John E.

I just finished the Daniel Warren Johnson segment. When it comes to art, DWJ is a BEAST; and yet, he sounds like a gentle soul, and generous, too, with that sketch offer at the end. I'm still waiting for the right DWJ piece to come along, but I'd love a commission, but they kind of sound expensive now. Daniel says he has a humble collection, but as the years pass and he makes more cash with steady work and art sales, and as his networks expand, he's going to have a nice collection as a result.

Okay, cool! Looking forward to hearing your take!

I'm not quite done with listening to the DWJ portion, but for us outsiders, is @comix4fun one of the Chrises on the roundtable?

I was thinking the exact same thing. I wonder if Anthony is the one who posted this listing or someone else. Nevertheless, I'm waiting for this conversation to move over to "(Attempted) Flip of the Day" next week.

'90s collector? Freakin' awesome! It's funny what you said about your $150.00 estimate--I thought $152.50 was going to take it home.

I can't believe the hammer price on that Shadowhawk

The image also has striking similarity to a Madman T-Shirt Mike Allred put out in 1994. I found this image in Madman Comics #3 (Dark Horse, 1994). It's already tough enough to see the details on the ad, even tougher in a lo-res pic, but some obvious differences are the background, variations on the line work, and, is that Madman's hair blowing in the wind? Maybe this is a separate drawing or the T-shirt company modified the artwork in your possession with airbrushing or something. A Madman trading card set was also released in 1993, so depending on when the original artwork was created, I don't see why this image wouldn't have been included. I've never seen all the cards in the set so I couldn't tell ya. Hope this helps.

So essentially, "over my dead body."

Thanks for sharing again. It sounds like you tried to raise money for these opportunities and just couldn't. You can't be blamed for that. I'm a budget collector, so when I see something for $2500, I think, "That's do-able." but the reality is, that it isn't for me. I wish I could've purchased that G.I. Joe variant cover by Paul Pope recently offered by Felix for $2500, but couldn't. Or the Knightfall cover that Sam Kieth did that Albert Moy had sitting on his site for $2750 for the longest time. When you can't, you can't. You can't buy everything. Besides, even if you raised $50K+ to buy that FF 100 cover, can you imagine all the bargain comic art you'd have to give up after your purchase for years to come? That anecdote reminds me of the Will Gabri-El's story of having the $50K to buy the Avengers 50 cover, but just couldn't justify it with a new family. Or if you missed Felix's special edition Albert Moy podcast, you would've heard Albert lament that a Wrightson Swamp Thing cover sold for "only" $50K. It was one of his favorites but he didn't bother to bid because of debt. Albert's story really put things into perspective for me. I have other regrets, but those are small potatoes. I find, though, that we talk about regrets, but we never talk about the bullets we've dodged--those impulse buys we resisted that turned out to be good decisions. And hey, we have to give ourselves credit for opportunities we didn't squander! Just to keep it vaguely on topic, I've recently been losing money left and right on my sketch cover collection. But what little money I've been able to keep is going to bigger and better things.

Sorry--I lose track of who said what in these threads and the "complain'" was me pointing in the general direction and not at you. That said I agree with you entirely, in that it's a head scratcher why the production art sold for so much. Thanks for sharing that JL/Eternals story. Sometimes it seems like everyone bats .1000 and anecdotes like that keep it grounded. It's just too hard (impossible) to predict which artists have staying power 20-30 years from now. And let's not even bring up those artists that never got their due.

I so agree with you with what you wrote in the second paragraph. A lot of indie titles seem to go through this; one month they're hot, the next they're cold. This is pretty risky when speculating and flipping. It's probably "safer" to buy because of the artist and the quality of the page than the title. Kind of like get that artist while he's cheap. I didn't read Byrne Wonder Woman--was that volume 1? If so, not sure why anyone would pass on volume 1 legacy. But then again, if you were chasing large art SA and actually got something good, then it was worth the sacrifice. I'd rather have that than Byrne. You can't buy it all anyway. But like Voudou says, you had 10+ years to buy cheap Bryne Namor, so no complaining'!

I leave comments for art that elicits some sort of response from me. I've noticed that often times those owners will leave a comment on one of my pieces. I don't expect them to reciprocate, but it sure is nice--especially on pieces that get viewed a lot but never get commented on. I'm not looking for "pats in the back," but I'm interested to know what draws people to click on the art. Anyway, when a stranger comments on one my pieces, I'll browse his gallery only to find that we have the same collecting interest. Thus, one or more of his pieces elicits some sort of response from me. That might be what's happening.

The music culture is at the bottom of my interests so I'm the last person on Earth that should chime in on the "death of the guitar," but yeah, coming of age in the 1990s, there weren't "guitar heroes." When it came to "rock" it was about grunge and wounded vocals (I listened to Pearl Jam and Nirvana). The guitar wasn't a focal point. Then there was the popularity and the rise of gangsta rap and hip hop, with the latter remaining very popular. No guitar there. But y'know, back to the case at hand, I'm sure the eradication of music courses in public schools have nothing to do with that either. Again, back in the '90s, the only thing available related to music was marching band and brass instruments. Bringing it back to OA, I'm still convinced by Gene's argument that OA has maybe a good 15 years before the hobby shrivels.

If I may finally chime in here... I acquired a few Wonder Woman sketches and sold them 8 months before the film's release at the prices I was asking for and relatively quickly too. That hardly ever happens on eBay! Was that because of the movie? Maybe. I wish I could survey the buyers. But if anything, there's a market for good Wonder Woman art, and movie or not, the demand is there. I'm glad I decided to sell before the movie because as I predicted there was an uptick of Wonder Woman art on the market, which meant more competition. Hardly anything surfaced eight months prior. That Eduardo Barretto cover is an interesting sale. I think it's a fun cover and as mentioned previously, Barretto is experiencing a positive reappraisal much like Norm Breyfogle. Barretto worked on many popular properties and if you're priced out good copper age Batman, for example, Barretto is definitely a good value right now. To me, I think the unexpected price was the result of an available Wonder Woman cover, period. I could be wrong, but I never see WW covers pop up. Does a screen presence increase the value of all art? Not all of it. I'm sincerely asking here: Did the CW shows for ARROW, SUPERGIRL, and LEGENDS OF TOMORROW increase the demand or the price of Green Arrow art, etc.? To me it hasn't, but I'm opened to be corrected. I will say that a Firestorm cover popped up on Will Gabri-El's site and it sold pretty quickly. To me, properties like Wonder Woman already have a built-in market; collectors are going to buy WW no matter what, and the better the image, the artist, the older and harder-to-find the art is, the more it's going to cost someone.

I just listened to a segment on NPR's Marketplace on the whiskey black market. Apparently one can buy certain premium whiskies at a store for about $100 and, according to a flipper they interviewed, one can sell sell it between $1200-$2500, usually through furtive Facebook groups since you can't sell liquor without a license. It got to a point where one frustrated retailer would sell a bottle to a customer on a "gentleman's agreement" handshake that the customer wasn't going to flip the bottle. On top of that, the retailer would make them break the seal in front of him. Geez. A flip or not, I think 99.5 percent of the art on eBay is marked up. Even at its most innocuous, the mark-up is to cover fees to try to at least get one's money back.

I had no luck searching via artist name. Funny that a lot of you here share the same sentiment I have about ComicConnect--not a place to go to for OA, frustrating to navigate. I thought it was just me being a noob afraid to get out of his comfort zone. I tried looking for stuff the other week and I couldn't find anything that wasn't in Jon Berk's collection.

Sorry--sometimes I check the Marketplace first and I didn't see this post. A move like this from a long-time collector like yourself is a reality check about completing a book. I know we've discussed this topic in the recent past, but if I ever seek this type of endeavor on a "nostalgia" book, my mindset can't be, "I'm trying to put that book back together," it has to be more like, "I collect pages from that issue." Again, I wish you luck in finding examples from your new want list.

I can't tell if you wrote that with a straight face or tongue-in-cheek but that sentence is

Wow, Brian, this must have been a big decision to let go of this endeavor. It reminds me of the posts about putting a book together and what you said here really nails it as to how difficult it can be. At least at the end you have some leverage to trade for some heavy stuff. I wish you luck on your new direction.

Felix, thanks for getting Kirkman on the show and bringing us our '90s art edition! Like @rocket1312 said, it turns out that Kirkman is my age (I guess depending on when his birthday lands this year) and, although I seemed to have started reading comics a little younger than he did, it seems like we all were swept away by the same zeitgeist (dare I say). He said something about the 90s that reflected exactly what I thought when we have these discussions--that the 90s stuff has a different type of energy than its predecessors. Compared to the books I read in the 80s, which were well crafted, very "classical Hollywood cinema"--the early 90s stuff by Liefeld, Lee, and McFarlane, just brought a lot of youthful energy and momentum. I'll have to look back at my collection, but I think it may have been New Mutants #100 that brought me back to comics (they weren't easy for me to get back then so I had to make the effort to find them) and invited me into what is now my sweet spot. I recently went back to my copy of NM100 and looking through it, there is a lot of youthful flair and energy despite the wonky anatomy, and I can see why it got me excited about comics again. And yes, when you have someone like Kirkman buying up Liefeld, what chance do we mortals have?

This is really interesting, Brian. Good detective work.

Yes +1 The art I colored were quickie sketches, not fully rendered. If they were fully rendered, then I would've left them alone. I would also let be quickie sketches from Superstar artists too. And finally, there are some indie creators that publish in black-and-white and I wouldn't color those either.

That Cage page is great. Classic issue. The "Where's my money, honey?" page would be the money the shot in that book. Wish I had the clams, ducats, and wherewithal to get this one though

The Kenneth Rocafort piece is at $6.50 and ends in less than an hour and a half. Are you going to let it go that cheap?