Randall Dowling

No question, the painting itself is evocative in an odd way. Which I guess is my fascination with it. Fortunately, I don't have the same associations with people on the boards.

One can never go wrong with Frazetta cover art.

There's a lot of talk about how these prices will affect other copies. But either the Promise Collection is special and commands non-rational multiples of what otherwise similar copies might bring (in which case these books are not useful comps), or it's not. After seeing the prices realized, I think it's clearly the former. We're going to see waves of under copies come up, increasing supply for otherwise scarce books. But I still fully expect sellers to hold up Promise prices as justifications for higher asking prices, whether it's justified or not. I mean, why not? Everybody knows prices on comics only go up.

It's cool for sure. The first issue in the run has an excellent cover for which prices vary widely. (Not my copy, taken from internet)

This.

Target acquired

@rjpb is having a great sales thread with classic girlie mags from the 30s and 40s and also Men's adventure mags. Check it out!

This was my experience as well.

This is a classic cover. So good, they used it more than once!

I love this sales thread! Some very cool books, many of which are exceptionally tough. The Peter Driben covers are particularly cool!

I thought posting the photo from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark would clearly come across as not serious. Apologies for my poor attempt at humor.

Well, they were correct. They just didn't provide a timeline.

Based on the grades some of the promise books received, 9.0? I personally would put this in the 6.0 range assuming the rest is pretty nice.

This is correct. It was in 1989/1990 when people started looking at Bronze Age books as a value compared to the Silver Age explosion of the time. And MS 5 was identified at that time as a big key issue. Before that, most issues of Ghost Rider were quarter box material.

FTFY.

I'll take both of these.

That's a sweet set of selections, sir!

Copyright and intellectual property aside, the problem I've always had about the missing artwork is this: If it was out in the public somewhere, why has none of it every showed up for sale (or almost none of it)? If it's stolen, I understand trying to keep a lid on it. But historically, virtually all stolen works eventually show up for sale. It seems like we would have seen more of it before now if it was in private hands (just due to the shear volume). I personally believe that Marvel still has it all someplace.

So this is for all work from 1975 going forward, correct? It sounds like we don't know what the contract before looked like (or if one even existed). And 1975 would have been after everyone caught on to the value of original art so it makes sense that Marvel would want to establish a new precedent of ownership. But that doesn't help us with before this contract, does it? And isn't it the missing 60s artwork we're discussing? Apologies if I'm missing something.

Upon closer inspection, this post is much funnier than I initially thought. And yeah, another example of why only a fool would take some of these books out of their current slabs.

I like the development of the second episode. Tom Hiddleston is doing great work as the lead and carries the story well. Looking forward to episode 3!

Am I correct that you've seen a copy of the contracts that artists signed at the time? Otherwise, how can you make these statements? My guess would have been that there was no language in the contract regarding the disposition of original artwork at all. Which is why Marvel was nervous about going to court about it. But I could be wrong. There are other professions wherein creators of drawings always retain ownership of original work. And it's been that way for over 100 years. Just because you can take advantage of someone doesn't mean you should or that it's good business to do so. And although your posts implies that talent is cheap, I would argue otherwise. Good talent is and always has been relatively scarce and compensated accordingly. The only exception to this that I know of is when an employer goes out of their way to convince talented people that they're not that valuable (like a bad after school special). I've seen quite a bit of that.

On an otherwise perfect book.

Very cool book! I've never owned a copy and have always considered it to be one of the big classic covers.

@Darkga was like