Michael Browning

Another stipulation to the deal was that I make him a print of the comic art and mail it to him to replace what he was losing. I agreed and so that brought the cost to $3112. The guy didn't even collect comic art - nor did he even read comics. He just like DeCarlo art and saw it for sale and bought it. He said numerous people had tried to buy it from him all the years he had it, but none ever made him think it was worth his while. He said he stopped reading my offers around $1500, but might have taken my $2000 offer the year earlier if he'd even opened the email to read it. Arrrgghh! Sometimes, you have to catch someone at the right time: the guy who owned the Cheryl pinup was needing a new roof and the $3100 went a long way toward getting that taken care of, at the time. He later told me that after he cashed my check, he looked at the cash and decided to store it away in his safe for a later day.

Late last year and earlier this year, I was looking at getting some Dan DeCarlo Betty and Veronica and Cheryl Blossom bikini covers/pinups and found a few that were all NFS. I inquired and made an offer well over the FMV and got several of the ones I was going after. Here's the one that took me paying 100x its FMV: the Archie's Pals and Gals 161 Cheryl Blossom pinup that was my grail. The guy who owned it bought it for $75 from Anthony Snyder more than a decade ago. I started my offer at $500 right after he bought it and was refused. Every year, I would ask again and increase my offer. Finally, after 10 years, and an offer of $3100, the guy relented and sold me the art. I wish I could have gotten it far cheaper, but, I didn't want to offend the guy and I knew I had to make it worth his while.

There is actually one page from the Cyblade-Shi crossover issue that featured Bone drawn by Jeff in, if I remember correctly, three panels. I bought it directly from Billy Tucci, who drew the rest of the page. Billy had one other page with Bone on it and the DPS from that issue that had Bone, along with characters from other companies that were drawn by their creators. Billy, after selling me the one page, has said he won't sell the others because it technically is the only Bone published art that isn't in the Ohio State collection. I ended up trading the page away a couple years ago and I know I saw it pop up on CAF last year.

I'm the owner, and I'm not actively trying to sell them right now. I offered them to a couple dealers when I got the collection and both told me that it was art and that they weren't interested unless I sold them at prices below what I paid for each page.

While I have bought from C-Link, I do not consign to auctions. I'm content to hold onto all this great art for awhile longer, unless one of my friends asks me to sell or trade to him/her. I have sold a few pieces here and there, but privately, instead of at auction.

Elektra, Punisher, Daredevil, Captain America, Hulk, Ghost Rider and a few others.

I recently found a treasure trove full of 1990s pages that feature some of Marvel's most popular characters, but no dealer will even touch them (I was even told the art was " art"). I'm telling you, the dealers' disregard of this era prevents some prime 1990s pages from ever hitting the market. In turn, collectors won't offer them for sale because they're told they are worthless and no collector wants to be told that their art isn't worth even trying to sell. But, when dealers start selling stuff that THEY, THEMSELVES, don't collect, and start selling art without bias to decades, then we will see a lot of great stuff hit the market that many of us have been looking for. A lot of dealers won't sell or deal in anything that they, personally, don't collect. One dealer doesn't want anything newer than 1980, another doesn't want anything that isn't large art and another only buys art that is published by Marvel and DC. Those dealers are focused primarily on selling to help build their collections and disregard anything that isn't in their collecting scope and, a lot of times, miss out on great art that is available for sale -- art that WOULD SELL IF PUT UP ON THEIR SITES. And that, in my opinion, would cause a lot of the 1990s art to come out of the woodwork and into our collections.

Yes, I was totally misreading that and I sincerely apologize.

No, the GI Joe 63 pictured above is NOT the So Much Fun variant, which has "Classic" written under the logo on the cover and So Much Fun written in the UPC box.

Rather than just buying art of one character or by one artist like I did when I first started collecting, I am trying to find art that has a nostalgic feel to it, so nowadays, my collection is becoming focused on more pieces that are part of my "Permanent Collection." I think my collection is better than ever nowadays and, thank God, I have been blessed to have found some of my personal grails (art from comics I owned as a child or teen). The Charlton art that I collected when I first started collecting wasn't so hard to get rid of, because they were mostly all cover paintings, so there was a market for those and they weren't by any one artist. I actually traded up with some of those and the others I broke even on when I decided I wanted to move in a different direction with my art collecting. As for my Jonah Hex collection: At one time, I probably had the largest collection of Jonah Hex art around. I had lots of covers, lots of pages, the pencils preliminary pages to his first appearance and commissions by a large number of artists. But, when I decided I wanted to branch out and explore other comic art collecting, trading away and selling my Jonah Hex-focused art was very difficult. Eventually, I traded or sold off nearly all of the Jonah Hex art (one cover left and I've got only a few commissions that were more personal to me from artist friends like Tim Truman; Dan Parent and the late, great Ernie Chan). I lost a lot of cash on most of those pieces and barely broke even on the rest. I simply don't do commissions anymore except a cover recreation every now and again from Bob Budiansky, Tim Truman and Jeff Aclin (all three I highly recommend if you're looking to get a commission). Bob is my favorite Marvel artist, Tim is a native West Virginian and a friend, and Jeff is awesome to deal with. He's reliable, very quick and affordable. I learned a valuable lesson: Focusing on only one character or artist is only good when it's published Spider-Man covers and pages and the artist is someone like Frank Miller or Jack Kirby.

For the first couple of years of collecting, I collected Charlton cover art and I traded all that away. Then, I focused on just collecting Jonah Hex, but, after getting enough headshots of Hex and, after he'd become popular again through a new series and the potential of a movie coming out, I decided to sell or trade everything away. Trouble was, no matter how popular the character was, no one wanted to give me even what I paid for the pieces and no dealer wanted to trade with me (but, thank God for Anthony Snyder making a trade with me for most of the Hex art a few years later), because they didn't have any faith in a western character and wanted only super heroes. I learned a very valuable lesson from collecting only Hex art: commissions do not sell nearly as well as published art, no matter who the artist is and, rarely, do you ever recoup what you spend for commissions unless they are by super popular artists - and not of Jonah Hex. Now, my only focus collecting is Bob Budiansky Ghost Rider art - but I don't collect JUST Budiansky GR art. My collection, as many of you have seen, consists of a lot of different artists and characters, ranging from covers to splashes to panel pages and only a few commissions, which are mostly recreations of covers by the same artist. I'm much happier with my multi-faceted collection and I'm glad I got away from the singular focus art collecting. I think it's made me a better collector and given me a much better collection.

I was in the race for this, but backed out after I found out the dimensions of the heads. I made Anthony a HUGE offer before I found out how small the heads were and, on January 19, when I learned that they were only about .75 of an inch, I politely rescinded my offer. Four days after I pulled my offer, on January 23, Anthony reached out to me and asked if I had another offer, so I did make another offer, but one that was quite a bit lower and with some really great art. Then, after waiting nearly a week to hear back from Anthony, I emailed him on January 29 and asked "Any thoughts on going forward with some sort of trade for the X-Men corner box art, Anthony? I haven't heard back from you and was wondering. Please let me know. Thanks!" I got this answer back: "Not right now thanks." I emailed him back and said this "Okay, after I rescinded my original offer, you asked me to make another, so I did. I have been waiting to hear back from you. So, does this mean you aren't interested in any of the art I offered?" Again, that was on January 29, and, not surprisingly, I have not heard a word from him since.

No, it was golden blond and cut in a bowl. But, I think we wore the same brand of pants - Toughskins.

CAF UPDATE: Kirby Kamandi splash and the story behind it Check out this Jack Kirby Kamandi splash I just got: http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1381324 Way back in 1982, a childhood friend of mine named Ernest Hilton started bringing comics to my house that were very old, mostly coverless or remaindered and that I'd never seen in his collection (all of us coal camp kids were trading around so much that we knew each and every comic in each other's collections). He let me in on a secret: he was buying them off a spinner rack at the Red Jacket Supermarket in Red Jacket, W.Va., not far from where I grew up. My dad knew where the store was, so he took me over there to see if they had any more of these old-new comics. The Red Jacket Supermarket was this big, monolithic building to me: it had steps that wouldn't pass ADA standards today and it was built with old stone. Inside, the floor was made of very old and weathered wood with drafty holes where the wood had broken through and fallen to the lower level. It was chilly and dimly lit because it was an old coal camp store. Inside, there was two spinner racks with comics in the center of the floor with two pool tables behind it. The market part was mostly gone, just a few items on the other side for sale, mostly necessities that had been there for, probably, years. I rushed over to the spinner racks to find late-1960s and early-1970s comics - mostly coverless DC 100-page giants and oddball comics and a few Charltons. I wanted to buy them all. I think they were about a quarter each and maybe five for a dollar. I spun the rack for more than an hour, going through each and every one until I thought I'd gotten everything I wanted. One of the comics was Kamandi 22. It was coverless and tattered, but it had this awesome bee trying to kill this blond-haired boy who, except for the length of his hair, looked much like I did at that point in my life. I loved the Kirby art and it was such a cool comic, but there wasn't any more of the Kamandis on the rack. So, I just read this one over and over. All these years later, I never thought I'd ever find a piece of art from that issue, but I wanted the splash so badly. Not being one who follows the Heritage Auctions much, I missed out on it twice, but it finally landed on Mike Burkey's site. Mike is good at giving you plenty of time to pay things off, so I took advantage of that and was able to buy it over a period of months. Now it is a very cherished part of my collection and every time I look at it, I am taken back to the old Red Jacket Supermarket and that old spinner rack where I found Kamandi 22 and so much happiness. Thanks for looking and reading. I hope you enjoy both! Michael Browning

Here is my Dave Stevens art that I got this week: Dave Stevens unpublished Wonder Woman cover from 1991.

Nice pickup on the Lost in Space Voyage to the Bottom of the Soul. How many of those were actually printed? 200? I know that most have damage and are usually dinged up pretty badly from being shipped in an envelope. I have owned four copies and none have sold for less than $150. Good pickup if you got all that for $31!

I was told several years ago that Ricardo Villamonte was dead. Not sure if that is true or not.

One last addition to the above information: the gold copy I sold to the Seattle collector was later sold by him on eBay. When it sold for a little more than $600 and didn't reach the $750 I charged him in trade for it, he sent me a note asking me, since it didn't sell for the $750 he'd given me in trade for the MM gold, if I could send him the balance in cash. I politely told him no, that it wasn't my fault it didn't meet that price and that he hadn't set a reserve on his auction.

It is really cool to see that so many of these have come out of the woodwork. When I did the article for Comics Buyer's Guide way back in 2002, I couldn't even get these listed correctly in Overstreet (I think they first listed them as Gold and Silver editions -- and I was an advisor at the time and had a tough time getting them corrected). I had first noticed these in an ad in one of Eclipse's comics when they were first advertised and I wanted one, but the price for these was too high for me to buy at that time (I was just a teen and whatever the cost was at the time was WAY more than I made in a month of cutting grass). I got into Miracleman collecting and, at one time, owned the Jim Starlin cover art to #4, the John Totleben cover prelim to #12, a Totleben page from #16 and several of the sketches he used to make that page, and a few pages from Miracleman: Triumphant by Mike Deodato (I owned the best of the pages that were available). I had purchased all that from Ricky Wong, who was the Miracleman collector supreme at that time and owned numerous pages of original art. I had a very rough time after that article was published and it almost made me wish I had never even written about them -- and was the catalyst for why I ended up letting my copies go. I had bought my first gold copy from an eBay seller for around $60, paid with a USPS money order, and I scanned my copy of the gold certificate, the cover and the signatures on the inside front page as the photo examples for the CBG article. About a year later (or maybe it was two years), a CBG editor contacts me and tells me I have to give them proof of my purchase of the gold copy and that I also needed to prove I had paid for it because the eBay seller had contacted CBG and said I stole the comic from him. I was crushed! I had never stolen anything in my life (still haven't) and to be accused of something like this was horrible. Having the money order carbon copy, I had my proof and, heck, as I explained to the CBG editor, the seller would have never sent me the comic had I not paid for it first! And, on top of all that, the seller, in all that time, had never even filed a case against me with eBay and he would have if he hadn't gotten his money. But, the CBG editor was very accusatory and demanded I show where the money order was cashed by the eBay seller, because CBG was threatening to not use any additional articles written by me and to take whatever appropriate action was necessary against me. I don't think the editor who was making the accusations on behalf of the eBay seller even apologized to me after I sent them the proof and cleared my own name. In the end, though, the seller had nothing to base his case upon and I proved my innocence -- and that he was flat-out lying. Here's what I believe happened: After he'd sold the gold to me, he saw that I had done the article about the copy that sold for $1500 and, I will always believe that he was trying to con me out of more money. At the time, I had two golds and a blue and I was left with such a bad feeling about these that I ended up trading one away to a collector in Seattle and then I sold the other gold and the blue to mycomicshop.com. If I remember correctly, I paid more for the blue copy than for either of the golds. I know mycomicshop.com got them graded and they graded really high, but I don't recall what their grades were. But, it is nice to see that so many have surfaced. Back when I first wrote the article, the general belief was that these were so rare only 20 or so copies may still have existed. Many MM collectors didn't even know about them and, those that did believed that the certificates were probably thrown away as many collectors may not have known that they would eventually be worth anything at all.

I think the hobby is still in its infancy and there are still great bargains out there that you can buy and flip. A few, but you have to do your homework and keep an eye out all the time. But, you'd be better off running an ad in your local paper or on the local radio station trading post asking to buy collections of comics to flip. There's some real money there. With so many people knowing the market and watching for the next bargain to pop up in the art collecting community, the great deals are becoming fewer and fewer and it's harder to buy cheap enough to flip.

I started building my collection the exact same way. I bought what I liked at first, then, as I watched the values grow, I started buying stuff I knew was cheap in order to flip it for something bigger and better. These days, I focus on stuff I want in my collection, but there are still those times I see something pop up that is so low I can't resist and I buy with the intent to flip. It's been awhile since that has happened, though.

This exact scenario happened to me two or three times last year with two dealers. It has caused me to lose nearly all faith in a lot of comic art dealers and is why I've been buying directly from collectors on CAF, instead of off a dealer's website.

Any idea what size that piece is? I've seen some of his other corner box artwork and the heads aren't bigger than 1.5-2" tall I was told by Anthony that the art fits into a comic bag.

As of yesterday, I don't think he had. Unless something transpired late yesterday evening or night.

Being a kid who loved playing games on the Atari and at the arcade, I was super excited when I saw the first issue of Blip on the stands. I bought it and issue #2 and then never saw another copy until I was an adult and I saw them in quarter boxes. Marvel and DC definitely threw everything at the wall and hoped it stuck back in the 1980s. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of the things that stuck. But, I hardly ever see these pop up in boxes anymore, so they are probably fairly uncommon, I would imagine. The last issue of Blip was the one I had the most trouble finding and then stumbled on a torn-up copy in a dollar box at an old antique shop a few years back.