paqart

On 6/3/2024 at 8:22 PM, LordRahl said:

I like your perseverance but you can take that poll multiple times a year over the course of a whole year and I bet the ratio will not average any better than 10-1 in favor of newsstand. See valiantmans post below yours for more proof. They just aren't nearly as available in 9.8 as directs. The evidence is there, just need to look at it objectively. And if they are "everywhere" as Kevin76 said, that ratio wouldn't hold up over any length of time, yet it does. Consistenly.

I was just looking at some of these on GoCollect today and found that every issue I looked at had sold recently for between 8x-12x the direct price. My wife was telling me to sell last year when they were at 5x direct. Glad I had no need to sell.

On 5/23/2024 at 5:14 PM, grendel013 said:

@cmcfanDon't sell this one.

Hey, it's the old bottom lip only lipstick trend! I wonder why that never caught on?

On 5/23/2024 at 10:59 AM, Cat said:

Variant cover for Action Comics #1068. I guess it'll appeal to the 5 year old reader segment. 

This is very rough but it is also well-drawn and has good colors. My complaint is that Superman is posed like a teenage girl.

On 5/16/2024 at 1:44 PM, Chip Cataldo said:

Thank you for your thorough analysis and insight. I'll re-read the post again later on when I'm home and it's quiet since the first read when I'm at work is probably rushed though I probably don't realize it. Lol

I've seen your website, and it's no surprise that when I first saw your more comic-style work I immediately thought of Darwyn. It's a great style and you do it very well. Your paintings are amazing in their own right.

Do you do commissions at all?

 

I haven't ever done a commission. Graham Nolan asked me to when I did a story for him, but I didn't because I had no idea how to price such a thing. I'm open to the idea, but the logistics of it are alien to me.

On 5/17/2024 at 11:52 PM, s-man said:

I ding it because he looks squat to me.

His abdomen is squashed and his chest is inflated dramatically. Based on the credits I see on GoCollect, I don't know if this is Schaffenberger or Oskner. I like both artists, but this doesn't look like either to me.

On 5/17/2024 at 8:20 AM, Ken Aldred said:

Still far from being the worst modern era Superman cover I’ve seen.

Looks to me like he’s simply tensing against a hail of shrapnel fragments.

Getting back to the original post, the ASM 13 cover may not be one of Byrne's best, but there are much worse covers out there. Also, although all of @Get Marwood & I's criticisms are valid, I wouldn't say it makes the cover "horrible." There are some Superman covers from the 1970's by (I think) Kurt Schaffenberger that are very weak. One, Action 464, is similar to the horrible Iron Man drawing earlier in this thread, though not as bad.

On 5/16/2024 at 2:15 PM, Ken Aldred said:

Great analysis.  Never really considered how much photo referencing goes on.  

Thanks.

Keep in mind that all artists use photo reference. It's the way they use it that is important. Some artists slavishly trace it, or freehand copy it, which is essentially the same thing. Once you've got a little practice, almost any artist can transfer a 2D image pretty easily even without tracing. The better artists understand 3D and perspective. With that knowledge, they can examine a photo, estimate the dimensions of the objects, and then redraw those same objects from a different point of view (camera angle) and lighting.

Some artists understand 3D well but are also tied to their photo reference because of the amount of detail they want. This usually isn't an issue with mechanical or architectural subjects, but is a problem with faces in particular, because of the compound complex curvature combined with facial muscles that can deform the skin in unpredictable ways. I believe Hughes is capable of using photo reference to extract 3D measurements, but because he wants these perfect facial expressions, he pretty much traces them off of photos. This usually creates a weird, static look. 

Norman Rockwell didn't have that problem because he was a skilled draughtsman before he ever started using photos. After he started using photos, he usually made caricatures in charcoal first, then made up the colors from live models (his reference photos were always black and white). By combining his exaggerated drawings with directly observed color, he got a very realistic look that was lively and unforced.

My favorite example of this is a pair of covers by C.C. Beck and Mac Raboy for Fawcett. The subjects are very similar, but it is easy to see that Raboy, unlike Beck, doesn't understand perspective. Raboy has a photo of a battleship and has essentially traced it. One of the dead giveaways is that there is a lot of structural detail hidden by shadows. If Raboy understood perspective and lighting better, he would have been able to extract that structural information so it wasn't lost. Another problem is that the figure of Captain Marvel Jr is not in the same perspective as the battleship. It's like he's been pinned to a glass slide placed in front of a photo on the wall behind him.

Beck, on the other hand, draws Captain Marvel and the landscape below him in the same 3D space. The giveaway here is how one side of his body tilts away from the camera. Raboy gets most of the attention for his feathery inking style and, I hate to say, extremely badly placed shadows, but Beck is the superior artist. In the Beck cover, though tiny, the gun placement on the island below Marvel is drawn perfectly. He couldn't have done this without a solid understanding of perspective and the ability to understand the structure of objects. One of my favorite examples of this is another Beck, where Captain Marvel has twisted some train tracks. Those twisted tracks and drawn very well, and in a way that lesser artists would find very difficult.

On 5/15/2024 at 4:40 PM, Dave2739 said:

To be fair, bad art is not limited to modern books.

No, but I may notice it more because the coloring is, on average, much worse. This is thanks to modern printing technology, which provides considerably more flexibility to be bad. Until around 1990, almost all comics (absent special arrangements) had a very limited palette of colors to choose from. Because of this, it was almost impossible to go wrong. It limited how good the colors could be, but it was very hard to go below an acceptable level of aesthetic appeal. Now, they can be much better than in the past, but can also be much worse. My impression is that most modern colorists working in the comic book industry are atrocious at their job. There are a few exceptions, like Cliff Chiang, Richmond Lewis, and Chris Samnee, but most are awful.

Then there are the painted covers, yet hardly any comic book artists can paint very well. They've spent their careers learning how to draw in black and white and have zero sensitivity to paint. Again, there are exceptions: Frank Frazetta, C.C. Beck, Richard Corben, Moebius (Jean Giraud), Berni Wrightson (watercolor only), Barry Smith, and Alex Ross (sometimes). Even in this group, most aren't up to the standard of a normal illustrator, though Frazetta and C.C. Beck meet that standard. Most, even skilled black and white artists like John Romita and John Buscema are very weak painters and color illustrators.

Painted covers are more common now because printing technology allows them, but I wish it didn't, because the output is repulsively bad in most cases. The few that are good aren't enough to make up for the profligate horror shows all over, and I include some artists who are popular in that group. Luckily for the artists involved, many collectors are just as naive about painted covers as the artists who make them, so their errors go unnoticed.

On 5/14/2024 at 10:19 AM, Chip Cataldo said:

I don't see anything wrong with that Spidey wedding cake topper cover. I think the art is very nice and it's a neat concept with the bloody knife.

What bothers me is the awful color, bland lighting, timid brushwork, and boring composition. Of course, among modern comics, there is a wealth of bad to choose from.

On 1/15/2024 at 4:21 AM, BuraddoRun said:

I'd be screaming like Tony, too, if my upper half expanded like a balloon inside a metal suit and my legs crumpled under me.

 

Holy cow. I can't picture John Romita ever approving a cover like this. How does that girl's green top stay on? I once met a model dressed as Vampirella, who had to use tape to ensure her nipples remained covered. This outfit fits into the same category of impracticality. Of course, Iron Man's hideous deformities are the real hero of this image. They are simultaneously repulsive and wrong.

These are all pretty bad or over-rated in my opinion. The worst is the wedding cake, but the newsboy Mac Raboy isn't far behind.

On 5/5/2024 at 8:11 AM, musicmeta said:

I had the worse round of grading ever.  Last three books were very far off.  I'm pretty sure I have the worse score of anybody this round.  Blew it on the Web of Spiderman.  15pts total.  
I've been banished to the neither worlds.  Please send me good food. 

You only barely beat me. I got 14, and had 1 bulls-eye. The Web comic got me big time. This contest is my worst ever, so it's pretty embarrassing to admit I scored 36 in total, an average of  9 per round. Normally I get around 22 or so. Oof.

On 5/4/2024 at 7:12 PM, CGC Mike said:

I'm going to give this to you guys for fun.  You can post grades in the thread.  I'll post the actual grade tomorrow night.   No PM's LOL  May the force be with you.

 

9.6

2 buls-eyes and a total of 4 points. If only the other two rounds went as well. To have a shot at 6th, I may need perfect scores from now on.

I have some hope this time. I got a Superman emoji.

On 4/30/2024 at 8:43 AM, CGC Mike said:

Still waiting on grades from:

@1337pino @Ahsoka Tano Jedi Apprentice @aj_curated @BlackOut21 @BrashL @brumil190 @canickus @Cerebus3000 @CHASEnBLUE @Cman429 @comicstock @Cushing Fan @Darwination @Deputy Dan @Doctor Dositheus @Dormian @frozentundraguy @grendelbo @jbpez @jcjames @KryptoMayor @Motor City Rob @Nschenks @Panda2 @paqart @pmpknface @TC33 @TheGeneral @thehumantorch @TheTallGuy @thingsofstuff @toro @TTG @WilliamLunt

Grades sent

On 4/28/2024 at 8:30 AM, Axelrod said:

You can't please all of the people all of the time.  Or some of the people any of the time.  I think mixing it up has been great.  

I appreciate these contests and everything you do for this community. 

I find the moderns much more difficult than GA, but I don't mind. Noticing the pain and wanting the pain to stop are different things. In this case, it's good practice.

On 4/28/2024 at 1:02 AM, Domo Arigato said:

Not trying to pile on, but just out of curiousity as well.  Since you've been a board member in here for almost 10 years, I would assume you have collected slabs for at least that long.  How have you previously never managed to see the older slabs with the wavy labels and the Title/Grade sticker on top?  

 

Not that I think it matters, but I have not collected slabs for that long, and I joined CGC during a period when I wasn't collecting comics at all. I was trying to find information on a store I used to grade comics for called Recycle Books, and that led to a post by someone here. To see it, I had to become a member. To my surprise, the guy remembered me, though I was doing that work back in 1978. I had almost no interactions after that until I moved back to the US after finishing my PhD in 2018. At that time, someone at the town dump gave me a stack of comics as I was tossing out all the boxes from the move. The stack included a Giant-Size Man-Thing #4, with one of my all-time favorite Brunner covers. At that time, I may not have ever seen a slab, though I'm not sure about that, because I had been to a couple of Strip Beurs (comic book conventions) in the Netherlands. However, my interest in those shows was to let my daughter have a good time while I talked to some artists I knew, and largely ignored the comics, which were almost all European. The GSMT4 got me interested in comics again, so I started looking for SA/GA comics, mostly GA Barks. 

I bought my first slab, a New Teen Titans 2, in 2020 or so, after reading about newsstand editions. I felt like an insufficiently_thoughtful_person for buying it, but since then have accumulated over 100, though 75 of those were sent in by me. The ones I sent in were all moderns and were put into whatever slab was current in 2022. The remaining slabs are mostly for current newsstand editions of modern comics that almost certainly wouldn't have been worth putting in a slab until at least 2010. None of my GA comics are in slabs. The CMA 51 would have been the first if I had kept it. The reason is that I don't like to have slabbed comics that I actually want to read. Since I don't read the modern comics, I don't mind they are in a slab and it seems to help their value for trading later, though I haven't sold or traded any yet. I do like reading the Binder/Beck stories, so I wasn't that happy about getting the 51 in a slab, but all the other copies were in such bad shape I didn't want them anyway.

I'd be willing to buy certain GA comics in a slab, but not many. For instance low grade comics that have great covers but are in such awful shape that they can't be read anyway (like early issues of Action)

On 4/28/2024 at 12:48 AM, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

And succeeded brilliantly. Not sure why you use this video, because it makes it seem like you don't think you succeeded. What about my other question though? I'm  curious whether the inner portion of the slab is sealed on all six sides or not, meaning two layers of plastic between the comic and the outside of the slab.

On 4/28/2024 at 12:26 AM, newshane said:

No. But if you tell someone they are wrong, you better be sure that you are right. 

So if someone tells me I don't know geometry because of a misunderstanding about the shape of a slab, he has to know geometry better? Look, RMA ruffled my feathers, but I'm cool now. maybe you don't need to take this any further. I wanted some info and got it, though it was difficult because of the way I described the problem. As a teacher, my position is that the reward for ignorance is education, not a demand to be less ignorant.

On 4/28/2024 at 12:17 AM, newshane said:

I mean, if you're arguing about the construction of a slab, then yes...you should enter the conversation with some basic knowledge. 

So I have to know the answer to the question before asking? Is that right? Or do I have to know the answer to this question also before asking?

On 4/27/2024 at 11:37 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

Andrew. Allow me to break my "vow of silence", as it were, for a second, because you're taking some very aggressive shots at me, none of which are justified. When I first responded to your drawing, I had no idea that you had no idea how the mechanics of Gen 2 cases (which is what you have) worked, so I was reminding you...yes, with my "crude" drawing...that what you had drawn was physically impossible without A. popping another corner post, or B. (and infinitely less likely) warping and damaging the inner well and comic inside. Most people I know who spend $$$ on slabs have seen one or two cracked out, or have done it themselves, or at least watched a crackout video on the internet, to familiarize themselves with how the product they're putting so much trust in works. You don't need to crack a 4 or 5 figure slab to do that.

And now, you're angry...again...because you didn't understand what you were dealing with, and when someone gently corrected you, reminding you of the properties of the inner well (and not knowing you didn't know those properties)...with a picture, no less, which is about as non-confrontational as it gets...you immediately assumed bad faith, immediately assumed someone was "making a joke at your expense." But nothing could be further from the truth. I don't need to be "right" at the expense of others. No, I want everyone to be correct, so that everyone works from a position of knowledge.

I am a buyer AND seller of slabs. It is not only in my nature to be factually correct about the things that interest me, but it is in my business interests to make sure that misinformation about slabs doesn't proliferate. While everyone was praising your admittedly excellent drawing, they had missed the fact that there was a glaring error in it: the idea that a comic is not sealed into the inner well, and can simply be "tilted" and "pulled out" if one corner post is broken. That is not correct, for ANY generation of slab.

My goal wasn't to make you feel stupid. My goal was not to anger you. My goal was not to belittle you. My goal was not to "tweak" you. My goal isn't...and I cannot emphasize this enough...to "shoo anyone away", but to make sure everyone goes into comics with KNOWLEDGE, because knowledge is power. People who know what they're doing are much, much less likely to be scammed, taken advantage of, or, as in your case, assume they're being taken advantage of when they're not.

My goal was to bring you to understanding, and prevent MISunderstanding in others who, like you, don't know the mechanics of these cases, how they're designed, and how they function, and might look at your drawing and internalize it, thinking what you drew is possible. It is not. It never has been. And it's important that that idea was corrected.

So, just so you know: for Gen 2 (which is what your slab was) slabs, the inner well is nearly the entire length and width of the case, and it is divided into two parts: the bottom part where the comic is is completely sealed by a sonic weld on all four sides and cannot, outside of QC issues, be opened without cutting on the inside of that weld. The top part contains the label, and is lightly welded into the label on both sides, while the top is unsealed and open. 

I get it. You're a very educated and talented man. You spent a lot of time and energy getting to where you are. And no one likes to be corrected, especially in public. But there are a lot of people who know a lot more than you AND me about many subjects here. And there's nothing wrong with that. Instead of assuming bad faith, perhaps just asking "what do you mean by that?" would smooth out the rough spots that may not actually even exist. Everyone has something they know that others don't, and learning is a lifelong process.

I hope my explanation brings clarity, if not reconciliation.

Excellent answer, thanks. The pictures weren't working for me. Now that we're both talking, let me ask something you may think you've already answered, but isn't clear to me: I'm thinking of these cases now as a box wedged between two halves of the outer shell, secured by the four corner posts. I didn't examine the partially open CMA closely enough to see if the inner box was sealed on all six sides. It didn't occur to me that it might be, or I would have put on my higher powered pair of glasses to see it better. I also may have used something to prop the corner open while I photographed it (something I didn't want to do for fear that doing so might make it worse). One of my photos did catch the label slipping slightly over the "wall" between the label's and comic's portion of the inner box, but from what you're saying, it could do that and the comic still couldn't be removed because both are essentially in the same box together, even if there is a wall between them. The reason is that the wall doesn't extend and join with a "ceiling" which would have to be transparent, because I didn't see anything like that. Another shot, a close up of the yellowed edge of the comic, makes it look like the label could, if so motivated, move completely over the comic, or vice versa. I don't see a layer of plastic over them, apart from the hard case which easily lifted from the corner. To me, it looked like, when viewed through the open cover, I was looking at paper, not a plastic cover over the comic. Are you saying that isn't possible?

On 4/27/2024 at 11:01 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

"As if". It's an important conditional expression. I didn't say it was your intent, but I was inspired to stop buying comics altogether for about 24 months or so. I was making up for lost time, but am feeling inspired again.

You don't get all the credit though. Getting back to this thread, what do you think of the situation with Zaneglor? It's beginning to look like this incident won't have any long-lasting impact on the hobby at all, and any losses suffered by collectors will be minimal.

Anyway, this is totally off-track now. My apologies, it wasn't my intent. RMA has a fantastic but risable talent for tweaking me (and others, apparently). Not a skill I'd be proud of, but it is undeniable.
In other news, anything happening in the Zaneglor cases? I'm glad to hear owners of tampered slabs will finally be getting compensation, though now I wonder how that will be determined. From CGC's perspective, it would be very easy to lowball collectors, and from the collector's perspective, almost any offer could be construed as lowball. This would recommend a higher settlement from CGC where there is no requirement to do it. Hence, the dramatic tension created by the situation. It seems to me that the individuals who bought from Zaneglor could have actions against Zaneglor even if compensated by CGC because they were inconvenienced, placed in jeopardy (if they had sold tampered holders), and may have lost opportunities to sell at higher than the settlement price.

In some cases where a buyer is duped, they can be attacked as incautious for buying something at a price so good that they didn't look carefully at what they were buying. That doesn't seem to be the case here, because the comics were won at auction, meaning, highest possible price. They weren't overlooking defects to save money here.