Flambit

$2700 for that unpublished Byrne WCA cover. Wow...

Really wanted that New Gods Black Racer cover. But since I have about 7k in dental work coming up... sigh. I was thinking that's probably the last time we'll ever see a Kirby cover of any kind of significance under 10k.

It didn't even occur to me to have Len sign it. I'm not even entirely sure I knew who he was at the time. I probably knew his name - I was pretty up on creators - but I was a kid, and I guess he didn't make a big impact on me at the time. There are some production markings on the back consistent with covers of this vintage. It's on the back of a standard art board and it's about what you'd expect: it's a montage of stats layered on top of one another to form the cover. The whole thing is about an inch shorter than a standard cover (there's a dead space at the bottom). A few years ago, it finally did occur to me to have Len sign it. Years ago, he was a regular every new comics day at the Golden Apple's satellite store out in the valley (and later, at a store called Galaxy of Comics). In the Golden Apple days, when it was on Reseda Blvd, in the early 2000s, I was a regular and got to know Len a little bit. We would make fun of that Alex Ross full image poster of Batman: "How could you be afraid of a guy that wears a satin cape?" (I love Alex Ross btw). Then, last year, I saw him at SDCC - I was going to bring the piece up to him - but I was so rattled by how sick he was, as I hadn't seen him in years. I sort of stammered some question about the Golden Apple, and then asked some variation of the same question again because I was so nervous, I guess, or just in shock and trying to make conversation. He snapped at me that he had just answered that question, and I scurried away. I could tell he felt bad about snapping because he said something like "It was nice to see you again." But I just felt so terrible to see the guy in so much pain, hunched over, just struggling to sit up... And then he was gone a couple of months later. Always bummed that was my last memory of him. He was a really cool guy. Never quite got over of seeing him like that.

Here’s one last dumb story. SDCC, 1986. I was at an art dealer’s booth, only remember vague details. Man and a woman, younger couple. Random stacks of art at least 8 inches high, and at least 6 to 8 stacks. No binders and no mylars - not even anything on their wall behind them that I remember. I vaguely recall they had a ton of panel pages and literally nothing specific about what they had sticks in my head, except for two pieces. One was the cover Green Lantern 195, I believe by Joe Stanton. It jumped out at me because the cover had no trade dress that I recall, and is this super powerful image of a GL in the shadows holding the power battery. $50. I set it aside to buy, and continued looking. I reached about 3 pages from the very bottom to the stack and found the Giant Size X-Men #1 cover production stat. Right at the bottom, below even the discount pages. Trash. “What the hell?” The dealer explained that it wasn’t the original art, and briefly outlined how stats are created. My funds being what they were, though, I could only buy one. So I went with the GSXM stat - hey, at least it will look cool on my wall, right? Got him down to $45, too (I don’t know what was with me always trying to talk people down - I must have been super annoying). So almost immediately after leaving his table, I get hit hard with this deep buyer’s remorse. I just paid $45 for what is a glorified photocopy. $45 back then was a fair amount of money for me. So I decide I’m going to try and just get rid of it. Not even flip it - I just want my money back. (In those days, you could get an NM GSXM1 for $75, and that was the key book for me and my friends - even more so than Hulk #181 - and I had bought, essentially, what amounted to a copy of the cover only, for 2/3 of that price). I *may* have even tried to get the dealer to buy it back, I genuinely don’t recall. If I did - he wouldn’t. And to be fair, there actually are very small slivers of original art on the stat, along either edge where a production artist had to re-draw both edges of the image that got cropped out when the stat itself was shot (edge of Storm’s cape, the page tearing, some of the speed lines). But nothing consequential. Anyway, a couple of my friends from school were at con - one had just bought the cover to UXM 161 for, like, $100 or whatever it was (although I wouldn’t actually know this until we got back into town). Bottom line, they had no money. I asked them if they wanted to buy this thing for what I paid. No. I asked if they wanted to go in half on it, and I’ll try and sell it/split the money? No. They basically thought it was stupid. God dammit. So now I’m walking around con with this thing - there were no coat check booths back then, you had to cart your around with you. And I notice, that a couple of people have stopped me asking to take my picture. I start to realize that people think I’m walking around with the actual art! At this time, I don’t think it was widely known that there were two pieces used in production. I would say, “Yes, this was used to shoot the cover, but no, this isn’t the actual art.” But people still seem to be interested, nevertheless. Finally, I’m talking to this dealer and just looking over his books and he’s fascinated with this thing. “Hey, I’ll trade you this,” and he offers me a sharp looking copy of Daredevil #1 - whites are bright, corners are sharp. No CGC back then, but it was definitely a 9.2, maybe even a 9.4. I explained that it wasn’t the actual art. He said, “Honestly, I don’t care - I think it would be really cool to own that!” I told him I’d really think about it. So about this time I’m starting to think, “Well, ok, maybe this thing might be worth keeping,” and almost immediatley this English dude makes a beeline right for me. He’s this fast talking, real in-your-face type. “Mate, how much do you want for that? I’m heading to the airport right now, so if you want to make a deal, we need to do it!” I looked pretty uncool - a kid with braces, bad haircut, geeky, and I’m holding, what looks like this all time key piece of comic book history. Clearly I’m a rube. “Look,” I sighed, “This is not the original art!” I pulled it out of the plastic sleeve and showed him.” “Wow… thanks for being so honest,” he said. Honestly, the hard sell thing was freaking me out and I wanted him to leave me alone. At the end of the day, I’m on the shuttle with my friends, and we’re going back to our hotel - I’m pretty sure the con hotel that year was this late great dive called Hotel San Diego - long gone now. It was one of those places that, in a bygone era, would have been beautiful: the lobby had balcony that ran along the back wall and this ornate open view elevator with those old timey fancy gated doors and it would descend from the second floor. So we’re on the bus, and, of all people, Len Wein is sitting behind me. “Hey, that’s really cool,” and he’s pointing to the stat. He proceeds to tell me exactly why they had to make it — and I wish I could remember the specifics of what he said now, but I was a kid and just wanted to go eat or something. But it had to do with creating the washed out effect on the original X-Men in the background and that the OA itself was too big. Here it is for the curious:

Absolutely! I've only missed, I think, three SDCCs since 1983. Hit me up when you're down there this year - we can say hi! Hoping to make Brian Peck's dinner - had to cancel at the last minute last year, but really want to go and meet some of you all in person!

Exactly - it's not like some of those great Byrne Dark Phoenix pages where he signed right in the middle of the art! Ugh. We already know Byrne's DNA is on the page - it's literally the most famous work he's ever done! - couldn't he have signed in the margins?? Yeah, in retrospect I wouldn't have had Robinson do those sketches - or at least two of them. But I guess my thinking at the time was that $200 bucks was the general price range for the average published cover in those days, so $200 by a Batman legend, although high, is in line, in a way. I didn't really think to differentiate between published and unpublished sketch art back then. I don't recall what year I met Robinson except it was sometime between 85-90. The Catwoman insert image, including the circle, is drawn right on the art (Aparo must have been super confident about his composition and where stats were going to go). All lettering and titles (including the epitaph/burn in hell, "in this issue the Catwoman," the word ballon, the bottom blurb, and title dress) are stat paste ups. The issue # and the comics code stamp were missing when I got it. Interesting note though: her entire mouth was covered in white out and redrawn prior to production, either by editorial or Aparo - as was her mouth on her figure by the grave above - if you really study her face, you can vaguely make out that her eyes and her mouth aren't exactly in line with the same emotion. I suspect she had some sort of unpleasant scowl and editorial decided to beautify her. Years ago, I thought about having the white out professionally removed, but, although curious - every instinct tells me that's a bad idea.

Such a mix of emotions, but I love it. Couldn't have lived with myself if I had let it go. So the good outweighs the bad, ultimately.

It absolutely needs to be a grail for me to overpay. Generally, I never really get rid of anything, so the price almost always catches up for me. But a few years ago I hemorrhaged blood for a piece and I don't think the price will ever catch up for what I paid, because I was so blinded by the nostalgic connection. I was just not thinking straight or rationally.

Thanks. Aparo is "my" Batman artist too, hands down. As someone said on another thread, there's a lot of Aparo Batman art out there, and a lot that's affordable - if that's who you really want a piece by, you will definitely get it. But yeah, growing up at SDCC as a teen in the 80's was amazing. Although I totally missed the El Cortez era, that CPAC SDCC era in the 1980s was magical. Some random memories: Frank Miller: He was actually pretty accessible in the 1980s, roughly up until just after DKR - then the lines started. I met him at SDCC 1985 and he was just watching someone's booth - the booths were basically big wooden tables pushed together which stacks of books on them, and some dealers had gigantic spaces with many tables, so I guess he was helping out. There seemed to be very few people wandering around - a big panel must have been going on - and no one knew who he was, but I recognized him immediately and grabbed a whole stack of my Daredevils. He was cool about it as I pushed a stack of about 20 at him, but my dad had to intervene: "ok, give the poor guy a break." I felt like an insufficiently_thoughtful_person, but he did sign quite a few. (Miller also signed at my LCS that year as well we spoke about working with Harlan Ellison on the Heroes for Hope one shot). Mobieus: Super cool guy! Met him in 84 or so at SDCC. Super friendly and engaging. He whipped out this amazing sketch for free - some sort of spaceman with an infinite horizon behind him, that he outlined with a blue highlighter. I hope I still have that sketch somewhere. Kevin Maguire: he was a bit reserved, but not quite stand-offish, just very serious. Met him in the late 80s. I worshipped the Giffen/Maguire JL and I was trying to work out a deal to buy the original art to the cover of Justice League International #16 which had just come out, but I couldn't afford the $250 (that's the cover with Bruce Wayne as James Bond and Fire and Ice as Bond girls on either side of him). Stan Lee: I remember it was a big deal when he came to SDCC in the late 80s. He signed the cover of an X-Men #10 I bought. Pretty much took the book, signed it, I said thanks, and that was it. But the line wasn't that long and I didn't have to pay anything, at least. George Clayton Johnson: Just the coolest, nicest dude. He started talking to me in the con hospitality suite in the early 90s, and was telling me all about his Twilight Zone days. A few of my stoner friends would go smoke joints with him in the stairwells. He was a wonderful staple of the early SDCC and I still miss seeing him around. Alex Schomburg: he was the golden age artist that did all those amazing Marvel Mystery Comic covers with the crazy detail. This was probably the most depressing meeting. He was doing sketches in 85 or 86 at SDCC and I really loved his covers so I stood in line. And he was not doing well. He was frail and kind of struggling to keep up, but he had some sort of handler standing behind him, this really thin, brown haired guy with a tan shirt that was almost sheer so that you could see the wifebeater he was wearing underneath, and he just cracked the whip: "You got to keep up! Come on! Let's go!" as Schomborg worked to grind out each sketch. It felt almost abusive and was uncomfortable to watch. Never found out what that story was. I remember also that year Harvey Kurtzman was signing, and he had a huge line, so I decided to go eat instead. Lines were a little unusual back then, because attendance was still pretty small for SDCC (most of the 80s it was under 10k people), so it was a big deal. But I've always regretted not meeting him. He was an absolute master of the art form. But I later read a story by Harvey Pekar where he meets Kurtzman's daughter, talking about that era of Kurtzman's life, and she said that he was actually in really bad shape then. Jerry Robinson: in the mid 80s he was there one year and did large head shot sketches for $200 each (of Batman or whatever villain you wanted). As I was kind of obsessed with the golden age, I splurged and got Batman and a Joker. It was neat to meet the guy, but in retrospect, for that kind of money, I probably would have been better off buying a Kirby Eternals cover and a couple of Joe Kubert war covers and I still would have had money left over for lunch. Don't regret it though. Big regrets: didn't try to meet Alan Moore the year he was there, nor, in my infinite wisdom, did I bother to attend probably the most famous panel in SDCC history (when Alan Moore gets into the argument with Shooter in the audience about Kirby's art), but I remember the dealer's room had cleared out to nothing while it was going on. And then for the next hour, that's all people were talking about. And people had these black shirts with white lettering that said something like "God Save the King." I did not get the reference until years later. I guess I wasn't really aware of the issue with Kirby/Marvel at the time. I also missed Joe Kubert or Irv Novick when they were there - I was huge fans of both artists.

Thanks. Here you go.

Believe it or not, I get really nervous about sun damage to art though prolonged exposure. Look at the Byrne Superman cover on Cink right now, the one with the action figures flying at Superman. Clearly it was matted to frame out the extra space at the top and the result is this weird square portion in the middle of the page is yellow. Not a deal breaker, but not ideal... I have some sketches that I did frame - Mart Nodell did a fantastic color Green Lantern for me in 85-86 or so (he and his wife were super nice people), and it has hung on various walls for 30 years. And now it's almost orange (He did it on really crummy paper, essentially typing paper). But I do have some other stuff framed as well - I'll try to remember to post to the frame thread one of these days...

Still own it. It would be one of my big holy grails I'd be searching for if I hadn't accidently stumbled across it years ago. The bat on the other page: that was done at the same time. When I sprinted away to find something for Kane sign, someone at the table had a sketch pad - my friend, I think - and Kane was taking pages out, tearing them in half, and doing quick little half page personalization pieces for everyone there, like mine above. My friend got him to draw very quick head sketches of Batman and Robin on his, then he was nice enough to ask him to draw that bat for me (it says, "To my friend Sam, Bats Wishes."). I know it's a big no-no, but Kane actually did sign inside the art as well, and personalized it (if you look right below the "Who is guilty" blurb, Kane wrote: "To Sam, Bats Wishes."). And while I would never do this today, I have zero regrets about it. Nor do I think it really takes away from the art, either (it's tucked out of the way at the very bottom). At the time it was Kane signing my first Batman cover by "my" Batman artist, so it was a grand memento for me. (Remember, this was long before CGC: my intention was to have Kane essentially deface/devalue a GA Batman book by today's standards. I don't even know if you're allowed to get comics autographed anymore. Kind of a bummer, I think). And believe it or not, $100 for Aparo was probably about average. Aparo, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane - these guys were at the low end of the OA spectrum at the time. Even Marvel Kirby 2nd tier covers (like Eternals) were only a couple hundred bucks. I mentioned this in another thread, but if you had a time machine, SDCC 1986 at Albert Moy's booth was the place to be: STACKS of Miller Daredevil art. The entire 187 issue + cover, 170 cover, 177 (Power Man/Iron Fist cover), Wolverine 3 cover, 159 cover - all there, randomly arranged in loose piles at the same time! I held most of these in my hands. I still even remember the 187 issue in a neat clean stack, the pages perfectly white, as if Moy had just pulled them out of the Marvel shipping envelope and put them the art pile at random. The most expensive was the Wolverine for $800. The 187 issue+cover was approximately 2k, the other covers ranged between $400-600. And Apple stock was once twenty buck a share, too!

This one is Sofa King bad. Bad enough, in fact, that I would guess it was done by some 13 year old kid trying to pull a fast one.

And it's only $5,000!

What a great thread! I may have told this story on the list years ago, I honestly don’t remember, so apologies if I did, but this is my favorite memory of the original art hobby. Warning, it’s long. At SDCC 1989, on Sunday, as the con was winding down, my friend and I walked into the room across the hall from the main dealers room (once used as the Masquerade room in the early 80s). Just inside the door was one of those big round tables with chairs for people to sit and rest. People were gathered around a man sitting down, telling stories and generally entertaining the small crowd. Bob Kane. I loved Batman - of course, who here doesn’t - and I had a big obsession especially for golden age creators (I was young - my teens - and I hadn’t heard of Bill Finger yet, so please forgive me!). I loved Kirby, but he was a fixture at SDCC every year and I’d met him a couple of times. But Kane - I’d never met him, never even seen him! (As far as I knew, he was the man who created Batman! Again, you know, I was young…). Anyway, Kane was at con promoting the Batman movie, but he hadn’t been listed as a guest; I didn’t even know he had been there, so I was super stoked! We edged our way into the group, said hi, and I told my friend to stay there, and I took off to the dealers room in a sprint: I wanted to find a nice, but affordable GA Detective or Batman with the last of my con money for him to sign. I sprinted up and down the aisles and suddenly came across an art dealer. Remember the days when they had the art in stacks six inches tall, with no binders and no mylars, just anonymous piles of covers, splashes and panel pages? I couldn’t tell you even who this dealer was. And standing in front of his table, a guy was holding the cover to Batman 291, my first ever Batman comic! I slammed to a halt, mouth agape, and basically said to the guy, “I will take that right now if you don’t want it.” I remember then having the gall to talk the dealer down from $100 to $90, and ran back to Kane. I asked Kane if he would sign it (as an aside: I would never have art signed today, but back then, this stuff was this weird oddity - not worthless, but not really valuable. There was no real market that I was aware of, not like the comics themselves. There was no way of knowing what something was worth, because there was only one of everything. So it was more like having a special memento from a particular comic, in a way). He signed it to me, and I remember he held it, and studied the central Aparo drawing of Batman for a minute, then asked, ”Who drew this?” “Jim Aparo,” I said. “That’s really good! This guy can really draw Batman!"

Huh. Obviously I totally misremembered that. Somehow I must have completely missed that second action. I would have seriously considered 7.5k at the time, even though it would have been considered a little high. I had really been looking for a decent Kirby Bronze Marvel hero cover at the time. Oh well - I don't suppose I'll get it for 7.5k at this point!

Interesting that the Black Panther 12 cover has re-surfaced here. I could be wrong - and please correct me if I am - but I would swear this cover was over on Heritage a few years ago, maybe 2010 (I'm guessing) and it sold for around 12k. But the odd thing is: it never appeared in the past auction results! Does anyone else remember that or am I going slowly insane??

Anybody know what Unknown Solider cover it was? I must be blind - I keep looking for it on the site but don't see it...

25 must have been sweet! Always wanted to see that one in person.

Nova #10 http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=619501

Really nice. You could never tell from the picture, either. Behind glass, obviously, so that disguises a myriad of flaws, but it looks clean and white, not even yellowed...

What was wrong with the condition?

I always liked 608 and 612 the best. While I'm from the "old guard," I guess, I always did like Jim Lee, although I don't have any nostalgic connection to him whatsoever. I remember when Hush was coming out - it was the must read run of the day - telling someone that particular run would mean to kids what Byrne's X-Men/Miller DD meant to me at that age. I'm sure that's the case, some 15 years later: kids reading that series at 12 or 13 would be in their late 20s now. I know we're not supposed to speculate on value, but I feel like those are the covers that will at the top of the heap when the 20 somethings of today hit my age and have real money to pour into the hobby.

I like your Instagram account - I'm a huge Jaime Hernandez fan. Cool sketches in there!

You should post this photo/story over on Byrne Robotics. They would get a kick out of it!