theflashunc

Mine tends to skew a bit more modern. Secret Warriors #27, Page 7. Nick Fury finally puts Baron Strucker on ice after planning for years to counter Hydra's machinations. Fantastic Four #570, Page 21. From the Solve Everything arc, Reed Richards 616 is introduced to the Council of Reeds, the Multiversal Consortium of Reed Richards' dedicated to, well, Solving Everything. Dork #6, Page 15. The Rending of Boba Fett. After a contentious trivia-off to decide who wins the right to buy the mint condition 12" Kenner Boba Fett, Bill and Josh break it in an argument. One receiving the head, the other the body, kicking off a sub-plot spanning two decades of Eltingville arguments among the worst fans around.

Another hot take for this thread: Sal's my preferred Buscema art-wise. (Well, Stephanie is top of the heap, but we're talking just superheroes at this point...)

I'll take a slightly different spin at this, if only to have a list that deviates a bit from what's come prior. I think the general consensus of an industry Mt Rushmore would be picking nits from about 6-10 names -- Kirby, McCay, Adams, etc etc. So who's the Top 4 for me personally? The ones that delighted me as a kid and wow me today? The ones that have a lot of sentimental attachment and maybe not broad recognition? That makes for a more interesting Rushmore, imo. Those 4, in no special order, are: 1) Paul Ryan. His FF work was seminal for me, and his work for the Big Two during the 90s is a who's who of stories that I deeply love, even if they're not the most well-regarded examples of the medium. 2) Scott Kolins. I know Infantino is the bar for Flash artists, but Kolins is THE Flash artist for me. 3) Tim Sale. Long Halloween. Sure I read the dialogue in Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill's voices, but ye Gods his Batman work... 4) Darwyn Cooke. New Frontier. Parker. The list goes on and on. And gone entirely too young.

Eltingville Club #2 cover. I have a weird love for these four jerks. Evan really went above and beyond on with this issue.

It brings Thanos full circle, book-ending the arc for the character dating back to that early Warlock stuff. I personally find it much deeper than your typical crossover book. It ain't about the heroes, it's all about Thanos. I just read it and pretend Infinity War (the follow-up) never happened.

At the risk of total thread drift, if y'all ain't read Waid/Rivera/Samnee Daredevil, you're really missing out. Best, most enjoyable run on the character. Just complete, unapologetic fun.

Sorry guys, agreeing to disagree on this one. The kid with great power who cuts corners for personal wealth at the expense of what he views as his core self. The kid held back by "the system" at every turn, whether its craven media, school or just suburban life in Queens? Its the rejection of the hedonistic selfishness that Rand differentiated from her espoused rational selfishness. I don't see how you can read those Spiderman issues and say he wasn't on that Objectivist path by that point. Course, it comes down to personal interpretation (especially since we'll never get the truth), but I very much take "with great power comes great responsibility" to be a self-directed, rather than societal mandate in the book. That, and its so different than any other Stan dialogue of the era. Ditko-era Spiderman just read different than every other Marvel book, and I chalk that entirely up to Steve. He got co-plotting credit for a reason.

If anything, his impact as an independent creator might be larger than the superhero work he did at Marvel and DC. He was a trailblazer in so many ways, and still cranking out great art even in just the last couple years. And at the risk of dredging up an old debate, I have a hard time believing "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility" wasn't written by the emerging Randian on Spiderman's creative team. Its impossible to over-state his legacy, really, and he did a large chunk of it on his terms.

How is buying the art in advance of a supposed "key" issue any different than speculation we see elsewhere in comics? Other than the cash changing hands, of course. Not how I choose to collect art, but everyone fans differently I suppose.

Without a doubt for me, Stephanie Buscema. She did this Faux Nancy Drew cover commission for my significant other and she couldn't have been greater to get to know through the process. Doesn't hurt her work on it's own is pretty phenomenal.

Owned is easy, Eltingvile #1 title splash. Nothing better for a book about horrible comic fans than a phenomenal Kirby send-up. Some of Evan's finest work I think. Grail? That's also easy: Kirby OMAC:

Usually YouTube. The Bernie Wrightson panel I moderated last year took about a month to get onto their channel, and most of the panelists had been asking for it. It'll get up there and I'll ping the content folks to see if they can expedite it at all, because it was such a fun session, minus the mic feedback.

It was. Heroes should be posting it. They're not always the most punctual on uploads, but it should be up over the next couple weeks. Was great to chat with both of them, they're both great dudes. Klaus' thoughts on digital were really interesting.

Then I'm glad you didn't see it in Evan's portfolio before I did.

Some Eltingville, some Fantastic Four from HeroesCon.

Picked up a couple Eltingvile and FF pages. Panels were great. Convention was stellar as ever.

I'll be there. Best comics and art convention around imo. I always find two or three creators whose work I hadn't seen that I really enjoy, and its always great to connect with old friends to boot. Picking up a few pages and moderating a few panels. The usual.

I know there's Adams fans and Jones fans and Jock and Breyfogle and everywhere in between, but my favorite Batman artist will always be Aparo.

For me its first and foremost a visual medium. The story should move along without the dialog. Yes, dialog can bring weight and emotional heft and context, but the art has to do the heavy lifting at the end of the day.

I currently have a fairly deep interest in one artist and body of work. I don't think there's a wrong way to go about it, whether you want a couple solid examples across a breadth of artists, or go deep on a few. There's lots of ways to have fun collecting.

As someone who's bought mostly modern OA produced via a range of methods, a couple thoughts: Keeping it all to "one page" so to speak simplifies things greatly. I'm reminded of outside a half dozen or so pages from early in the run, most of Paolo and Joe Rivera's Daredevil pages are separate pencils and inks of bluelines because of a shift in their process. Paolo started sending digital files to his dad to print and ink, rather than shipping the penciled pages themselves. While his dealer sold both "pages" as one set, I'm sure those will get split up as time goes on. Disclosing the process up front is always appreciated by the buyer. As noted in this thread, it'll turn some folks off, but not everyone. Does every collector of Kirby like his collage pages? Probably not. Variation in production can be interesting and an appeal for some. I have a page from Dale Eaglesham's recent run on Fantastic Four where there were no inks. He penciled each page crazy tight, and then they were colored digitally. Its not bog standard production and that's part of why I like it. I think in the long run, if its going to lead to more time for the artist to focus on the art, and a process that works better for them, keeps he or she engaged and doing really killer work, why not? If this change leads to producing killer stuff, I tend to believe the market will recognize it even if you're doing prelims in fingerpaint.

I've also seen Jim pre-draw several headshots and other inked sketches for conventions, and offer them up for sale for first come, first serve. Buddy got a pretty great Thanos head sketch that way.

My sense having had a couple transactions with Spencer -- with no issues other than going through his admittedly unique process and waiting a bit for stuff to show up -- is that anything that deviates from that process or throws a wrench into the works takes things down a messy path rather quickly. The outdated website, mailing stuff in and waiting for a response works great, I'm sure, when the buyers' communication is crisp and clear and on point. If, as in the OPs case, the ships pass in the night communication-wise, all bets are off. That being said, Spencer's far from the worst dealer I've had to deal with, and my experience in the hobby is far newer than some. So even on a short time horizon, I'd classify him as a goodif ( a bit wonky buying system) egg.

My philosophy echoes what a lot of others here have said. Buy what you love, don't try to boil the ocean and own everything, curate as best you can and if something no longer sparks joy or interest, time to part ways and move on. For the nitty gritty, most of my purchases come directly from the artist or their rep in one form or another. I personally think at that stage the artist is pricing it to what he wants to part with it, and tend not to haggle all that much since I'm putting money back in the pocket directly of the person creating that work. If there's anyone in the hobby that should be compensated, its the artist right? And I've found that kind of approach has made it far easier to go back to artists for subsequent purchases when they know things will be fairly straightforward if we're interested and the pricing works for all parties. Even gotten folks to unlock some previously pretty NFS's on some pieces when they know its going into a collection that isn't posting it to eBay in six months. And last but not least, try to have fun with it. That's the point of all this, right?

For me it was later and more recent Ditko. Too turned off by the more overt political themes of his work, I didn't really give his work the look I should have. I gotta say, still don't agree with the politics, but man he's still got it from an art standpoint. He still draws superheroes pretty fantastically and in a way few artists can.