Flambit

1 hour ago, Mr. Machismo said:

You may be confusing with Ken’s Bermejo splash from the JOKER book.

If you’re thinking of someone else...please PM me!   

I actually also thought this owner was known.  In fact, I thought this page was discussed in detail about a year ago on these boards?  It's not my cup o' tea, so I didn't pay that close attention, but I think there was a thread about it...

2 hours ago, drdroom said:

As I read the description, there was a five panel origin strip. Panels 2 and 3 are missing, thought to have been pasted up on the (no doubt lost) Action 1 boards. Sotheby auctioned the unused, unpublished, discarded panels 1, 4 and 5. I have pics of 1 and 5. Comparison to Action 1 shows these panels were redrawn, somewhat more crudely and with minor changes, for the comic. 

Really interesting to see the additional detailing on Superman's arms - costume details that were discarded for whatever reason...

I always think of Avengers 198 when I think of badly colored/ruined pieces.  I saw it in person around 2007 and it looks so much worse in person.  It would definitely make me think twice about buying it if it were for sale.  I wonder if one of those resto guys could work some magic on something like this.  

You won't have any competition from me! 

Regarding that Aparo Spectre cover - any reason it's going for a price significantly higher than the other Aparo covers in this auction?  It's a good cover, but I would have thought the Batman presence would have made the other covers worth more - or at least close up the gap a bit... (Granted not Batman in his own title, but still)...

You probably mean 1st run Hernandez Love and Rockets (issues 1-50)...  Stuff from the successive runs is much more affordable (currently).  

19 minutes ago, Caltex98 said:

I seldom get any inquires if I want to sell my art but that may have something to do with the fact that I almost never let the prefilled "NFS" on CAF stay that way. I try to replace it with something more innovative like "No way!", "Nope", "Not. For. Sale. Period." "Not on your life" or "Are you kidding?" Maybe that communicates in a more humorous way that when I have a piece of art in my collection I intend to keep it that way? Of course the fact that what I collect is not very attractive to others than myself also can have something to do with it.

The exception is my Preacher and Books of Magic pages where other collectors have been more persistent in the past, but I believe (keeping my fingers crossed) that they have given up by now. And knowing that someone else wants what I got is of course an ego boost in a way (I'm not saying I holding on to stuff out of sheer spite, but you know what I mean).

A good point: anytime I see anything like "Nope," etc, I always assume the owner would never consider selling.  But when I see NFS, in the back of my mind, I figure they would at least be open to a discussion, even though the figure may be unapproachable.  

I thought I was the only one who kept mine in their original boxes!

While I like them, I only really buy the ones where the art hits a particular sweet spot.  Kirby's FF volume, Miller's Daredevil, the Marvel Covers book.  Really want the Born Again and Dark Knight volumes, and definitely getting the Byrne X-Men volume.  I think there's a Byrne FF volume too - I'll pick that one up at some point.  

2 hours ago, williamhlawson said:

The SINGLE piece of art that got me into comic art collecting after a 10 absence, sits there staring at me, every damn day.  Big fat NFS on it, but I wonder if he means it??  How soon is too soon?  Is this locked in an Itoya instead of on my damn wall? Maybe they just don't like it in hand?  It happens, right?  RIGHT?

I believe approaching a NFS is fine...as such.

My philosophy on NFS is... don't ask if you don't have the obnoxious, well researched, number in mind you plan on paying ready and the funds immediately available.  It's okay to ask for a price, but expect to have the onus placed on you.  Don't waste others time.  NEVER be rude.  ALWAYS explain why this belongs with you. If no reply, try again.  If no reply, move on and give the owner peace. If we all just golden rule the process, everything works fine from what I've seen. 

Came here pretty much to say exactly this.  Without getting into a discussion of  "what does a grail mean/you can have only one, etc,"  there is a grail sitting on CAF, that one single piece out there in the wild that I covet (to clarify, I would value a handful of pieces in my own collection on a "higher" level grail to me personally - but on CAF, this is pretty much my one want).  

And like you, I have similar anxieties.  "How soon is too soon??"

And my philosophy is basically the same.  When you come, you should come correct.  The onus - and I was going to use that exact word - is on the buyer.  Be polite.  I feel sorry for some of the responses some of you have received.  People badgering gallery owners into coming up with a price, or saying they don't feel comfortable doing that.  Then don't inquire!  I feel like you better be willing to offer a figure or a trade piece that isn't an insult.  If not, you'll always be remembered to that seller as the guy looking for the bargain and you'll pretty much lose access to the piece you want (if you wanted it to begin with).  Or, at least, you'll have to fight to make up all the ground you lost by looking like a jerk.  

I've been pretty lucky.  I've been approached a few times and the people have always been very nice, and, in fact, I've had terrific conversations and made friends with some great collectors.  The last time I was contacted, it was pretty much textbook how you do it: he was polite, and offered a respectable price right up front.  Kudos to him.  One the other hand, I've only ever inquired on one piece (which was blank, and not NFS - and not FS either - I had just assumed he had forgotten to fill in the sale status) and we couldn't make it work.  No harm done.

So any piece that I inquire on - I will be prepared to pull the trigger and have the cash or trade at ready.  Basically, I look at it as a very different animal than a FS piece.  

Some nice stuff.  But I'm always grateful when I don't see anything I have to have.  

I found one in an old trunk in the attic.  I was going to post it on eBay, but I'll sell it to you for 5k.  Today only!

I personally always value the original pencils far above the inked blue lines.  The inks are the published piece and what the inker does is extremely important, I grant you, but the pencils are the soul, the genesis, of the story on the page.  I love Sinnott, but not even a question for me: I'd take Kirby's original penciled pages!

16 minutes ago, MYNAMEISLEGION said:

I hated New Mutants then, and I don't know that I particularly like it now- I think part of it is a function of my complete and utter disdain for 80's style and fashion, which very much influenced Bill's work. It also infected JRjr's run on X-Men and between the two, I stopped collecting both titles for a time.  Any character created or expanded on during that era very much suffered from 80's fashion, and it took years to grow out of it. I think Rachel Summers/Phoenix was a lousy character and it had a lot to do with her look. Rogue almost suffered the same fate, but Lee reinvented her "look." Dazzler faded to nothing for the same reason, she went from flashy Disco look to a bad Jazzercise Work-out Video Star.

That very much parallels my experience with comics during that era.  Sienkiewicz on NM was so utterly jarring for a comic that I avidly followed that I couldn't hold on for more than a few issues.  I know that Sienkiewicz is considered a genius, but to this day I can't stand his style.   And over on the X-Men, the weird fashion and design choices were beginning to get out of hand: remember Magneto's purple suit with the flared collars and huge white M?   I stuck with it for a while, until it morphed until that 90's lineup that is so revered today, but for me, it was pouches, giant guns and Liefeld, So with the sole exception of Love and Rockets, I didn't read a comic book for five or six years.  And although I continued going to SDCC, unfortunately, I sort of forgot about the original art aspect, so I totally missed those early 90's prices.  

From those of us stuck out on the west coast: thanks for the pics!

"It belongs in a museum," I want to shout.  

It's a shame, because as a fan, I would love to see some of this great art, even though I'll never own it.  

I do think another issue, though, is people don't want to be pestered to sell.  There have been times on caf I've written the "Please sell me" message and then deleted it because I just thought the owner doesn't want to deal with that.  

Ok - and once I sent one because I couldn't help myself.  

8 hours ago, Nexus said:

I owned that for a bit. Great cover. IMO, second only to #1 for nostalgia value. I ended up trading it (plus some cash) for a Mazz BORN AGAIN page and a Miller WOLVERINE page. Really did the deal to get the Mazz page, so spun the Wolvie page off in another deal. I thought it was a fair deal at the time and in hindsight, over 10 years later, still feels like the exact same equitable deal.

I would love to have had a shot at that cover.  That variant issue was the hot book of it's day.  I still remember the elation of finding a half dozen copies at my local hole in the wall liquor store.  

2 hours ago, Brian Peck said:

I have been a fan of Jean Grey/Marvel Girl since I first read X-Men #8 by Jack Kirby. In 1994, X-Men #30 Wedding of Jean Grey and Scott Summers was published. I was on the hunt for the artwork. About 4 years later I found the wraparound cover at Spider-Web Art Gallery. The interiors for the wedding issue was tougher, the penciler Andy almost never sold his art and never had seen any interior art on the market. 
I found Spencer Beck an art rep was helping Andy sell some art so I inquired about the wedding issue. Spencer informed me Andy would sell his part and Spencer has contacted the inker Matt Ryan and he agreed to sell me the pages he owned. After paying alot for all the pages, I discovered 3 pages were missing. Andy never sold and of his art and neither had Matt… a mystery. This was back in 2000, 6 years after the book was printed.
Fast forward 6 more years…… and I get an email from Spencer Beck wanting me to call him. I called and he told me a story.
The staff at the Joe Kubert School of Art were cleaning out the basement of the school, I think they were renovating it. They found a rusted out old desk belonging to Andy Kubert. Andy said just to throw it out since it was useless but when they started to dismantle it to move it they found.......
a ton of original art by Andy including 50 plus covers..........
an envelope containing three pages from..............

X-Men #30
Andy mentioned this to Spencer who remembered someone one was trying to put the book back together. He then contacted me.

With Spencer's help I was able to do a deal with Andy for the three remaining pages. 

That's pretty awesome.  Those pages could have languished unfound forever.  You're so lucky to get an entire book put back together.  It's one of my goals to get an entire book of something one day.   

What's more insane is Andy - how do you just lose 50+ covers?  Crazy.  

Didn't you own most of a Byrne FF book?

55 minutes ago, BCarter27 said:

$7200. Buyer was one Lord Manga Khan. Anybody know him? (That's a joke. The price is not.)

I definitely misremembered.  I think now that I must have checked in on eBay and it was $4500, but I forgot to watch the end of the auction.  That makes me feel a little better...  

If only the original cover to JL #1 would surface...  I wonder what that would go for?  I've heard that Andy Helfer owns it.

1 hour ago, buyatari said:

I love the McGuire Justice League run. How much did this one sell for? 

Somewhere in the neighborhood of $4500, I think.  

I LOVED Pacific Comics!  The memories!  Like the kids in the 1960s who bought every Marvel book, I was the kid in the early 80s who bought every PC book.  Initially because Kirby was their big name, but later because the books were super cool - Alien Worlds, Twisted Tales, Rocketeer, Groo...  Waiting for Ms Mystic #2 to come out...   I don't have a scan but I did manage to score an early Captain Victory cover (#2) many years ago.  Not Kirby in his prime, but I still have memories of buying it off the rack.  

And what can be said about Love and Rockets?  I think Jaime Hernandez is one of the greatest living cartoonists.  

17 minutes ago, comix4fun said:

You probably dodged a bullet on the X-men page if it was advertised as Kirby. That was almost all Roth. 

I think he means FF #28?  That was Kirby, wasn't it?  

4 hours ago, vodou said:

And finally, this one, another Totleben ST cover oil out of HA from August 2015:

This is the post-Moore Veitch story where ST takes over Constantine's body to bang Abby, all this to "produce" the next generation of ST. If you think about it, that's pretty far out stuff for 1988! Love it. I hate the circular aspect to the image and that's why I didn't really go for it, but in hindsight less than $3k...duh. And that's after it sat on Albert's site for years at $4k iirc. (Which I always knew was "too much".) Oh well. Still to this day do not like the circularity of the image, but I should have taken it down, there's only one, and it's a great weird story from back in the day, and very early in Constantine's publishing "life" too!

I think this and the two above are the only pieces I'm really, really, kicking myself one or more years later on. Otherwise, I tend to get what I really want and for the price I want to pay. Sometimes it's just a matter of being more patient than the rest of the market...

 

Yeah, the circular composition would really have bugged me too, but I actually think it kind of worked in that case.  And 3k, wow...

Fair point about pictures.  In order: Top Ten #!, PMIF #106, Superman #4 splash, New Gods cover, Absolute Justice League cover (faces wrap around on the back cover too!)... 

And one last one, a painted Frank Quietly Books of Magic cover.  This goes back a little ways, and I'm trying not to violate my own rules (otherwise we start talking about passing on assorted Kirby bronze age covers for 2k a piece), but Quietly's rep had this on his site for a long time - only 2k!  I just couldn't pull the trigger, I remember mainly because the figure in the background kind of bothered me (too busy), but it's a spectacular piece.  I'd probably buy this today.  

Inspired by the recent "What would you buy" post - which I thought was a great idea for a topic, but I can sort of see why people might not want to advertise what they are in the market for while pieces are available.   

So, now that certain pieces from our recent history are now unobtainable, if you hadn't dropped the ball or bailed out for whatever reason - what would you have bought in the last year or two that you really regret?  

And hey, I get it - people may not want to say anyway... 

For me: my biggest regret from the last few years is missing out on that Alex Ross Top Ten #1 cover on Clink.  I'm a huge fan and that's pretty much the ultimate statement on those characters (aside from the Ha #1 cover).  At the time more money than I really thought it was worth but I'm bummed now.  

Also regret missing that awesome Byrne Power Man/Iron Fist cover with Whirlwind on Clink (to the Donnellys no less - so that one is gone forever).  Just a great piece from Byrne in his 80s prime with revisiting his first hit character.  I was the underbidder and I feel like the buyer got a great deal because Byrne prices exploded right afterwards!

That amazing Byrne Jimmy Olsen splash from two Clink cycles ago: probably one of the most beautifully executed Byrne Superman figures I've ever seen.  I fought for that one, but it ultimately just went way higher than I really felt it should have (at the time), but kudos to the buyer/seller - a fantastic piece. 

That Kirby New Gods Black Racer cover... I really waffled on that one.  Such a fantastic, in-your-face image, and a steal, but I couldn't get around how derivative I felt the character was (Black Racer/Silver Surfer.. one is one a surfboard, one is on skis...  I love you Jack, but c'mon...).  Still, a great deal, and I don't think we'll see a Kirby character cover go that cheap again.  

Bonus: That Kevin Maguire Absolute Justice League elevator cover that Maguire listed on eBay.  Didn't even bid.  

1983 - a Buckler World's Finest cover.

4 hours ago, Pete Marino said:

One was on ebay a year or 2 ago, I think it was from XF.  It did fairly well, 4-5k ish if my memory serves.  It was one of those broke-back pose pages.

Not being sarcastic here, but genuinely curious: what is the love for Liefeld?   I really disliked his art at the time, but I also stopped reading comics for several years, so I have no artistic or nostalgic attachment to his work.   

I mean I get paying big money for an early Deadpool or Cable appearance (neither means much to me because that's all a bit after my time), but is it a nostalgic thing?  Do some people really think he's a great artist?