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ESeffinga

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Posts posted by ESeffinga

  1. 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.

     

  2. 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

  3. 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. :)

     

     

  4. 19 hours ago, Bronty said:

    Its a fallacy to equate quality of art (if such a thing can even be measured) with the price of art.   The two often have nothing to do with each other.    It doesn't need to be great art to have a great price tag.

    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.

     

     

     

  5. 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.

  6. 2 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

    That's because we are wedded to comic books, while the rest of the country/world is wedded to comic characters and its stories

    I don't think the face of the comic book industry is in the comic book industry, but in multimedia, because that is where the money is. Stan Lee was famous to us well beforehand, but when he became famous as a media personality, that is what made the difference. With low profitability in publishing comics, a media personality is needed to save and protect the comics to serve as a source of new characters and stories (like the upcoming "Peacemaker"). And if not the creator of the Arrowverse, who else?

    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. 
     

     

     

     

  7. 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.

     

     

  8. Bruce:

    414488135.jpg

    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...

    414488136.jpg

    414488137.jpg

    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.

     

     

     

     

  9. 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.  :)

    414488052.jpg

    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.

     

     

     

  10. 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.