MBFan

That girl's got almost no lobe at all, much different from the ear clearly seen on Alice's publicity photo.

I wonder if he did it himself? I think at that point his health was still ok, but he was having trouble finding jobs. Maybe some extra bucks from inking his own pencils would have been worth his while.

Looks like Baker-inking-Baker to me, much in the style of his last few Teen-Age Romances covers. If it's not Baker on the inks, it is certainly someone who respected the pencils and faithfully enhanced his work.

29dukedog said: "...when I compare the second ear (from Sweethearts 102) to the ear in the b&w publicity photo, I'm seeing what I believe is the exact same ear... same shaped lobe, same shaped (and sized) tragus, and same relative proportions."

For what it's worth, I completely concur. The lobe, the tragus and the folds all look like the exact same ear on Sweethearts 102 and in Alice's b&w pic. Too bad the models' ears aren't visible on more covers!

After tons of research online, I'm convinced that one of the most infallible ways to determine identity is through the ears. They're like fingerprints. (For more technical info, see the link I posted earlier.)

To my eyes, Alice's right ear lobe is longer and more oblong than some others. If that's her on Sweethearts #102, note how the lobe is somewhat oval, whereas the lobe of the model on Love Experiences #12 is shorter and more circular, even though she is wearing an earring which could pull the lobe down and make it look longer.

Another part of the ear to focus on is the tragus, which is the small flap in front of the ear canal which projects backward. When you press your finger on the tragus, if it's big enough, it closes up your ear canal.

Note how the model on Sweethearts #102 has a fairly pronounced tragus, but the girl on Love Experiences #12 barely has one at all.

With a photo editing program, I cropped to the ears only and rotated the pics to similar angles. The model's ear on LE #12 is smaller and rounder, while the model on Sweethearts #102 has an ear that is bigger from top to bottom and more oval overall. I would post the pics, but the forum software will only let me add photos which have a url.

Speaking of Alice, this may be my favorite cover of hers.

 

 

 

Did we also already flag this one as hers? (Not only am I too lazy to do my own research, I'm too lazy to even check after other people have done research!)

 

 

 

Note how CGC missed the boat on labeling these books as having Baker art -- two stories each, in fact.

Since this thread started, I've been educating myself on facial recognition. Based on what I've learned about the reliability of comparing ears, check out the lobes on these covers. They don't match at all. These are 2 different women.

Those are some great points. The only thing I can think of is that we may be able to turn up an Alice Kelley image bank somewhere on the net. And if it includes the photos used on comic book covers... well, then we'd be set.

True. Or if the photographers' archives turned up, showing exactly whose photos they placed with the various comic companies and which covers they were used on.

Re: GCD or CGC designation as an "Alice Ann Kelley cover"

Except in the case of the book with her name in the indicia, the rest are just guesswork. Good guesswork, maybe, but still guesswork nonetheless.

Even though many on the forum are true experts in comic books, I haven't seen anyone here state that they're a professional facial recognition expert. (Anyone here work for the FBI?)

One of the most infallible ways to recognize someone is by their ears. Even identical twins have different ears. Here's the most recent study I could find, done in 2012: http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~uhl/ear_survey.pdf

Unfortunately, most of the cover shots in question don't show the model's ears. Even when they do, you don't know for sure that what looks like the right ear is really the right ear, because as we've seen in at least one instance, the negative could have been flipped.

As much fun as it is to think that this thread could start an "Alice Ann Kelley cover" designation, the truth is, the only absolutely provable Alice Ann Kelley cover is the lone one with her name in it. Given the fact that there are so many examples of misattributed Matt Baker art listed on CGC headers, I doubt that they'd want to start a new designation that couldn't be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I'm a "never say die" kind of guy, so if someone wants to push for an "Alice Ann Kelley cover" designation, go for it...but I can see why GCD and/or CGC might not go along.

In auction news...

 

The 6th St TAT #9 8.5 White goes from a lexcorp bin of $1175, held for 6 months, and sold at a loss in CL for $920. Subtract the commission and that leaves the seller with a 30% hit.

 

Has the overall run-up paused to consolidate? Flipping Bakers for fun and profit? Don't try this at home, kids. Gotta know your stuff, and even then...of course, if your entry point is low, it's all good.

 

and oh yes the TAR #32 5.0. That's a really great presenting 5.0 - and to the winner, whoever you are and I have my suspicions, if you didn't request a bc scan, don't worry - you won't be disappointed. And a decent price for the seller (who is not me btw), about $600 net, yeh? Not a world record, but not too shabby at all.

 

Speaking of lexcorp, what happened to them? As I'm sure many of you noticed, a couple of months ago they ceased eBay activity in the middle of active auctions and several bin's.

Searching under their seller name lexcorp shows no listings. However, I have several on a watch list which were apparently set up for auto-renewal, and they have a heading that says, "This seller is currently away, and is not processing orders at this time."

It seems quite strange, considering they were making big bank and getting a lot of attention. Based on the statements in some of their listings, we have only seen the tip of their 6th Street iceberg.

I am leery of bidding on any Baker book advertised as the "highest graded" until all of the 6th Street books have been graded. One of those books could drop an expensive investment to a distant "second-best graded" in a heartbeat.

Astounding and very thorough! Gotta love the Internet. 20 years ago, it would have taken weeks, maybe months, to come up with all of this info.

On a personal side bar, Alice was born 18 days before and just 30 miles up the road from my own beloved mother, who turns 82 next weekend.

Call me crazy, but the cheekbones, eyes and teeth make me think she's on the cover of Teen-Age Romances #5, too!

She's kind of holding back on the smile and the light is at such an angle that dimples aren't obvious, but really, how many girls had those eyes and that face structure...and more importantly, GREAT TEETH back then?

Here's a pic from comicbookplus.

The Art of Glamour book reproduces a number of pages of Baker OA, but as far as I can see, his St John work is represented by just a single page from TAR 17.

 

Some of the art reproduced is held by the Baker family. I suppose it might be possible to approach them as to whether they know whether more of his St John OA has survived.

 

The family has some wondrous original art work mainly from the men's magazine illustrations, which are amazing in themselves. From what I understand, they've shown basically most of the artwork they have. I'm betting a lot of the artwork was destroyed in some kind of flood or housing accident in St. John's son's house. I read this many years ago so I could be mistaken. But, I'm thinking he might be a good source of information.

St. John's son should have a wealth of information, but considering the circumstances of his father's death, he may have conflicting emotions about his father's work. I expected to see an interview with him in The Art of Glamour, but apparently he contributed so little to the project that he didn't even rate being named in the list of those who were thanked on page 34.

It's possible that he and his mother saw the business as the thing that took the family patriarch from them and eventually wanted no reminders from that period. They certainly did turf the family business. There's a quote somewhere in which Matt Baker complains that he didn't understand why they let him go, because he didn't even know Archer had a girlfriend on the side.

Had the St. John family saved and preserved materials from St. John Publications, they would be sitting on a platinum mine today.

Just in case anyone should be interested in it, the All-Picture Comedy Carnival 1 on Metro does not, in fact, contain any Baker art. The listing indicates that it does, but they checked for me and none of the remaindered books in this copy have Baker art.

 

Unfortunately, they didn't change the listing even though my inquiry was a few weeks ago.

Thanks for the head-up on that. All of my dealings with Metropolis have been great, but it's reckless to claim an unslabbed remainders book contains Matt Baker work without checking...and to not modify the listing after checking and seeing that there is no Baker art is downright false advertising.

I expect Metropolis to be an authority on comics, but I wonder how knowledgeable they are when I see their listings for 2 different copies of Batman #23 say the cover art is by "Batman co-creator Sprang". Sprang didn't receive his first Batman assignment until 2 years after Batman first appeared. Bill Finger has a legitimate claim to "co-creator" credit, but not Sprang, whom I still admire greatly.

(In previewing my post, I notice the forum subs "spoon" for the nickname for "Richard", but you know who I mean.)

It's sad that so much great Matt Baker work has gone missing, especially the St. John stuff. I'm very curious as to how the 3 lone St. John pages that went through Heritage survived...and why there's not more to go with them.

After realizing that I just needed to search the Heritage site better than I had before, I found another. http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=826&lotNo=43024 Notice the note to the "code examiner".

Have any St. John/Baker pages or covers sold via other auction sites, etc.?

That is certainly a new high, but the other Matt Baker Tiger Girl page (http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7093&lotNo=92226) went for over $3000 less than the one with partial hand coloring. That seems a little strange, since the coloring looks like something done after Baker and Fiction House were finished with the piece. The leafy green look of the bushes in the last panel does not match the coloring of the actual printed comic.

Since the partial colored page was apparently tampered with by someone other than the original artist, I'm surprised it's the one that went for the biggest bucks. Regardless, the scarcity of Baker OA means we'll probably continue to see these kinds of prices from here on out.

Has even ONE piece of Matt Baker St. John work ever turned up?

The cover of The Saint #4 is not credited to Matt Baker in Overstreet or The Art of Glamour. To me, it looks only slightly Baker-ish. From what I can tell, Matt Baker never did any work for Avon, who published The Saint.

It's risky to trust what you see on the internet about Baker. Here's a site where an author has included the cover of The Saint #4 in a collection of "samples from Matt Baker's career". http://www.tallguysgearguide.com/my-blog/2012/12/matt-baker-the-art-of-glamour.html

The cover of Zip Jet #1 is also shown, and it is DEFINITELY not Baker's work.

I've just started to come here to lurk & learn about Baker books, but I must say that the turtle discussion has been very interesting. Great photos, too. It's amazing that 3 of the main contributors to this thread are all serious turtle-people.

Here in Oklahoma, we encounter vicious snapping turtles at the lake and the kids find a box turtle wandering through the yard about once a year, but I've never put the time and devotion into raising turtles like you folks. I guess the turtle talk is off-topic, but I'm not bothered.

First of all, I appreciate the Matt Baker inspiration insight! Other artists could have used the same source material, but their work would never compare to Matt's.

Now, some "value" discussion. There are 2 sales of what is apparently the same copy of Teen-Age Romances #3 on eBay during the past couple of months. Compare pics from both listings, and you'll notice that the wear and scratches are exactly the same, the most distinctive evidence being the scratches at the top center, down through the middle of the title logo.

Auction 1: Teen-Age Romances #3 closed for $151.45 (143.50 plus 7.95 shipping) on 2/5/14

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BARNYARD-FIND-GOLDEN-AGE-TEEN-AGE-ROMANCES-3-MATT-BAKER-GGA-COVER-1949-NICE-/121265511444?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item1c3bfcdc14#ht_3305wt_1226

Auction 2: Sparkle City listed what is apparently the same book, newly-slabbed with a 5.0 grade, to end 3/26/14. It sold for $192.50 to i***n (who had bid on the book the 1st time but lost).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Teen-Age-Romances-3-CGC-5-0-Matt-Baker-Cover-art-St-John-Golden-Age-Comic-/201056096476?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item2ecfe090dc#ht_3920wt_1168

The $ 41.05 difference barely paid for having the book CGC graded and shipped back-and-forth. In this example, at least, slabbing didn't result in the book suddenly multiplying in value.

In light of all the talk about soaring Baker prices, what do you think about this?

As a newbie who just wants to build a decent little Matt Baker collection, my observation is that the high prices on recent eBay Baker books are being driven by just a few people.

A quick look at the bid history on a few recent eBay auctions shows that most bidders drop out at just barely above guide...and then 2 or 3 people push the bidding to multiples of guide.

This makes it tough for someone like me to build a collection. And people hoarding multiple copies of certain issues doesn't help, either.

I don't know about everyone else here, but one reason I collect Matt Baker's work is that he has been overlooked and should be exalted. Whenever I'm lucky enough to get a new Baker book, I share the art with everyone I know. Even my friends who don't collect comics think Matt Baker is cool.

WIth that same thought in mind, as I gain better-condition copies of certain issues, rather than horde multiples, I plan to put my lesser-condition books up for auction so others can collect and enjoy Matt Baker, too.

It appears that Baker books are at a high right now, due to a certain few people. If those people are bidding on books they need for their collection, that's great. If those people are simply speculators, trying to hoard great books that others could enjoy, that's not cool.