Will_K

Mike Carbonaro - founder of the Big Apple Comic Con. Formerly, the "church show" in a church basement, which started as the "show must go on" show when the Great Eastern Conventions show was cancelled at the last minute. He's a familiar face at all the east coast comic shows. Actually, in the pic above, he sporting a more conservative appearance.

And sadly, paying an artist in advance does not guarantee the art's delivery / quality... nor a refund of the payment. Most of these artists are widely reported / discussed. Also, OP may find topics mentioning alternate versions of covers for sale (with logos and the works). The art may be legitimate but the "alternate version" story may not be. I will shy away from that stuff mainly because unless you examine the art directly, you won't know how logos, etc are attached.

I skipped the whole Death of Superman thing. But I think (at least) they tried to introduce other characters (Reign of the Supermen: Steel, Superboy, Eradicator, Cyborg Superman). I mean, there was even that Steel movie with Shaquille O'Neal.

Frankly, if I saw OP's piece literally hanging in the Whitney, I would still have qualms about whether Bob Kane actually drew it. All thanks to Bob Kane signing his name to other artists' work and unscrupulous people creating "Bob Kane" art. I wish good luck to the OP in returning the art. This is a tough lesson to learn. But I think it's good to be learning it early. It's a great hobby but once you've caught the bug, the next lesson you'll learn is that you're on a very steep, very slippery slope.

I'm no Bob Kane expert but for me, there's 2 main issues with ANY art with Bob Kane's name on it. First, Bob Kane is generally acknowledged to have signed his name to other artists' work. Second, totally unrelated parties are motivated to create work and attribute it to Bob Kane for profit. The clown story is good for a laugh:

I was just relaying what was said in that video. At the time it just seemed so incredible. As a rep, it's just something I would never repeat.

Allow me: https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=132715

Not sure who is Larry Stroman's rep currently. But a while back, on ComicArtLive, Bill did an interview with Ken Carson (4C Comics). I think this is the one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LrKSej6pK8 I think he said he was trying to clean up Stroman's backlog of commissions. One explanation given for the backlog was that Stroman didn't drive and therefore couldn't make it to the US Post Office to send out commissions. And here's an older Stroman topic:

I've never used it but Camscanner is a commonly used phone app. You can search these forums for various opinions.

Here's a great 2 page fight sequence from Detective Comics 454 (Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez / Ernie Chan). It's not a DPS, you'd have to turn the page of the comic to see the 2nd page. But I posted them on CAF as a DPS. The memory is vague but I think I got them from Garcia-Lopez at the same time.

I follow some people (including DC Man) that post very infrequently. And when they do post, it is worth the wait. DC Man may not be responsive to e-mail in general. The gallery where that PS piece resides is a little bit of a mish-mash, it's titled "Art Sale" but includes his want list pieces, for trade pieces, for sale pieces and NFS pieces. And in general, it's a great DC and JLA collection. My guess is if you e-mail him politely once a year or so, he'll get back to you if he ever feels like parting with the PS piece. Otherwise, you're always on the hunt for PS anyway.

I think this topic surfaces every once in a while. Congrats to people who are able to achieve their desires of assembling a story or book. Condolences to people who were not able to achieve their goal. Good luck to those who are still trying to achieve this feat. I have a few complete stories that I bought intact. But my 8 page Senorita Rio story from Fight Comics 52 (Oct 1947) was assembled from separate pages over multiple transactions. My recollection is it took 5 transactions over roughly 10 years (sometimes multiple pages). And the page 1 splash was the last page acquired to complete the story. I didn't set a goal for assembling the story. Rather it was my obsessive desire to acquire as much Nick Cardy art as I can. It's just dumb luck that the pages were still moving around in the market after so long. https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=45919

I guess that would've been a different kind of ending.

The Nobody Wins story credits Tony DeZuniga as the inker. And that splash looks like DeZuniga inks, mainly in the figures. They have that Tom Palmer "scratchiness" look. But the backgrounds are pretty "blah". But I really don't see DeZuniga in that original art. I mean, maaaaybe. But I don't. And I'm not really a John Buscema fan but I think he would've come up with a more interesting layout for the last page of a story.

The USPS has the Postal Inspectors which is their law enforcement division. Maybe file a report with them. https://www.uspis.gov/ However, I'm sure they're more concerned about things like stolen retirement checks or smuggling than comic book art. But a police report is certainly useful for filing insurance claims or if the art does turn up.

Comes across as someone trying to justify their record breaking bid. Congrats !!!

The only thing that comes to mind is... if you watch Dueling Dealers with any regularity, you'll see some pieces (usually depicting Spider-Man) with a brick wall or similar in the background. Usually someone in the chat will exclaim "Bricks !!" Because I guess some people think it takes some extra work / talent to rule the lines for the bricks. It could also be the stones of a castle or whatever. Cobblestones will do if you're in a pinch. You get the idea. This is my favorite depiction of a brick wall, which I think is exceptional.

Those boards look like they came after Nestor Redondo passed. I mean Canson didn't start making comic art size paper with blue lines until 20 years ago or so. Also, I think those other art boards with blue line text at the bottom margin came after Redondo passed. The art is fully inked with no lettering so that's something that would've been generally rare in Redondo's time. It's super detailed lush art, definitely a labor of love. But I don't even think it's Nestor Redondo's style.

Years ago, I asked HA to stop sending catalogs to me. At the time, I couldn't find an opt-out, not sure if they even have one on HA.com. The catalogs take up so much room and weigh a ton. So much easier to just do a search and research on HA.com. MyTrackedLots is so much better to keep track of interests.

I can imagine the artist not wanting to do that. It would feel like doing the drawing a second time. Filling in the blacks is kind of "mindless" and I imagine the artist is basically doing the blacks as a courtesy.

I've mentioned this wish before and I don't think there's any money in this but... I hope that one day there will be some kind of process where you could re-pigmentize faded ink with some precision to restore the art without human intervention. Like with the precision of how a laser printer gets toner on paper. Although it's possible that the "restored" inks may not appear as good one would like.

These days, even if an artist totally inks a piece, they might tweak it digitally for publication any way. So there's not much of a difference any way. It's a chicken or egg thing. Not quite the same thing but there's the argument that says inks over blue lines (the published image) are better than the original pencils. There's all kinds of ways to justify to yourself that you're getting what you pay for.

1 of 1 of many .

Maybe ask the inker.

Interesting point, "rid" maybe a poor word choice but OP is clearly a fan, otherwise he wouldn't be asking. It's kind of hard to separate a comic artist's work from the title/character that the artist worked on. At the other end of the spectrum, only commission a topic that the artist has never worked on ?