Michael Browning

Honestly, nothing interested me in either auction - except the Star Wars page - and I figured it would be out of reach - and I already have a better page from that issue.

I saw the exact same thing. Bids happened in the first few days and then the bidding was light in the end.

All of the Star Wars 38 pages have toned word balloons. I didn’t think the Leia was any more off-putting than she is in some of the later Star Wars pages that have sold higher. Generally, any SW page of this vintage would hit sell at this price, but this is one of the coveted Michael Golden pages, so I figured it would go at least to $15,000. I thought the whole auction and the C-Link auction were both letdowns. The trajectory of comic art hasn’t slowed down - even for lackluster pieces - over the last couple years and I think these two auctions and the last HA signature showed deflated prices. I don’t think anyone should panic because I figured this would happen after the Secret Wars page sold so high.

Wow. Okay, so … The ‘Nam was one of the best comics of the 1980s and got three trade paperback collections long before collected editions became the norm. It was critically acclaimed and Michael Golden’s art on the series is some of the best of his career. Golden pages from the series consistently sell in the high five figures.

I am shocked at some of the bargains there were in the two auctions ending tonight. I really hope the sellers in both auctions only had pennies in the art they sold, because everything but a Steve Ditko Fly page sold low. I predicted the Michael Golden Star Wars 38 end page with Luke and Leia and the next-issue tease for the Empire Strikes Back at the bottom would hit at least $15,000 in the C-link. It ended up being a major bargain at $7,900 - about the price of a page from The Nam. Clearly, this page was either overlooked or bidders thought - like I did - that it would go much higher and didn’t bid. Maybe those “back-off” bids really do work… The other bargain in the C-link was the Batman 357 page by Don Newton with the first appearance of Jason Todd that sold for $5,988. I figured the first appearance collectors would push that into at least five digits. I mean, in a day and age where every first appearance page is worth five digits, this page underperformed big time. Over at HA, the Frank Thorne Red Sonja market appears to definitely be very saturated and it showed when the Marvel Feature 5 page sold for just $1020 with the BP. The seller had to have paid more than that for it. The Ross Andru Fantastic Four 146 DPS sold for an incredibly low $720 with BP. I know it’s a DPS on an 11x17 board, but you can’t buy a Paul Ryan common page for that. Heck, a Vigilante Annual 2 page by Andru sold at ComicLink for $1,600. There we’re a few surprises, like the very faded Green Lantern 20 cover by Pat Broderick that sold for what I think is high at $2,400 and the Ty Templeton Batman Adventures 2 page 17 (featuring the first appearance of BTAS Catwoman) selling for $2,750. It is a first appearance page, so maybe that was very low. Except for the Kirby animation drawings, there really weren’t any major highlights for C-link and the Ditko Fly 8 page selling for $10K was, in my opinion, the highlight of the HA.

The $3.36 million sale of the Secret Wars page caused everyone to start dumping their collections with the hopes that they, too, would get rich by selling their long-hidden Frank Springer Dazzler and Steve Ditko Fly pages. From what I hear, there’s no supply chain problems in the comic art auction business right now.

Really nice group of scarce comics! I found a stack of about 15 the GR 94s in a comic shop about three years ago and bought them all for a buck each, but haven’t seen a copy since. The previous owner of the shop had been a GR fan, I think. I also found the Doctor Strange, Wonder Woman and Spectre 62 in the same shop. I didn’t even know the Ms. Marvel Marvel Must-Haves existed, so that’s very cool. And, though I’ve found multiples of the later printings that are all supposed to be very scarce, that Wolverine is one I haven’t seen since it was published. The Silver Surfer Fireside graphic novel is one that’s been unseen in the wild for me in about 24 years since I bought my last copy for $5 in Comic World in Charleston, WV, along with a few other Fireside TPBs.

I think that cover color guide is already very valuable, but, no, I don’t think the DKR 1 cover art selling for $2.4 million does anything to enhance or detract from its value. Color guides in general are going up as more and more people recognize them as part of the production process for their favorite comics.

Anybody who pre-orders comics - and especially CGC-graded comics - on eBay is begging to have their money stolen from them.

I will say that I hope I’m the only one who values art this way because I hope everyone I buy from only values their art for the exact cost of just the art - not including the shipping, BP and sales tax. 😁

Every single penny that I have to pay is now part of the new value of the art when I sell it in the future. Others can try to come up with formulas and scenarios about the value and how it shouldn't include sales tax and/or shipping to keep the price as low as possible when they buy it from me, but, the new value of the piece includes tax, shipping, BP and whatever else it cost me to buy it. Every single penny.

Thanks! Now, I wonder, where did the #4 blank box come from?

It looks like the printing press rollers may have gotten dirty and smeared ink when it was printed. Those old presses were sometimes messy. If you know it’s on more than just one copy, why are you so worried about it?

I had never seen copies with a blank UPC box before, either, as all my copies have the code in the box. When I found the #3 in the stack at the comic shop, I thought it was a reprint. Then, the guy had #4, too, and it was the same. Neither have any note that they are second or later printings, so I am believing them to be first prints. I have a second print of the first issue and it is noted by Roman numerals on the cover and it says “Second Print” on the publishing information page. I wondered if they were toy variants that might have been packaged with toys, but I don’t believe any were packed with the action figures and I can’t find any evidence that they were.

The same thing was originally believed about the stickered Spawn Batman newsstand, but then it was determined that they were done at the printer (or somewhere before it got to the bookstore company) and not at the bookstore.

I miss the days when I didn’t have to sit through gloom and doom financial forecasts on an original art auction post.

Unfortunately, there aren’t indicias in any the Kingdom Come issues, just the publishing information on a page prior to the title page. The second prints said “Second Print.” These don’t say anything, so I’d have to believe they are first prints. The blank UPC boxes are unlike any copies I’ve seen. I have other DCs with the stickers on them. I’ve always been told those were done at the printer for newsstands and bookstores - and not done BY the bookstores.

I found these in a shop this week and I’m wondering what they are - Kingdom Come #3 and #4 with blank UPC boxes and UPC code stickers on the front. I can’t find any for sale on eBay, nor any that have sold. I’ve also looked online to see if there is any information and I haven’t been able to find anything on them.

That’s the one Stevens cover I’ve never found in the wild.

That one went for exactly what I thought it would. Solid result for a painted cover that was for a comic published in another country. Lopez Espi covers have been on the rise, just like Marvel UK art, because it's the cheapest published Marvel art that can be found from those years. Not much nostalgia here, but a lot of people just want a cover of their favorite character and those are pretty nice.

He’s Jim Lee’s agent.

Actually, the Moon Knight results were quite soft - especially the Colan Hulk #11 splash. That splash went just under $9,000, but the seller was asking for $15,000 just weeks before it went to auction. I thought the Sienkiewicz pages sold low, too. I was surprised that the Dazzler #3 splash sold higher than the Uncanny X-Men Romita Jr. pages, but, a Frank Springer Dazzler #16 panel page ended in this week's HA at $2,040, and that also kind of shocked me. My take away is that the Moon Knight market is soft, while Dazzler art continues to sell high. Did anyone think a Brent Anderson Uncanny X-Men page would sell for $6,500 or that a Batman Son of the Demon page would sell for $4,090, while a Brian Bolland Camelot 3000 page only sold for $3,900? I thought the Byrne Wolverine #21 cover would hit $50,000, but it came far short of that at $29,000. I still believe the Stan Lee autographs on the J. Scott Campbell art hurt the end results. I don't think it helped the Spider-Gwen hip-hop variant cover, either. Dillin Justice League of America art seems to have cooled off and, I thought, the great pages offered would sell much higher. Steve Ditko art sold well if it was Marvel, but the Charlton horror cover underperformed. That was cheaper than what I paid for a Ditko Charlton cover in 2001. I'm not sure why a Rafael Grampa Batman splash would sell for $27,000, but, wow, it sure did. It's good art, but I didn't know he had such a following. The two Alan Kupperberg Spectacular Spider-Man #127 pages were bargains. I figured black costume Spider-Man pages would sell for at least $2500 each or more. I couldn't hardly believe the Back Issue #1 Batman vs. Captain America cover by George Perez sold for just $5,655. I thought it would reach at least $10,000 and possibly sell as high as $15,000. It's a good cover from Perez's later period, so I had regrets for not going for it. I know nothing about Rob Prior art, but that Iron Man painting with Stan Lee under the helmet sold for the opening bid of $285,000, which is, in my opinion, CRAZY. But, I couldn't understand the cracked ASM #300 recreation selling so high in the spring HA, either. I wanted that Green Lantern #48 page by Bill Willingham, but knew it would sell high (it went for $1409). It sure would have paired well with the cover I already own. *As a side note, I do think there is too much great material coming to market and not enough dollars and that's going to cause a lot of art to sell cheaper than it should.

That piece was up on eBay for several weeks. The seller - not one of the Bros. - would put it up with a starting bid of $1 and then would take it down and relist it the next day. He had two or three other pieces that were also done the very same way - list and end, relist and end… At one point, he had a Buy It Now on it that was in the high five digits and had posted a harsh message to the description about people trying to lowball him and he knew what he had.

$250-$350 seems about right for a page from the original Marvel series, especially these days. That is from Savage Sword and by Wyman, so I’d say in the lower end of that range.

I am very blessed with what I have and I thank God every day for it all. As a kid growing up fairly poor in very rural West Virginia and loving comics, I never thought I would ever own a single page of artwork so I am constantly amazed at the pieces I own. I look through my modest collection and I have most of the art I’ve wanted over the years - what everyone calls “grails” (a grossly overused term today). I still buy a lot of pages and covers when I find art I like, but, yes, I am content with my collection. Every day I think about quitting the game and just enjoying what I have but there’s always more art to buy that I like, so I’m not done collecting, just content with the art I have and have owned at one time (yes, I’ve sold and traded away some great pieces and I can at least say I once owned that).