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I think that Batman piece is as solid a comic illustration as I’ve ever seen from Miller. It’s not overly fussy, it is super easy to “read” what is happening there. It totally fits Batman’s aesthetic. It looks “cool”, and it slams the character home in an ominous way. It has an icon like approach to it. Almost like Miller’s take on a Bruce Timm animated Batman shot. Nothing here is out of place. More than I can say for that Spidey 299 cover. No I wouldn’t spend anywhere near the asking price, but I’d take it over any of those McFarlane double page splashes if I were offered my choice this or any of those for my personal collection, and I really mean that. any day of the week. More lines doesn’t mean more better. Buy whatever makes you happy. Don’t worry about the other folks. My .02€

I don’t own any of Steve’s work anymore but I am a huge fan of his art, both as a draftsman, and a storyteller. He’s a double threat. So so so clean and right on the money.

Looking closely at the CLink listing, I may have at least partially answered my own question. It looks like this was used to add the Issue, price etc to the line art. Not sure if this is a common practice. Seems like something utilitarian enough on board layout to be a legit period correct use of a line trans setup. With that in mind, I’d feel more confident it’s legit. Would be a weird thing to fake. Whether it has any value to anyone other than a process completist who has the OA, or is just super into the stuff that normally gets thrown away as a byproduct of the process of old comic print making, I guess that’s up in the air. Personally if I was into process collecting, I’d want plates. Or something of that nature. Or maybe as much of the process from thumbnails, to OA, to the full set of color transparencies, to the plates, to the comic for one page, cover or that sort of thing. So from beginning to end. That might be interesting from an academic standpoint.

Why would there be a line-only acetate of this cover? If it’s supposed to be one of the separations for proofing, where’s the CMY acetates? It doesn’t appear to be one of those hand-painted jobs that would need to have this over the top, based off the look of the printed cover. So what is this thing’s purpose? Im not an expert in this period of Marvel’s in-house print production practices, but my limited experience makes me question this. Well that and the fact that a high resolution black and white scan of the actual cover is still up on Heritage’s site, making printing one of these off a breeze. An in hand inspection would more than likely tell the actual tale, but barring that... IF I was a fan of buying production pieces, this would give me some pause. https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/covers/mike-mignola-the-incredible-hulk-309-triad-cover-original-art-marvel-1985-/a/7036-92179.s

Oh, believe me I am 100% sure they talk to each other. They know.

I actually agree with ALL of what you say, by and large. Especially on your assessment of fine art as it relates to this. Kitsch is a big thing at auction houses now. As someone that has bought and sold a few bits of fine art over the last couple decades, and even though don’t see me as having considered it, I’m aware. It might even be worse in that realm really. Especially at this time with people taking selfies of themselves with “famous” artists & works in museums and at auctions. Meh. Somehow I think you misunderstand me and I don’t plan to dig in much further into the topic. I think we bore in waaaay deeper than anyone else here cares. I will just add that “subjective” is a term very often used as a convenient stand in for ignorance, where art is concerned. Not talking about “value” in money, talking about quality of the work. I am not talking about the empirical, but it is akin to debating the theory of evolution with a creationist. (And I’m not saying either of us are these) just a reference to the circular nature of the discussion. No one ends up happy, I suspect. Especially the folks on the board who bother to slog through it all. I’d love to hash this out with you one day, at a show maybe where we can chat and not try reading things between lines, etc. Would be fun. We agree far more than you seem to think, though we value different things to differing degrees, with some overlap of appreciation. Like all appreciators and sometime collectors of anything, I imagine.

So true, as has been driven home to me over and over again here. 2 ends of the spectrum, with everyone falling somewhere in between. Plenty for everybody. ART collectors — art COLLECTORS The only bit that I disagree with a smidge is the part in parens. Art can be evaluated and judged, but it only works with enough education. Kind of like math, you gotta study and learn how it works. There is always going to be that grey area when comparing high end but dissimilar works, akin to arguing about theoretical physics, but you can still look at a basic equation and know if the math is wrong. Simply being able to draw something that looks kind of like a math equation doesn’t mean it actually makes sense. Art can be drawn in all kinds of styles. All kinds of applications. It doesn’t ha e to look the same. You can bend the rules, you can break the rules. But some with enough education can generally look at art and tell if the artist has done their homework. If they are breaking rules or if they don’t know what they are doing and just faking it. It’s why many most comic artists tend to like the work of certain comic artists and not others. Or why they can find things of value of work in another artist without actually liking it. It doesn’t mean art that is bad at being “Art” has any impact on its value in dollars. Or in enjoyment of its potential owners. To put it in other terms, If someone adores their hastily drawn Micky Mouse tattoo, it could absolutely mean the world to them for some nostalgic reason, (reminder of a trip, of childhood, of a dead relative, of better days) and still be nothing more than kitschy scribbles to someone else with an objective eye. Similarly, there may be a piece that looks like smudged garbage hanging in the Whitney to someone who thinks the Golden Dr Strange poster is the epitome of great illustration. There are all kinds of reasons art can be important. And there are all kinds of objective reasons for it to be deemed “good” or “bad” by folks that study such things. And the folks that didn’t study and didn’t do their homework continue to stand up in front of class and draw the most embarrassing things. Many because all they choose to look at is the work of their friends and classmates, and not their school books. But so long as they have others buying those things, bully for them! It’s hard work making a living as an artist. Having people appreciate it is wonderful. Often being the first or early is good enough. Mark making doesn’t all have to be Art with that capital A. If it means something to someone in their life, and this is the thing I’ve taken from all my exchanges with Bronty over the years, if a piece has a real connection with enough people and changes their lives, even if the craftsmanship is poor, then at least that work has accomplished something. Even if academics turn their nose up at it. It can be that Mickey Mouse tattoo. Even for millions of people. Be it early Magic card art, or props from Krull, or buying Trimpe comic pages. What matters is the personal connection to the thing. That in some level is an achievement in itself. It’s not necessarily what I might see as art or the type of work I may respond to, but I have my own kind of respect for it. Even when the volumes of money spent on those things continues to admittedly shock me.

If you twist my arm, my order is 1 & then 11, as they are the only visually legible splashes. I think a lot of that blame probably lies with the colorist. 16 as my runner up, perhaps because of the “special” help of Rob Liefeld (I presume he covered the feet?) The Spider-Man image in 16 is so laughably bad, I had to look twice. Yay.

That is my point exactly. At that time it was insane money. By today’s standards for color Timm art $300 sounds like a steal. But what I could have bought for the same money drives home how crazy that price was.

If you think they should keep them private, why would you bring them up publicly here?

Here’s a fun BT commission anecdote. Back in I want to say 96 maybe 97, Albert started taking commissions for Bruce. As now, Bruce would only take the commission requests that interested him. I of course, had him do Deadman. I’m sure a google search would find the image for you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than that one Deadman from Bruce, and I’ve seen it pop up a lot over the years, people sharing my old scan around as headers for Deadman related blog posts, and articles. Or just in general. The reason I mention it was to give Tim’s art prices some fun perspective. I paid Albert $350 for that 8.5” x 11” color commission from Bruce that year. Sounds like a steal now. That same year I paid Jeff Jones $100 for an ink drawing of Deadman. Jeff created an 11”x14” oil painting for my $100 instead and sent that to me. A gracious unexpected gift, that Jeff told me over the phone just happened. Yes, in that day we still often talked to artists over the phone. Albert was, Albert. Always getting top dollar for his artists. MOST artists at the time were asking $100 - maybe $250 for some over the top 11”x14” pieces. Most of my painted commissions were in the $150 range. Many of the black and white ones were more like $50-80. Bruce was taking in $350 - 500 for them. It was what it was. If you wanted something from BT you pretty much always had to pony up. I later parted out my crazy Deadman collection. Too much of a good thing, that became a self-fueling monster, and then eventually, I just got bored of it. I do have fond memories, and get little pangs of nostalgia when I see so many of the pieces I brought into the world via requests from so many artists, just in everyday life. A lot of them have exchanged hands many times since. And others still live in the homes I sold them to. I’m not certain where Deadman landed. I shudder to think it’s asking price now.

Regarding lighting, I switched every bulb 💡 in our house (other than the bathrooms) over to 4000k led bulbs a couple years ago. The LED market finally got to a color temp and lumen count that hit a sweet spot for me, coupled with a quality and aesthetics that I was finally happy with with. Early LED bulbs were ugly. Really ugly. But they did offer the advantage a non-UV in the light source. So I had a few in rooms that had more UV susceptible pieces in them (my hall that had no windows but watercolor pieces hanging). The bulbs were in an enclosed fixture so I didn’t have to look at them. They always reminded me of some robotic version of corn. Hahaha. But now there are a lot of options I. The LED world, and they have sizes, output and color range for most any budget. Some people will opt for the 3000k-3500k “temperature” color range. This replicates what you can think of as incandescent lighting. That warm homey glow that most everyone grew up with. The other end of the spectrum that was around for a while was 5000k. It is VERY bright white. It actually has an almost cool/cold coloration to it. It’s what we typically use in light sources for color matching in many industries. It’s supposed to be an equivalent to a neutral bright sunlight. I personally have found it too strident in practical home use. It tends to make things actually feel too cool/blue, too strident, and impossible to comfortably live with. So I ultimately settled on using 4000k LED bulbs. They are much brighter than the 3000-3500 bulbs I typically see used. It actually took a couple weeks, maybe a month to get used to them. That said, they are MUCH more “neutral” to the art in the walls. Especially the color art. Meaning they cast much less “color” onto the art. So blue skies look bluer and less “green” from that warm incandescent like glow of cooler bulbs. The colors all just pop more. All of this said, lack of UV is not equivalent to keeping a piece of art in the dark in a portfolio. I don’t leave lights on when I’m not in a room. 1, why waste electricity? Or as my dad used to say “are you burning a hole in the daylight?” and 2, why expose the art to any light not needed? So my treatment is generally as simple as that, as regards to lighting. Ive never gotten around to setting up any art spotlights, and frankly I generally don’t need or want them really. I’ve found other ways to maximize the light in a room with the art. Directional lighting presents as many issues as it solves, in my experience. My rules of thumb, Keep the environment as stable as you can. I keep the thermostat relatively even all year. I do allow a little drift, summers are a little warmer, winter is a little cooler, but always that comfortable to people standard I mentioned yesterday. I run a whole house humidifier, because here when the heat kicks in in the winter, the house really dries out without it, and my little plug in humidifiers couldn’t cope. We have art all over the house. Next, I hang nothing across from a window that can’t handle it. And even if it can, I keep that in moderation. Nothing good comes from full bore sun. Keep more temperamental pieces to the cooler darker places. In my case, watercolors. I would add to that, if one has any pieces with markers, dye based paints, art prints or printed matter of any kind. Zipatone, heavy correction fluid use, etc. These are things that the sun is likely to effect differently than the paper, and you will see a greater change in them over time. If I know a piece is straight India ink on an acid free Bristol, I feel more comfortable placing it somewhere the sun might touch. But again, No full bore sun all day. Or even more than an hour or two a day. But framed with UV glass, a bit of sun a few times a year, I’ve not seen any deep appreciable changes to pieces with pencil and deep inks. Be mindful of the paper the art is on as well. When in doubt, don’t do it! I will add, a LOT of my art is post 1990, so it is more modern, and thus has more modern substrates. Paper from Bronze Age and earlier should be treated more gingerly, as it pre-dates the paper industry becoming more aware of the effects of acid on art papers. Which is why so much older art has aged so much more extremely than newer art. It’s not just the years, it’s the materials they were made on and with. They will deteriorate. There is more acidic content in the paper pulp. The dyes and inks can be more unstable. The glues from zipatones , tape and other adhesives and residue are more likely to age, yellow and become more brittle. The chemistry really improved on the 90s so art after the early 90s is less likely to have issues to earlier work. More recent modern stuff from the last decade or two will be even better still, as most manufacturers are mindful of making the best product they can for the money. But then some artists still use the cheapest trashy products because they are artists, and it’s not an easy way to make a living. There are still acidic papers I. The world. Super cheap markers will fade in a month. So know your artist. Ask around about their materials. Google those materials for yourself. India ink is generally good for the long haul, and pencil isn’t going anywhere. Both are pigment based. Think of pigments like leaving a physical substance behind on the paper. Like charcoal. Or mud in water. It’s grains of something solid. Markers are generally trash. Especially older ones. Some newer ones are better, but the method of solvents they use is still suspect, even as they are more fade resistant than before. I’ve posted long thoughts on those before. I’ll spare you more. Watercolor and other dye based colors fade really badly fairly easily as well. All for the same reasons. They are all chemical based and lack what pigments have. That chunkier physical substance resistant to fade. “UV inks” used in some prints are fade resistant as they often use a mix of pigment to dye, with a heavier pigment component, which is why they are more color fast. I’ve yet to see a totally fade proof print though. All UV inks will still fade given enough light exposure. All this is a VERY long winded way of saying, try and get a feel for what you have and how it will react to the environment. Art conservation is a bit like art collecting. Owner beware. You wouldn’t buy a multi-thousand dollar piece of art without knowing who drew tux and if it was published. So why frame it and hang it without knowing what you are putting on it and where you are putting it? And keep in mind all this might make a reasonable person think, I’ll just keep everything in portfolios all the time. Problem solved. It’s a method that works for some. Despite everything I’ve written above, I’m the guy that believes in living with, seeing and enjoying my art daily as part of my life. It exists largely on my walls. And living this way was a tectonic life shift from when I was 90% a portfolio guy. I can not describe how much it improved my mood and appreciation for my art. I just make it a point to be a nerd about everything about it. Not just the artists, and their mark making, but the mediums they employ, getting a feel for the tools and substrates, and the way they react to the environment. So instead of reading a 4th blog post about the new season of the Mandalorian, I nerd out by reading a blog post about ceiling spot lights to avoid reflections on a surface, or museum papers on various LED bulb tests they have studied for use in different environments. Or about new materials introduced in framing. Just watch the sources of what you read. The internet is big and full of wonderful info. But also a lot of DIY at home folks talking a lot of uninformed horsepucky. Including potentially me, so DO YOUR OWN research, and take everything with a grain of salt. Sorry for the essay. Hope someone got something out of it. I get as excited my this stuff as talking Heritage, or favorite documentaries. Hahaha.

¡De nada!

Humidity is more likely the bigger problem, vs outright temperature, but temperature swings can be an issue depending ron the environment. Paper is made from wood pulp, which of course makes it susceptible to humidity levels that can result in paper waviness, etc. Temperature swings can also effect the humidity within the paper, but also other things can potentially happen to OA. Expansion/contraction can potentially effect adhesives and mediums used on a page differently than the paper itself. So paper can theoretically spread or shrink at a different rate than things like adhesives for bubbles or pasteups, or halftone screens like zipatone, or paints like gouache or correction mediums like whiteout. Are any of these things guaranteed to happen? Nah. Are any of them likely? It genuinely just depends on environment and storage methods. Temps and long term nature of the storage. There is a reason why museums store things in a “cool dry place” using the methods they do. Sticking a portfolio with text bubbles and copious amounts of zip or whiteout in the attic would probably be ill-advised. Especially for any length of time. And certainly would never do that. Leaving your portfolio in the car during a long weekend con, you are probably fine. The generally accepted rule of thumb is that paper, like wood, is generally happy in environments that are comfortable for people. 30-55% humidity. Upper 60s to mid 70s being the ideal. Too high or too low humidity. Too wide of a temp swing and things can happen. But like I say above, it will vary on so many factors it becomes difficult to state to exactly what degree. I can say, I have 2 pages that hang inside my house on an exterior wall that gets no sun internally. They’ve been there for 20 years now. I had to fix the acid free hinges on both the last 2 years, as they started to slip on their respective frames. I imagine 20 years worth of summers and winters could very well be the culprit, as other pieces in the house of the same time period have shown none of those tendencies. I have a temperature gun, and I can tell you the wall does have a good 15 degree swing depending on time of the year, even though the general temp in the house is a constant. But no way to empirically prove what is little more than an anecdote. I do know that constant swings in temp shift can play havoc with paper. Not unlike UV, it can contribute to brittleness, etc. I think the goal is to provide as constant an environment as possible. Quick extreme shifts are going to be worse than really slow gradual ones. I have one large oil painting on an “exterior” wall. I monitor it yearly for any signs of issues. The big one being temp sifts eventually causing the oil paint to crack from expansion/contraction. This happens to almost all oil paintings eventually (visit any art museum) but it can be mitigated with careful control And monitoring. I take the big piece down every time the temps get really high in summer for a stretch, or really cold in winter. My unscientific method is to stick my hand on the wall. If I feel a significant difference between an interior wall and an exterior one is when I jump through the hoops. Of course the easy way to avoid this is to never hang on exterior walls. But if the interior walls largely face windows, it can severely limit what can go where. I prefer to be active and cautious within reason. I’ve not had any major issues arise in almost 3 decades. Knock on wood. I’m not an art conservator, but as a long time collector, and guitar collector, and a wife that did a lot of art conservation and framing for a number of years, I’ve picked up a lot, read a lot and paid pretty close attention to the topic.

To which I still say “who”?!? If you want to go down that road, like him or loathe him, wouldn’t Kevin Fiege be the more recognizable name to nerd culture at large? And bringing the most name recognition for himself and the characters he has shepherded into that media. Not unlike the moustachioed pitchman this thread is about? But of course silly me, I thought this was about who was the next Stan Lee: Ambassador for Comics, and I still come back with “no one”. That’s because everyone has a “real” job now. And Stan was both an impossibly positive hype-man, and able to put himself in a position where his only job was really Hyping the comics medium. Specifically Marvel, but also the medium at large. Everyone else is too busy being an Editor, or a writer or an artist, or a producer, or CEO or whatever task they do. No one has the freedom to be themselves (I.e. not the guy that runs the Twitter account for Marvel) and has the time to just ride social media and appearances, and interviews etc. right at the nexus of things happening. And at this stage as you say, with people losing interest in the medium of COMICS in the mainstream, there is likely never to be that person again. Not sure how many people would be satisfied with that being their only job. They’d want more, and thus wouldn’t be 100% That Guy. Stan hit the right time in his life, had a goal, and had the personality to stick his head in any door and turn on the Stan Lee persona. Like him or loathe him, he was a total salesman through and through. Even if someone crated a job solely to do Just THAT, and be the whole industries’ hype man. They wouldn’t have the street crowd of being there in the early days. Have their name mentioned in the Mount Rushmore of comics. I don’t care if they created an “Arrowverse”, it’s all riding on the old guys coat tails. Peers of Stan. Or his. And I sound like I’m all pro-Stan. And actually never liked him. Not even a little. Just objectively looking at the question at hand. Kirkman maybe (maybe) could have seemed like the guy at the center of comics a few years back, when Walking Dead was everywhere and spin-offs and world building, etc. and bleed into public consciousness, but it looks like interest has faded pretty quick for that “universe”. I suspect it’s just too one-note and not enough fantasy and expanse as some other world building ideas have been. Not as much can happen, and while it’ll never go away, it’ll never be as big as comics on the whole. Even just Marvel, never mind things like the Mignolaverse and others under the comics umbrella with tons of legs within comics.

I had to google who that was. So... not such a good start for him.

Krazy Kat is a lesser subject?!?

To what Felix just said... Stan in his comic days was a big man in a small pond. He egressed from comics to the entertainment world relatively early, to try and get things going in the larger world. It wasn’t an altruistic endeavor, and in many ways he had big Hollywood stars (and money) in his eyes. And through an unconquerable enthusiasm, eventually lived to see his dream come true. Along the way he became comics defacto ambassador to the larger world. His enthusiasm for the medium was revisionist (for most it was a gig that paid when they couldn’t get jobs in their preferred professions) but history is written by the victors, or something like that. And no one can deny the gusto with which he promoted the medium to anyone that would listen. He was a born salesman. There is no one in comics like Stan. Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Robert Kirkman, etc. These folks are artists and storytellers. Kirkman might be the most natural “salesman” among them, but none will ever be in that early developmental position that Lee had, firmly focused on introducing himself into that wider world, and using his unbridled schtik to pitch a media he helped birth/develop to the attention of the folks that would eventually make it a staple of modern culture. Slowly at first, small ripples, but those early projects... the cartoons and whatnot exposed new generations to things he had a hand in creating. He was one hell of a salesman. He definitely had a role in the creation of some of the medium’s biggest properties. But it was that sales angle that made Lee who he was. He could BS with the best, and he was unstoppable. I don’t see anyone out there like that now. And with comics so fractured and subdivided, the would-be audience for such an individual doesn’t likely exist. A super reductionist look at Lee (he deserves much more) and my personal .02 pennies.

Bruce: The Mrs is still working on the main computer,so I haven't checked there yet, but here's a little fun. I stumbled across an old art insurance binder a few weeks back when cleaning out a closet. Back in the pre-internet/website days, I used to print scans of the art with notes about the pieces as part of my then art insurance policy. This was in the era of the Iomega Zip and Jaz drives, when the occasional hard "floppy" disk was still around and people didn't yet have the ability to save CDs yet, and there were no such thing as DVDs, much less the ability to burn them. Hahah. Anyhow, so this binder is a bit of a show. I don't think I have 90% of what is in there anymore, and it's THICK. I couldn't find my Hard Boild panel piece, or my Sandman one, which ticks me off as it should have been next to this Big Guy. My other Big Guy monster published page was not in there either, and I'm not sure why. tBut since I mentioned these earlier I guess having a crappy black and white copy printed out in a binder is better than nothing for show and tell purposes... Pretty sure the Shade Darrow piece ended up with Scott Eder, and I can't recall where the Big Guy or Sandman pieces ended up. Eder might have gotten the Sandman one. I think the Big Guy version went to Ebay. They may both have. And I think the Nixon piece ended up with Danker? I know he got my Sam Kieth Sandman. That insurance binder is a crazy flashback. So much in there I'm SO glad I got rid of. But I'm veering wildly off topic. -e.

It went “missing”.

Phantom Stranger art will plummet, all the way down from $50. Who knows what the bottom will be!

Let me see what I can dig up old scans or photos of. Alas, I sold and or traded off all my old Darrow art over the last 2 decades, with the exception of this one more recent piece (inked on paper not vellum) that hangs in my kitchen. One of our dogs is a Frenchie, and I can attest to the accuracy of the drool and stares any time we have food. Which is why it hangs where it does. The struggle is real. I may have some old scans of art tho, and maybe even some at the show photos. I can't recall exactly what. Been ages since I scrolled through all that material. I'll check my other computer a bit later on.

As long as the buyer is aware, it is what it is. Personally I see it link a hand inked xerox copy. Not something I would ever want it as my interest in Neal was as an artist. A hand copied drawing isn’t art, it’s tedium. The art was when he drew the head the first time. Tho for Neal, I haven’t seen much creativity in ages. And I hate his current inking style as well, so an easy pass for me. But I did once love Neal. There was a time when he was doing some amazing commissions (I got a couple) and drawings for folks, but that ship sailed long ago. He has stock poses and he plugs and plays with these days. He might as well be tracing $100 bills. He is trading off his legend as a genuine artist to make his way now, and I don’t begrudge any artist for using any method they can to make a living. It’s great that the market is there and he can do that. Too many artists struggle. But it’s not art. It’s commerce. And good on him for making it work.

I don’t blame you. The real thing is to match up the inks to the published art. While Darrow does re-ink pieces, he doesn’t do slavish recreations. The details and linework will differ on the re-inks. You just have to really looks close. And often the re-inks are similar poses you will see over and over. I see it way more with Shaolin Cowboy and Big Guy than Hard Boiled, other than a couple of very popular shots from that book. The full figure Nixon standing pose, and the kicking in the car hood shot are the ones I’ve seen the most. The other thing that put me off was Vellum isn’t exactly an archival material. In recent years he has switched over to using more paper than he used to. But so much older vellum yellows or grows brittle. It’s like markers, in that I won’t buy that stuff myself anymore. I want to display the art. I just don’t trust the materials. But there are good pencil pieces out there to be had in people’s collections, line overthetop mentions. I’ve seen some doozies over the years. Just be prepared to pony up for them.