Flambit

deleted... sorry for wasting everyone's time!

In my continuing quest resurrecting very interesting but dead threads I'm getting a kick out of reading:

not sure if this is what you're looking for, or you've already seen this, but there are a bunch here:

http://cadencecomicart.com/artist.php?artist=76

Walt is super nice!  I finally met him at SDCC a couple of years ago and he demonstrated how his name is signed in the shape of a dinosaur! 

Great interview!

On 3/1/2013 at 8:14 PM, Dave Aikins said:

Most of the 70's coloring books for Marvel were done by Owen McCarron. I have the 1966 Whitman Captain America one, and it could be by Owen, but it would be one of his earlier books, so it looks a bit different.

 

I love that guys work. I grew up with his coloring books, and with his Marvel Fun & Games comic. Good, fun stuff!

Wow, Marvel Fun and Games.  Fond memories there!

Do you know of any index of Marvel Cap America coloring books from the 1970's (or Marvel Coloring books in general)?  There is one I really, really want to find, circa 1976-7, but I have no idea how many variations there were, or how many were issued!  

What a neat thread!  I almost started one like this, but found it while having fun going back and reading all the early threads...

My first - from my first SDCC in 1983.  I think I spent $25 on it - literally my first ever exposure to OA and I recognized the cover having bought the comic (then) recently.  

My dad had it framed for me that year for Christmas.  Unfortunately, they literally glued the art down to the orange board instead of matting it - and I didn't care, this stuff was basically worthless at the time, and I was a kid (I was maybe 11 or 12?)! 

So, one of these days, resto time!

Edit: the art was water damaged before I bought it, not a product of the way it was framed.

My 2 cents: 

I'd personally place corner box art above panel pages.  I'm kind of a 70's Kirby Cap fanatic.  So artdealer's Cap corner boxes would have been a great piece for me.  Would I have bought them over a Kirby cover (money notwithstanding)?  No.  And most of the splashes from that era would probably have edged it out.  But, I probably would have bought them over just about any panel page.  So I think his pricing was pretty fair.  

Edit: i mean any 70's Kirby Cap stuff, not Kirby covers/pages in general.

I don't have any corner box art, but I always loved it.  Most of you probably know this, but I'd heard a rumor that there was a Miler DD cover that had the corner box art actually drawn on to it.  I believe that turned out to be true - issue 185 (but others could correct me here), wasn't it? 

6 hours ago, Nexus said:

IIRC, the pages were spared but did suffer some minor damage. They were eventually restored by a well-known art conservator of the hobby.

I don't believe Wein had the cover.

I'd heard he didn't as well.  The general rumor I hear is that it doesn't exist anymore, but that's total hearsay.   I'd generally go with what you folks here believe because I'm not super well connected.

7 hours ago, GotSuperPowers? said:

Thanks Malvin!

Flambit, I don't have any Top Ten pages on my site for sale currently, sorry!  I did sell a nice page a couple of months back.

You can see my Top Ten collection here:  http://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=21662

At one point I had the complete art for issue 10, but I bought that to break it up, not to keep it complete.  The page Snyder has on eBay right now used to be mine, too, so hopefully that page sells well for the cosigner (assuming it's consigned and not a purchase).

Best

Simon

I literally was just about to email you!

Noooooo!  Years ago, I saw - I think(!) - the #10 book.  I swear, I saw it on Coollines, but I could be mistaken.  Whomever it was, they had the entire book, with the cover, and they were offering 2k for the whole thing.  I jumped at it.  Their response: "Oh, sorry about that - we sold it a while ago, and forgot to take it off our site!"  Arrgh!  I'd always been hoping to put that book together, or find it complete  Sad Panda...

Thanks anyway...  Keep me in mind if you sell - cheers - Sam

1 hour ago, Bird said:

That was going to be my suggestion but I didn't see any on his site. but it couldn't hurt to ask as Simon is good people.

Thanks for the help - not familiar with Simon ...  What is his website?

18 hours ago, J.Sid said:

Cool page!

Also may try Albert Moy. He used to have a bunch. I don't see them on his site currently, but he might provide a lead.

Also, try Gene Ha on his website. 

First thing I thought of was Albert, but he never responded to my email, i was a little shocked.   Yeah, in '07, he had a binder full of pages.  I bought a handful of good ones, but have been wishing I'd bought more.  I doubt he still has them, that was 10 years ago, and nothing is listed on his site.  

Gene Ha - terrific idea!  In fact, I just emailed him.

Thanks for your help!

4 minutes ago, comiconxion said:

Got soaked in cat urine and had to be restored.  Some of the red ink washed off (as well as Claremont's signature) when they did the restoration and it was missing the surprint.  Still looked much better after the restoration than before.  You can see before and after here:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1344871

Good grief!  

It's amazing what resto can do now, though!  It's funny, about six months ago, someone posted a 70s/80s Flash splash that also had similar resto and it washed off red ink, and i saw some 80s marvel cover that washed off Shooter's signature.  I wish i could remember specifically which ones they both were, though!

I think that was my first ever X-Men issue I bought off the stands, too!  

But, back on topic - I totally agree.  No Cockrum X-Men cover will ever sell for less than 25k, maybe 30k at this point.  Just because of the historical value of the X-Men title from that era alone.  

Just now, comiconxion said:

I think most of the Cockrum X-Men covers are locked away at this point.  Realistically, you're probably looking at $50-100k for a 1st run cover and $25-50k for a 2nd run cover (likely more for the #145 and #153).  The #162 seemed to go cheap when it came up a few years back, but after seeing the amount of restoration to that one (from the urine stains), I can see why some people may not have bid that one up as much as it should have been worth.  It would be hard to find a 1st run Romita Jr. X-Men cover for $10k these days.  Those typically sell in the $15-25k range and the nicer ones go or even more (as was evidenced by the #211 sale last year). 

Jeez... what happened to the 162 cover??

12 minutes ago, vodou said:

10k for the pair, iirc.

That would have been tempting!  I don't know how I missed it.  I was even there for preview night!

1 hour ago, NoMan said:

Thank you so much taking the time to post that story! Mind boggling

Thanks!  

In a feeble attempt not to derail the thread, because this technically didn't "get away," here's one last - almost surreal - SDCC OA memory.  

My second SDCC - i vividly remember it was 1984 - I was at the far back of the dealer's room (if you walked in the room from the double doors right off the main hall, and walked all the way to the far left corner where the load in doors were), there was a booth facing the wall, with an old woman.  She had this collection of really random comic related stuff.  In the later years, I can only assume it was maybe her husband's, who was a part of the First Fandom, and had passed away, and she was liquidating his collection.  

I know this sounds totally unbelievable, and I still to this day wonder if I really saw this, but I'll never forget: on her wall - for 10k - was this cover:

1 hour ago, thethedew said:

There are always pieces that I'm on the hunt for - I'm not shy about that -  but the primary one which 'got away' for me was the Corner Box Art by Michael Golden for the MICRONAUTS.

An Ebay seller had just posted the original Cockrum corner box, featuring Baron Karza.  The seller let me know that he had the Golden one as well, fishing for an offer.  Funds were a little limited at the time, so I prioritized the 'Original' Corner.  I did offer (and bid) the same for the Golden as what I'd paid for the Cockrum Corner, but turned out to be the underbidder.  I now wish I'd had a little more gumption - what difference would a couple hundred dollars make - but it is what it is.

The attached is NOT a pic of the piece, but a Photoshop mockup.

At least I kept good records at the time.  Since it was pre-Ebay-info-lockdown, I noted the winner's Ebay handle, and give him a 'tap on the shoulder' now and again.

 

 

Oh man, corner box art is awesome!  My big soft spot is Kirby 70s Cap stuff and someone on Caf has the Kirby drawn Cap and Falcon figures (placed in circles on either side of the Captain America and Falcon title logo).  Sweetness!

Kirby, Byrne, Miller, Jaime Hernandez

Child of the 80s, what's can I say?

I agree that nostalgia is totally subjective, of course.  I went back and looked at Cockrum's UXM run, and yeah, it's hard to beat most of those 1st run covers.  But I think historical value really props that 1st run stuff up; these are the shoulders that the fame of the X-Men stands on.  Of course there's the Byrne stuff - but I think most agree that's on an entirely different level altogether.  There are few comic book runs in history that can be compared to, randomly, say issues 133-142. Those sort of transcend "X-Men" history, in a way, or Cockrum pricing.  

But those 2nd run covers are beautiful!  At the time they left me a bit cold - like Miller DD, how can you follow Byrne/Austin X-Men? - but there really ain't a bad one; it's almost like Cockrum was drawing the covers for the OA market!  Almost every single one has a pin up quality character front and center in some full body dynamic pose, and most feature the entire team in the background.  

I have a big soft spot for Alan Moore's Top Ten, because that stuff is modern and reasonably affordable, and really resonated with me, but outside of that, I agree - I'm more interested quality over quantity any day.  I think my collection is decent, but it's definitely not like some of the people here who have binders and binders and binders of fantastic art.

Do you have stuff up on caf?  

4 hours ago, delekkerste said:

The one that got away for me is the Daredevil #208 cover by David Mazzucchelli and Bob Wiacek.  It was one of the most memorable comics from my youth; it came out during the first year of my collecting comics (I started reading DD with issue #206) - I still remember riding my bike to a local gas station/convenience store and buying the issue off the rack.  The cover was available a couple of times at auction...I have no idea why I passed on it the first time, but I was the underbidder the second time around.  I think I was looking at it more rationally than emotionally - it was personal to me, but not really what most would look for in a Mazz example (I believe it was his first DD cover, his pencils were overpowered by Wiacek's inks...not really a standout in any way - the issue is really only memorable for the Harlan Ellison and Arthur Byron Cover story), so I just wasn't willing to pay much beyond FMV for it.  Also, given that it had bounced around a bit, I didn't think that anyone else was going to step up big for it, so I just put in my max bid and forgot about it, only to see the next day that I had been outbid by one increment.  Obviously in hindsight, I should have bid more!  I later approached the owner about a potential sale or trade, but, as he would only consider it if I let go of one of my true blue chip pieces, I crossed it off my list.  Hence, it will forever be the one that got away...

I've had a lot of other near-misses (and a couple of regrets/computer-freeze up mishaps that I was later able to acquire anyway), but, for the most part, I have very few regrets about the art that's gotten away (I'm even relieved in hindsight that I narrowly missed out on a number of those pieces).  As an OA friend recently remarked to me, "there is loads of art for everyone out there", and, as such, my only regrets are/would be regarding a very narrow slice of art that was very memorable/nostalgic/important to me from my first year or two of collecting comics.  So far, it's only been the DD #208 cover that fits the bill.

I had to look it up, but I definitely remember that cover.  That's a good one - great DD image.

My problem was my friends and I were SO besotted with Miller - Elektra, the Hand, Kirigi, Stick - that stuff was sort of the center of our comic collecting world when I was a kid (we were just young enough to have JUST missed Byrne's X-Men, but just old enough to come on board with Miller when his stuff was on the stands) that when he left, I just totally lost interest in DD.  How can you follow that??  I tried to keep up with it, but I only ever got excited when he came back for that single issue, and then, of course, Born Again....

8 hours ago, NoMan said:

Cool memory you got of that. 

Yeah, it was pretty awesome.  And depressing.  Mostly depressing.  

I've been trying to use my "Vibe" powers and remember what else was on the table.  

I did forget to mention the covers to 187 and 159 were also there - I know that for a fact.  

And I do definitely remember seeing the 187 dps (pg 2 and 3), but Albert did tell me - or I overheard - that the entire 187 book was there in a stack.  I do seem to remember vaguely flipping though it.  

That's all I got.  But I was such a Miller fanatic at the time, that's all I was paying attention to at that age.  Miller had been off DD for a couple of years, and Ronin had sort of come and gone (I loved it - I didn't really understand it, but I loved pouring over the art and trying to draw like that!).  I honestly don't remember if DKR was out or not.  I suspect this was the summer before - 1985.

But the most amazing thing is that this area at the table I'm talking about was maybe a four foot section - two or three stacks.  He had a corner space, with tables - remember those old beat up wood tables that SDCC used to provide at the old convention center? - that ran at least eight feet or ten feet, turned, and ran another eight or ten feet.  And all of it covered with multiple stacks of art, each one maybe eight inches high.  No mylars or binders.  Just thumb though and pull stuff out.  -Shudder-

I was mentioning in another thread, I had a childhood friend - I was probably, maybe 15? at the time, my friend was maybe 14? - and I went over to his house right after that SDCC (or maybe the one after - memory is hazy now haha) and I walked into his room, and he had the covers to UXM 161 and Alpha Flight 7 just propped up on a chair.  "That's cool," I remember saying.  You could be a kid and own key covers.  So, message to the current owners: those two covers sat in a teenager's collection for a long time!

Back then, it was like buying a moderately expensive key book, like a GSXM 1 - and VF - not mint.  Now it's like buying a brand new Toyota Camry.  

Thank you both for the heads up!

Well, I hope you get one!  I know all about chasing that nostalgia grail.  If it was "only" 10k, I'd probably try and get one myself, but I suspect even the weakest Cockrum 2nd UXM cover would be pushing 20k at this point (at auction - I don't know much about private sales).  And I just went and had a look at a gallery of Cockrum 2nd UXMs, and there really isn't a "weak" one among them, honestly!    Maybe when he was really pushing the Starjammers, but even those covers are pretty good.

I shudder to think, but i suspect the days of the 1st run UXMs for 20k/2nd run UXM for 10k might be gone...!

16 hours ago, Brian Peck said:

I have just one story of art that got away but found it years later.

I was a poor collage student back some 25 years ago. Phillip Anderson of Booksource (how many remember that) now Artworkworld offered me a two f nice pieces by Bob Layton, one was unpublished X-Factor #1 cover (one of 7 produced and rejected) and what looked like an original X-Men pin-up. Unfortunately I could only afford one and choose the unpublished cover, Phillip included a xerox of the X-Men Pinup along with the unpublished cover. I was never able to get that pin-up, Phillip ended up selling it. 

So I had been searching ever since for that pin-up. About 10 years ago it popped up on ebay and I ended up being the high bidder. Found out the owner lived south of me in LA. Its up in my CAF:

http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=229715

 

 

Those stories are the best!  Congrats!

12 hours ago, vodou said:

I remember those eBay Cap covers and even Gene's that he won for 9k or something a few years ago, I've always thought those were overpriced. Even at $5k-ish. There may be nostalgia for certain folks for mid-1970s Cap, but the art ain't all that. First run SA TOS/Cap...that's where it's at.

Well, of course I'd love to have a TOS Cap cover lol!  But I think the one with the Super Adaptoid just sold on HA a few years ago, for, like, 150k?  That pretty much eliminates that as any kind of possibility in my budget!   And that cover was good - but I didn't think fantastic!   So imagine how much one of those split IM/Cap TOS covers now would go for!  200k+?

Yeah, Jack's art was on the wonky side in the 70's, but that was definitely my era.  I get the warm fuzzies looking at his 70's stuff -- especially his 70's Cap stuff.  Definitely nostalgia driven, but I think a lot of it is just... wonderful! - for lack of a better word.

BTW - do you know what cover he won for 9k?