantastic meta-textual message on Original Comic Art - it could well be Kirby talking about his own art! Great stuff!

I am not dogmatic about it but I don’t recall ever being interested in unpublished pieces. Maybe a Giffen Defenders tryout story that trickled through various channels a few years back. But I seem to remember it being pencils only and that is a major no go for me, being inks such an integral part of the Comic OA concept itself (at least, to me)

‘70s Kirby. I found his blocky style not palatable at all as a kid. Now to me that is the most distinctive Kirby. Still prefer his late ‘60s style as the perfect balance, but right now I like late Kirby much better then his pre-Hero and early Marvel work.

Childish faces on oversexed female bodies. That is a major turnoff for me on some otherwise fantastic major contemporary artists' work.

....and got to keep 6 pages, probably the better ones (I have not checked). Well done!

Now there is a piece one can fall in love with even having ZERO context. Will be interesting to see how it fares.

You are definitely on to something there ....interesting comparison. Can make you look at some interior pages under a new light. Still you need the context to appreciate them.

In general I prefer splashes to panel pages of equal content. In this case , I also prefer the splash but that is because I like DD better than Spiderman (as a character and visually). But the panel page is spectacular , very Colan-esque. I was not surprised by the price it fetched.

Got it! Yoe were referring to the sizes of the FF images, I thought you were making references to the numbers in email. Got to be patients with those foreigners! On the size of the figures on the FF cover, what I meant - and I think there was another post to this effect - is that you can really see only part of Sue's and Reed's faces. Yes you have most of Reed's body, but not exactly in the most heroic representation (admittedly Reed's power is not easy to make iconic). And the Torch is definitely looking away. But I agree it is a good cover, with great architecture backgrounds and the pogo plane etc. I just did not expect it to go much higher than that. Re the N Adams Batman 226 cover I had another look. I am definitely not a Batman Adams expert, but Batman's image seems quite good to me, but I may be skewed by the black background (I tend to be partial to lots of black on OA). But the foe's legs are definitely out or proportion.