The Voord

No-one was making Jack do all the tedious work; these recreations were performed voluntarily to earn some money for his family at a time when the days of churning-out several books' worth of art per month were well behind him. Like I said earlier in this thread, it's all guess work as to who did what. Unless you were present in the same room, or know people in the know, it can be nothing else. Yes, I realise that you're possibly trying to extrapolate a possible scenario based on how work for regular comics was produced . . . but this is away from the industry. You only have to look at the lousy lettering on these cover recreations to realise that Jack didn't have access to/wasn't using a professional letterer.

"Jack don't do lettering"

No doubt all very true until the idea of these recreations came along at a time when, "Jack don't do regular comics anymore". Recreating something, as opposed to creating from scratch, comes with its own set of problems and would, I imagine, involve light-boxing to get the pencil lines where they need to be. Or do you think these covers were all done freehand away from such devices? I don't, which is why I suggested some tracing of basic lines. Please feel free to provide your own thoughts as to how you would attribute the breakdown of labour on these cover recreations. Glad to see you now acknowledging the cover to be all pencils, as per my original contention. At least that eliminates your theory of Jack and his magic marker pen. Heck, everyone knows that , "Jack don't do marker pens."

You need to speak to someone well versed in conspiracy theories.; Like the boardie who had it all figured out where all those missing early Silver Age Marvel covers got spirited to . . .

If it's digitally-produced, then the OA exists in cyberspace. If an artist who works digitally has offered to re-do the image traditionally, I'm quite intrigued and impressed by that idea and think it has merit. Big improvement over digital artists offering you a one-off digital print. If you like the artwork, I'd say go for it!

'Basic pencilling' . . . in the sense of Jack making a minimal contribution (if Kirby's family is selling a 'Jack Kirby' recreation, I guess it needs to have some Kirby involvement). My idea on that one (if Jack was using an assistant to do all the 'tedious' work) was along the lines of, "Here, Jack, you trace some basic layouts and I'll take care of all the detail." It's all guess work, no-one knows for sure. Maybe Jack's involvement was the marker pen you suggested he was using a while back to fill in all the black areas?

Maybe the same kind of collectors who own original 'Bob Kane' drawings . . .

The link I provided for Danny boy's article is just there for additional reading, so make of it what you want. All things considered, my own belief is that Kirby did some of the basic pencilling, with an assistant tightening things up. I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest (at that point in time) Jack was up to successfully replicating earlier drawings on his own.

Same could be said about the ghost penciller. . . . if you believe in ghosts

Kirby did ink some of own pencils but as you suggest was rare.

Thanks, Michael, I was pretty sure I was looking at pencils only . . . then Aaron (Doc Doom) came along and got me questioning my own sanity . . . or lack of.. Did Kirby even ink any of his later stuff with a marker?

https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/10/original-art-stories-mystery-of-jack.html TOS 39 is listed alongside AF # 15 and ASM # 1 as being Kirby only.

Ha, ha, ha, ha . . .

Maybe it's just me that thinks it's pencils. Description lists Jack as the sole artist. I do know he did a pencils-only version of AF # 15, while other recreations had Richard Ayers doing inks (joint-signature on the art). Looking at the image, the areas of solid black look like pencil shading to me. A larger scan would reveal more. I think it's pencils only , but I could be wrong . . .

Oh, sure, lots of possible options to choose from. Seem to recall that someone here re-sold the JIM 83 cover recreation in recent years (don't think he'd held onto it for any lengthy period of time) . . . and that one was well before the pandemic kicked-off. Regardless, there will likely always be niggling doubts over these recreations.

It is pencils only . . . isn't it?

Sure, if you're talking about inked pages, yes, the original pencils were mostly erased. This cover was re-created as pure pencils . . . so not really fair to compare with penciled & inked pages. One set of drawing for a production process (the end-result mass-produced comic-books) . . . this one to exist as a single drawing for an art collector to own.

Comic Link should be including the full background concerns regarding the possibility Jack used assistance. Back up for auction so soon? Kinda suggests to me that the last owner let all the niggling doubts get to him or her. In all honesty, I find this piece painful to look at. Once you get past the initial overall impression and look at the drawing in detail, you begin to notice the faults. Most of the lettering looks awful and the hands in the three panels running down the left side are very clumsily drawn. Nice signature though!

During the latter half of the 1980s I used to attend monthly 'science-fiction media' meetings held in one of the Liverpool city centre hotels (UK). These were always staged on a Friday evening and the room that was hired came with bar service. At the request of some friends, I attended one of these meetings armed with a portfolio of complete EC stories and some covers. Included in the selection were some prime Wally Wood artworks. As I'd been drinking for most of the evening at around 11.00 pm when the meeting was finishing I wanted to move onto a night club - which I did, staying out till about 3.00 am when such places closed. Later on Saturday morning when I was waking up with a bad hangover, I was trying to piece-together the events of the previous evening. It suddenly dawned on me that I had no recollection of what I did with the EC artworks I'd took to the meeting with me. A quick search at home confirmed they were not with me. A horrible feeling of panic was swelling-up inside me, when the phone rang. It was my friend, Pete. "What time are you calling round today to pick up your EC artworks?", he asked . . .

"Featuring the cover that got away"

Couldn't have been terribly excited about what it is that he was supposed to be buying.

As I'm mostly into Movie Poster OA nowadays here's a painting I received for the price of mailing some artworks to Spain at the cost price of about £65 (less than a $100). A selection of about 120 UK movie paintings came up for auction earlier this year in which I won four vintage originals ranging in date from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. A Spanish collector friend also won himself about seven paintings in the same auction. My friend asked me if I would collect his winnings and post them off to him as a favour, which I was happy to do (I was planning to visit the auction house in person to collect my four paintings the following week). Amongst my friend's selection, he had won himself two similar paintings for the movie advertising campaign of the early David Lean film, THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (1948) that had been sold together as one lot. As a 'thank you' for my help, my friend suggested that I could keep one of the paintings in lieu of a refund of postage costs, which took me all of about a split second to agree to THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS is a 1949 British romantic drama film directed by David Lean. The film is based on The Passionate Friends: A Novel by H. G. Wells. It describes a love triangle in which a woman cannot give up her affair with another man. The film was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.

Thanks. I thought it was really pathetic and smacked of power politics being played out on a small scale. Or maybe that time of the month . . .

THE VICTORS, 1963. The original thread got deleted and I got a warning, so I did a follow-up censored' thread and that also got deleted and I got a second warning. The painting, by Renato Fratini, was plastered over UK cinema front-of-house displays at time of release and was in plain view of people of all ages. The image is suggestive (I don't think deliberately so) and open to misinterpretation, but in no way explicit. Not sure if it was something a moderator picked up on, or was pointed towards. Either way, I can live with the deleted threads and warnings, even if I think they were unnecessary and heavy-handed.