This is getting silly. The story behind both Stan's Schultz Oil Painting and his comics has been told many time, in many different forums. For the sake of clarity, I'll tell them both again, as I was there for both of them.
Shortly after we started Heritage's Comics division, we contacted Stan, and he invited me to come out and inspect his holdings. He told us that he had several storerooms worth of stuff (he admitted that even he didn't know what was in there), and that I was welcome to come out and see it for myself. If I thought there was anything of value, we could talk about his consigning that material to a future auction.
I flew out to LA and met with Stan, and began the process of cataloging the storerooms. To be honest, the vast majority of the stuff he had was pretty mundane: lots of Marvel Masterworks, comp copies of more recent comics, lots of scrapbooks with fan mail, etc. But there were some gems. There was a box labeled "Number Ones," which contained the heart of what would become the first offerings of File Copies (FF #1, AF #15, ASM #1, etc.), along with several shelves of comics in various conditions. There was the original art to a number of the Spider-Man dailies, as well as other significant pieces.
An agreement was reached with CGC to label the books "Stan Lee File Copies." A few of the books were signed, but not all of them. Later, as we continued to submit books from Stan's collection, CGC declined to give the designation "File Copy" to low-to-mid-grade books, and, after returning to LA and having the remaining books personally signed by Stan, they were graded as "Stan Lee Signature Series" books. FYI, documentation on all of these books is on file wirth CGC. They were very strict (and rightfully so) about the conditions under which they would accept these books.
As far as books that were water damaged in Stan's basement, I have no knowledge of that. If that happened when he lived on the East Coast, that was many years before he got involved with Heritage. However, Sta told me that these were the copies he kept on and for reference, so I'm sure they weren't in his basement at any time.
ALL the books sold by Heritage that claim to be either SL File Copies or SL Signature Series were personally obtained by me from Stan himself. All of the Signature Series books were signed by Stan in my presence. End of story.
There's also no mystery about the Schultz painting. Stan bought that piece years ago at a USO charity Pop Art auction. A number of cartoonists were asked to create a piece of Pop Art for this event, and this is what Schultz came up with. Stan told us that story when he gave us the piece, and even gave us supporting documentation. As Stan had always been upfront and forthcoming with us before, we had no reason to question his word.
Just before the auction in which the painting was to be offered, we were contacted and told that the painting was not, in fact, by Schultz. We disagreed (remember, we not only had Stan's word, we had documentation, all of which is talked about in the catalog description of that piece), but rather than risk damaging the piece, we pulled it from the auction. We then set out contacting other prominent cartoonists who were at the same event, and they corroborated Stan's version of events. As it turns out, the person who insisted the piece was a fake wasn't even associated with Schultz at the time the painting was created. It was a non-issue, but I feel certain that we handled that situation in exactly the right way.
So there you go. Sorry to disappoint you, but there's no big conspiracy or cover-up here. Do a little research online, and you'll find that these stories have been told many times before, and in the exact same way.
I hope that clears up any confusion. Working with Stan on this was one of the high points of my life, and it's a memory I'll always cherish.
Best,
John Petty
