Randall Dowling

This is correct. This is not. It's an incredibly common mistake that laypeople make and reflects not understanding the many things he was exploring. Nobody ever said anything close to this when I was in school. Again, reflects a deep lack of understanding what he was after in later work. These are dubious statements but I get it, you like his work and think he's great. To each their own. FTR, Mondrian's later geometric work isn't some evolution from studying trees. He saw what Chicago architects were doing with stained glass, copied it onto a canvas and called it fine art. So, I guess in some ways, he has more in common with Lichtenstein than one might think. I'm sorry, but if there was ever a forgettable art movement, it was the Dadaists. But yes, I'm sure they served as a precedent for the pretenders that followed. Everything they produced was some kind of joke, an exercise in self-celebration at how clever the artist thought they were. But perhaps more importantly, required is some sort of essay to explain it, which is in itself, a pretty big artistic failing. Pretty far off from my definitions of great art but that's just me. I am personally not a literalist (even though I can appreciate the work of Chuck Close and I'm also a big fan of photography as an art form). I'm a modernist and an abstractionist. But the ability for people to not understand the difference between those things and Pop Art, Avant-gardism, Dadaists, or any of the other clever little joke movements is incredibly pervasive. The one thing that they all have in common is that the joke being told, is on you the viewer. And it's amazing how many people have no clue that they're being laughed at. Lest you have any doubts about my assertions, witness this quote by Lichtenstein himself in 1972: "I think my work is different from comic strips – but I wouldn't call it transformation; I don't think that whatever is meant by it is important to art." These aren't words of principle or conviction. He was just looking for something that would stick. And his appropriation of comic panels did. Reading more into it than that is all just rationalization for liking it.

Got it. Thanks, Mike!

Is there a section for selling super-hero trading cards? Asking for a friend.

Darn you, woowoo!! That family album was private!

I just want to take a moment and note how this young man is dressed. He's wearing dark shorts with weird striped socks and dark shoes, accentuating his pale white legs. Additionally, he's wearing a long sleeve shirt with some sort of collar to match those shorts. And his haircut is a little weird! This is the original comic book geek. His social and fashion deficiencies would lay down the tracks for all the rest of us to follow, leading to years of social exile and poor treatment by all the other kids that were into sports and girls instead. I don't know whether to celebrate him or condemn him but either way, there he is.

If anyone would have it, it's @Stevemmg since he still has the original shipping mailer with his. I've never seen a dust jacket on a copy before.

The Vampirella Special HC is the most difficult Warren Vampirella. My copy in Spanish is more of a curiosity as most don't include foreign magazines in their consideration.

Here's another thread for the beginner in regard to Warrens and the Spanish Invasion. And here's a great thread on the difficulties of identifying the first printing of the Eerie 1 ashcan And another...

It's neither signed or numbered. If I have a moment, I'll pull it and post some pictures. It's pretty much exactly the same, except it's in Spanish. FTR, I'm sure there are many Spanish copies out there (in Spain and Europe). Just not in the US.

I've seen probably a couple dozen copies sell over the years in a full spectrum of condition from poor to near perfect. Many are just locked in collections. I own the Spanish copy that @Jayman was referring to. And that's the only one in Spanish I've ever seen.

Not my cup of tea. But some might really like it and that's great for them.

Respectfully, I think this is false. If you're lumping Picasso, Pollack, Rothko, and other abstractionists in with Lichtenstein, I think that's misunderstanding what these various movements were about in the 20th century. Warhol, Lichtenstein, and others brought an extremely jaded attitude toward art that wasn't really there before. They seemed to embrace the "artist as star" or "art as a means to notoriety" and denounced anyone that argued for the virtues of art as naive. From my point of view, they're almost singularly responsible (along with the gallery owners and an illiterate clientele with more money than sense) for the current mess that the art world is in. Still, it seems foolish to debate the controversies in the fine art market. To me, this thread promises to be a great resource with all of the source material collected in one place. Thanks to all that have helped and contributed in that regard.

Beyond some of the books that people have shared, there's also some excellent texts by Dynamite (the current publisher of Vampirella). Both are great resources with excellent notes and some rare images of Warren covers, used and unused.

He's having fun. That's an unused cover proof that wasn't used in favor of the Frazetta cover.

Not to me. In fact, they are often worth less to me. I find the practice of getting a signature on the cover to be defacing the art (with only a few exceptions) which is one of the reasons I love and collect books. Having someone scrawl all over that art is the sort of thing I'd expect from animals, not fans or appreciators of the comic medium. Hard pass.

I once had a client that we were designing her closet for and the topic of shoes came up. She got very sheepish and said "I have a lot of shoes". My partner said "That's no problem, just give us an idea of how many." After a pause, the client said "Maybe close to 450 pairs." To which my partner said "Sure, we can get that sorted out." and then the client said "I also have boots..." For the record, that's a lot of shoes and boots and it took up a large area in her closet.

This is a great question. The answer is that prices are (and have been for a little while) in transition and as you said, public sales of certain issues can be few and far between. There are still some sellers that are pricing magazines according to prices in the guide and/or what they sold for 4-5 years ago. Others are actively selling and have a good sense of what books readily and quickly sell for. A good example of this is Eerie 23. I purchased a CGC 9.2, White Pages probably 14 years ago for $200. It seemed like a lot of money at the time but I'd been looking for a while and hadn't found a nice copy, so I grabbed it. For 10 years, I didn't see more nice copies come up. And then, I saw a raw 9.0ish copy sell for $400 at auction on eBay. Clearly there was pent up demand. So much so that, for a little while, virtually all copies publicly available dried up. Now, a 9.0 is probably a $600-$800 book. A 9.6 sold a little while go for north of $1500. As high grade material usually sets the tone, who knows what another 9.6 would sell for today. I know quite a few people that are waiting for an opportunity. As more people are figuring out how undervalued magazines are, there will be more and more public sales and the market will narrow the gap between highs and lows. Until that happens, it's really just a matter of tracking the market for yourself. When an opportunity comes to get a very high grade copy of something, I recommend being aggressive (unless it's just crazy). Anything less has left me empty handed on the sidelines in the past. Hope this helps.

I think what the Lion has shared with me is that due to the larger size, they can tolerate slightly more flaws as the allowable amount is directly proportionate to the size of the book. Anyone can feel free to clarify what I just wrote (it reads like English but might not make sense).

I was thinking the same thing. The vast majority of books I would just leave alone rather than wet clean.

Nice book! Northland copies are very

In high grade, yes. Mainly due to it's popularity. Here's a snapshot of the current census (all credit for data to @valiantman and his excellent website cgcdata.com):

paging @The Lions Den

Yeah, I miss @BangZoom

While I agree with this... IMO, this is not even close to what makes great art. By blowing up a comic panel and accentuating Ben-Day dots, there isn't some kind of revelation about how we perceive things or an exploration into the nuances and beauty of human expression or any other strong basis for artistic exploration. I'm pretty sure that Roy knew that when he did so (he's hinted as much in early interviews). I think he was looking for something that he could claim was original and started producing his comic canvases out of desperation. And as most Pop Art and avant-gardism is filled with pretense, people just acted like they saw something more than there was. And they've been doing to ever since. To me, it's one of the best examples of the "Emperor's New Clothes" phenomena that has pervaded the art world ever since.