ESeffinga

I definitely appreciate the piece as art for art’s sake for what it is. So much going for it... but one and done? For Kirby? Nah! It does have cool Kirby henchmen and a neat Kirby-tech vehicle going on, but no Kirby crackle??? To me, that’d be the second dealbreaker for a one and done Kirby. Well that and knowing I was going to a c-list Kirby creation to get there, with how much other amazing Kirby is out there. As Kirby Kamandi art goes, this is A+++ all the way. As a piece of work from this period, it’s super cool. If that is someone’s sweet spot for Kirby, maybe this was all they ever really needed (but also how does that even happen? Got to Kamandi and stopped reading Kirby there?) But IMO, someone that grabs this is doing it more likely as a notch in a belt with other Kirby on hand, or a placeholder/good as they can get for the $. IMO, anybody grabbing this is certainly not “done”. Maybe done with Kamandi...

I’d be more concerned with ink sticking to the top loaders, but that is just me. I’d have just gone with regular old non-stick Baking sheet/roll from the grocery store. I have a large IKEA coffee table in my reading room with a smooth bottom and a heavy glass top. I like to stick the art under the glass To let it flatten. A few weeks to a few months, depending on how heavy and stubborn the paper and curl are. Most are good within a month. But I always tilt and lift that glass top carefully. Don’t want the art to slide on the table or have any dust under the glass that slides against the art surface, risking other kinds of damage. But yeah, flat piece of heavy glass on a clean flat surface, can work wonders. I don’t bother rotating, since the weight is pretty equally applied to both sides when the thing is flat. Often no muss, no fuss. Just put the work in, and a bit of patience. Even slight kinks and mailing bends can be minimized in this way. It’s not always perfect, but often better than one might think, going in. I have a smaller piece of glass I keep on top of a bookshelf in the reading room closet. I can do 11”x17” stuff in there. The coffee table comfortably fits work up to 26” x 30”. It’s helpful when the furniture can do double duty. I just keep all drinks, etc away until it is empty.

Funny. I was offered that Arak cover privately very recently (I left a comment on CAF about the nostalgia of it in a previous owner’s gallery and they contacted me with a private offer, as they were selling), not sure if this was the same person or a short flip, but I wanna say it they were looking for like $500-750 or something in that range. Somebody did ok. And the humor of owning that almost made me do it, before returning to my senses. I do remember getting that comic during a summer vacation road trip, and being sprawled out in the back of the station wagon with pillows, as dad was driving the family to wherever we were headed. I think the only Arak book I ever read, and I have no recollection of the interior story at all, but vivid memories in grabbing it off the spinner rack before we left, with 4 or 5 other titles, (ROM, Conan, GI Joe) and looking at it a bunch during the trip. Heh.

When we redid the air system in our house a number of years back, one of the things I insisted on was a whole house humidifier to help keep things balanced out. Especially in the winter when the heat is on, and the air gets hella dry without it.

Crappy ones, of course. The one I was referencing is gorgeous, not as massive, and a 3 stack tower. Beautifully finished, and wouldn’t look out of place in a living room or library of a high end home. Ballpark for the run of the mill wood flat files run $300-800 depending on condition, location and the type of file, from what I’ve seen over the years.

Nah. I’d think of that as overthinking it. Plenty of OA was altered during the production process over the years. How many old Marvel pages had pasteovers made of printed stats covering beautiful art underneath? Or the occasional cover that is all stat covering the original drawn art underneath? I don’t think anyone prefers the enlarged stat over seeing the drawing, do they? Be jazzed with your piece. Don’t sweat the small production edits. Chances are the writer or editor made the changes after the art was done. Part of making comics. Post it up if/when you can.

For instance, I found a lovely looking oak flat file in the home of a retired architect a few hours from me. It’s not too big, like the large metal ones, and it is tall enough to fit a ton of art in. Price, $3000.

Most metal flat files are gigantic, and eat up an acre of floor space. Not practical unless sanded, painted nicely and turned into something like a coffee table in the living room. The part about that which always gave me pause when I briefly considered it was, what happens if someone accidentally overturns a drink of the top of the coffee table? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t have a lot of great suggestions on that front. I’m the guy that doesn’t care to have a lot of stored art anymore, and my collection has evolved to such big pieces they are forced to be stored on the walls. Hahaha. My take is this, look around. Watch places like craigslist in your area long term. FWIW, that cabinet You lined to, IMO is not bad at all. Think about how much you spend on the stuff that goes in it. That’s “nothing”. But watch for letterpress cabinets. Spool cabinets. Smaller map files and blueprint files, etc. I’ve seen some beautiful things done with those. But it also depends on how handy you are. If you can’t do the work yourself, having someone else do it will make that linked cabinet look dirt cheap.

I can honestly say, I have never seen a single issue of that book before in my life. I didn’t know what Vodou was referencing. Hahahaha

Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. As opposed to McFarlane. Who DIDNT do it. I don’t care a whit about Larson. I can still tip my hat to him for the effort. And to be fair, somebody is still buying his books. Maybe not you, or me, our any of our friends, but clearly he isn’t doing it for nothing. Must be enough to be worthwhile to him, or he’d throw in the towel.

Doesn’t that pose problems for the auctions took place after the covers announcement was made? Potentially anyway. Bidders not getting what was described or something...

The folks that ripped off Nintendo and Valentino both deserve to burn. Doesn’t make that page worth 1 penny more, IMO.

Me either, FWIW. Never read any. Didn’t need to. Am a big fan of Stray Bullets. Now that we’ve totally derailed this thread.

I found it entertaining. I will always bristle at McFarlane's 300 issue "milestone". Dave Sim might have taken Cerebus to some odd places, and filled issues with diatraibes of increasingly strange nonsense, but he made THE WHOLE THING. Sure Spawn has now run longer (more issues) but so has Batman. There are swaths of Spawn with no McFarlane writing, pencilling, inking, etc. It's a false hype pile of doodeedoodeedoo. But Todd is a character, and it's almost always amusing to hear him speak. -e. p.s. Larson is at least up over 250 issues now, and (shocker) pretty sure he worked on the whole thing. p.p.s. The whole McFarlane story arc of work for hire ... fight The Man ... make his own book/company ... become one of big 3 companies ... become The Man ... to bring in artists to Work for Hire has always struck me as all kinds of ironic. Admirable, but ironic.

Maybe this?

Pffffft. Why stop there? How about the second tablet of the Ten Commandments?!? To me that is seriously up in getting-silly territory to make a point. To me it seems the heart of the matter is one of property rights. Some folks take it to further extremes than others. If you had the complete ASM 121 prelims, and wanted to split it up to maximize profits, eh. Some folks will not bat an eyelash, and others will think you the scourge of the hobby. I think if you are a Dealer, you raise less of an eyebrow by and large than if you are a collector. If you chose to burn those prelims instead... well some folks would just think you were "eccentric", some would hate you. But you'd be within your rights to do so. No law against it. It'd be like buying a house with some kind of cultural history tied to it, but isn't on some historical register somewhere that protects it. Then, either modifying it greatly, or outright knocking it down to build your new vanity home. You are going to catch some ire from the neighbors. In the end, to me it just gets back to our actions in the hobby speak to who we are, and what we value far more than our words do. And as we've discussed in the past, reputation still means a lot, and word gets around. If someone bought a rare complete book that had a lot of competition for ownership, and then say decided to keep the cover and a page, and split up the rest... next time a complete book comes up for sale from the same dealer, depending on how that dealer feels they may chose not to sell to said individual again. In the end, it's gray, it's muddy, it's a big whatever works scenario. And there can be a nobility in trying to take the tact of looking at comic art as custodial, rather than a straight ownership. Same can be said for a lot of items tied to pop culture. And yet, not everything survives. Some things are lost, stolen, altered, damaged, lost to accident, kid drew on it, dog chewed it, etc. For a few there might be an academic woody to be found in the idea of being the guy that preserved the one complete story of OA for Adolescent Radioactive Blackbelt Hamsters, but in the long run, other than as a passing curiosity, who will likely care? There are some stories that ideally should remain together if at all possible, but in the long run, as with anything of import in comics, you can't predict what will be important before it becomes so. And in the end if collecting art doesn't come down to enjoyment, it's really just another investment. And we have long discussed the idea of collecting art as investment vs the love of the work. So one side of the gradient is to treat all art as if it is going to be important to the anthropologists of the future, and the other is to treat anything you own however you damn well see fit. And for the vast majority of us, it's that gray in between. Simple answer, do your best and don't be a Donk. If you really love the stuff, treat it with a modicum of respect. Beyond that, your hobby will live and die on your reputation.

In general, I have pretty mixed feelings on the practice, but that might be because I see the issue from more than one perspective. On the one hand, I can cringe to see an older work that has managed to remain intact for decades become split up, so many years later. It feels like a shame, because we all know it’ll never be whole again. It’s less physically destructive than say, people who erase pencils from the OA because they find them distracting (it happens) or people gluing on trade dress that isn’t present in the OA, etc. But splitting up a story is taking an action that is VERY close to impossible to undo. And one where the time and resources to pursue often feel futile. On the other hand, as someone who has collected contemporary original art, as well as being interested in older work for going on 3 decades now, I have seen how that work has largely been distributed from one to the next. Back when the stuff was cheap, sold by entire stacks and trunk-fulls, and was currently apparent to all it had little serious monetary value (No matter what people would one day realize it’s value to be.) Hind-site is always 20/20, but in essence the entire sequential art collecting community was largely born out of page-at-a-time gifting, sales by artists when they finally started getting their art back, and those dealers that obtained it in (ahem) other ways. Hell, it’s only recently that contemporary artists have managed to sell the idea of keeping their work complete. I think many would agree Felix has been a pioneer in this just in the last few years. I’ve seen other sellers trying it. Think about that for a sec. Felix is a pioneer. It’s 2020. Prior to that, the VAST majority of modern art page sales have been individually. That goes for 70s-today. Or if one was lucky to turn up at the right time for a new art sale, they might be able to string 2-4 pages from a sequence together in a single buy. The dealers did buy up whole books and collections, but were able to spread the work around, keep people interested, get it into more hands. They grew the hobby bit by bit. Many of them taking big $ risks for their time to do so. I would argue the ability to sell those single pages enabled the hobby to grow. Allowed many a young (and old) person to get interested in original art. And kept many artists financially afloat, as finding someone to buy every page of a single book would both vastly limit their sales base, and income. The price of admission would choke the very hobby of buyers we would believe it is trying to “save” the art for. And piecemeal sales probably saved a lot of the art at a time when the previous decades were just shredding the stuff, chucking the stuff in a dumpster, using it as coasters, and tossing it into a warehouse until they felt the need to dig a piece out and cut it up to reuse some part of it. Dealers sell single pages for essentially the same reason. Not to mention the economics of it. Especially in the early days of OA collecting. Selling someone on a $100 page in the 80s, much less the 90s was WAYYY more likely, than talking them into a book. Most books sold complete tended to be because it was deemed less desirable, couldn’t be easily sold for premium per-page prices, and more often than not, buyers demanded buying in bulk discount prices. So selling complete was taking a financial “loss” on the part of the seller. It truncated the reach of the artist, and dissuaded a lot of would-be collectors from getting involved. Was this breaking up of a book a sort of cultural pillaging? Taking a whole thing, and making it into bits? Sure, there is an argument to be made there. But just as compelling, IMO is that a LOT of comic art is so serialized anyway, taking a page from say, an issue of X-Men is kind of like taking a drop of water out of the ocean. That story as a work of art, if you are going to call it that, is so huge and massive, you could argue that because one has a “complete” issue, they own a different sized segment of that story. Is a single page less artistically relevant, than having a complete issue of a 5 or 12 issue story? By my way of thinking, it is still just a snippet chosen by a different natural break in the telling. 22 pages gathered together in a book, vs what begins and stops at the beginning of the page. Both are “complete” representations of a form of comics. Now if someone starts cutting out panels and physically altering the OA, that is messed up. But splitting up the pages? It’s not always ideal, but what in this world often is? I see it as the culture of the hobby. It was largely born out of those single page sales. I don’t see the continuation of it as moronic, just a natural state of existence that keeps the hobby vital and expanding. Who among us would have entered the hobby by buying a complete book, first time out of the gate? How big would this hobby be with that massive gateway to walk through. Especially in 2020? If anything is moronic, it would be the idea of telling anyone else how to be a collector of something. Futile at best, offensive at worst. People collect for many different reasons and at many different levels. All collectors in every hobby come in shades of gray. Not as black/white boxes on a check list. Even the “check list” collectors. There are certain things I personally would and have hated to see broken up. Since I’m picking on X-Men, I remember thinking was a shame it was when X-Men 1 was split up. It hung together so long. But then I remember the joy of collectors as pages started to pop up around the country and world. And at the same time, I’d hope the whole world would rise up with me and join me in beating Gene about the ears, if he ever decided to beak up the silent GI Joe book. As an art form, some things just really do belong together. But as someone else already pointed out in the thread, not everything in comic art is “Art”, or memorable to everyone. The vast majority of it is the byproduct of a consumable. The real art is the comic. Which is made available to all via mass printing. The great equalizer. Comic art collectors may want to put a big A in front of the art in our hobby, but very little of it transcends in that way. The rest of us should just have fun and enjoy the work as best we can. And not go around calling each other by undeserved and pointless derogatory names. Thats just my opinion.

People tend to bid higher for charity than for profit auctions. So, no surprise there.

In the grand scheme of things this cover is honestly not “bad”. In fact the majority of the anatomy is done really well compared to a LOT of art in this field. It is a ton of lines to look at, but the only reason I was goofing on it was the discussion of the $ and where it ended up. It had enough of the heroic comic cover tropes to make for an easy target. As I discovered when I went looking for Finch art pouches, he wasn’t as big into the pouches as other guys. And swiping pouches from say Liefeld felt like cheating. So I had to hunt CAF a bit to find what I did (and I’m lazy and it was supposed to be a joke so I didn’t want to invest a ton of time into a gag.) His thing, as it turned out, was drawing lots of armor type things growing on people. Melded into them and such. As for the facing different directions, wing, etc. It all looks to have been done from reference material, but the reference material comes from different sources, so the depth of field and perspective is a bit of a mixed bag. That’s what’s throwing the Angel image off. Hardly a punishable offense in comic art, compared to some. Anyhow, I’d never come out goofing on a piece like this if it were posted by a board member or if I knew it was someone’s art day, and they’d feel attacked. And truthfully, I’m only comfortable doing it because, as I said it is not that bad at doing what it does. It’s fine. Good old fashioned ball busting. I’ve seen so much worse posted, and by beloved artists that people fawn over, and I’m not about to trash someone’s treasure. Even if it drives me nuts to look at it. Even if it makes me think some of you guys are straight up cross eyed, and half blind on one of those eyes. Hahaha. I’ll goof on something solid, the straight up trash I see, I just keep those thoughts to myself.

Conqueror Worm / Box Full of evil is gonna be your transition sweet spot, in the arc of Mike's art evolution. Older pieces have darker blacks, but less of the great visionary simplicity of what Mike has distilled his art down into. By that point you have just a little bit of the spotchy blacks. Much more subtle and eye appealing as far as that potential for distraction goes. After those books, the splotchy blacks become more prominent as his ink gets thinner. FWIW. And yeah, I always thought the point of the art editions was to hold a repro of holding the art in your hand. Not just a big copy of the comic with everything cleaned up, no colors, and the borders showing. I want to see the tanning paper. The whiteout. The creases and even the snot blast, cause you know artists sneeze.

Hmmmm...

Lots and lots of lines? Check. Wolverine claws popped? Check. Legs ending into a pile of rubble/fog/water? Check. All female characters with bad posture to emphasize butt and waist? Check. Pouches? Pouches....................................... am I the only one noticing a distinct lack of pouches? Where do they keep their keys to the mansion and the blackbird? The team must have left them at home. OR someone stole all the pouches in the mansion. Is this the issue about getting the pouches back? Claws-out Wolverine and Emma's lack of feet and scoliosis are only good for so much. Without pouches though... probably kept this one from breaking $50k.

Without knowing anything, it almost looks to me like they printed that from the sort of scan they'd send to Dave Stewart after the black levels had been fixed, and the paper knocked back to a clean white. All Mignola's blacks tend to be "thin" and splotchy. have been for ages. Shame the repro didn't capture that. Were all the pages this black adjusted, or only certain ones?

Just wanted to say, you and me both.