Flambit

On 9/27/2017 at 1:50 PM, RYEBABY said:

I'm firmly in the "extremely disappointed "side of the opinion (to say the least) as far as the TV show is concerned. With source material as strong as it is I cannot see the point of watering it down and going at it in a half arsed way.  Then again I'm Irish so what the f&*^ do I know except that Cassidy is the best thing in it and they have well and truly ruined the character of Jesse, nothing like the guy in the comic book. And don't get me started on Tulip. You know, the blond girl, who's father taught her to shoot in the woods when she was what, 6 years old! (and who never shagged Cassidy (at least until she thought Jesse was dead and she was drugged out of her mind), and was never married, yeah, that girl who was totally committed to Jesse, WTF!)

FFS. If your gonna do it, do it right (and I'm not intentionally quoting the George Michael song!)......

Rant officially over. 

And breathe....

Actually no, while i'm at it, why don't we turn the Black Panther into a skinny freckly faced, ginger, paddy boy , who wields a rather ferocious looking shillelagh when's had a dram too many...

Gonna grab a nice Guiness now boys and enjoy some catholic guilt while i can, I'll be seeing ye's, unless the Pale Paddy Panther gets to me first... 

 

Totally agree.  I love the Walking Dead series, I love a lot of the Marvel films - and while I prize an adaptation's regard for it's source material more than a civilian, I'm not as fanatic as, say, John Byrne about total devotion (if you follow the Byrne Forum, you'll understand haha).  

But man - I tried staying with it for the entire first season, considering how long it took to get this thing made (even though, by the end of the first episode, I was thinking "uh-oh..")   So disappointed.  The actor playing Jessie feels so completely off, and his direction seems so off. There were times where I even forgot what the hell I was watching - "Wait, this is supposed to be based on Preacher?"  WTF?  I understand their attempt to flesh out the backstories of the characters in season one, I guess, so they can start their "road trip? (I guess the adaptation of the comic starts in season two?  Because almost nothing from season 1 I really recognized), but I've totally lost interest.    

I don't know, is it better now?

Anyway - back on topic now.  

 I waited for 25 years for this to surface, and finally the stars aligned a few years ago and I managed to win mine at auction:

16 hours ago, RICKYBOBBY said:

Faded inks. That's unacceptable to me  and doesn't matter how old the page.

As for the toned pages I don't mind if they are from the 60s.. those pages are nearly 60 years old so it's not that big of a deal.

I generally don't have that much on an issue with condition.  I know the Daredevil #168 cover has a ton of white out on it to create the lightning effects and I wouldn't turn that cover down (I'm sure I won't ever own it either, so that's all academic).   And marker is ok, but there are certain specific pieces I've turned down because of fading issues: The Byrne WCA cover - I believe it was 56 - the owner was selling on caf about ten years ago and disclosed (I'm grateful he did, it was definitely the right thing to do) that, I'm trying to remember exactly here, but I think there is a bunch of marker work on the Scarlet Witch that was turning purple.  And I just couldn't pull the trigger despite how much I love that cover. I've heard some Preacher pages also have issues with fading as well.  I know the owner of the big Hollywood comic store Meltdown had this crazy amount of OA on the walls in his original location - this would have been 05-06 - and one of the pieces I vividly remember was the Preacher page where Jessie, Tulip and Cassidy have the Polaroid picture taken of the three of them - the bottom of the page is a half splash of that picture... and I seem to recall there was some fading damage on it, but I'm not sure... it was many years ago....

18 hours ago, bisquitodoom said:

The more I use it, the more I like it.  Great job on this!  I can't imagine how long it took to put together, but I'll certainly use it a lot. 

The only suggestion I have is that it would be really nice if it also included CAF classified postings.  

I second this!  It seems like a lot of art that I miss gets bought and sold on CAF.

Pretty fantastic.  

I'd love to see an option to restrict certain dealers from my search...  *cough*coollines*cough*

1 hour ago, comix4fun said:

Big Barda Byrne Porn Tape Cover....$14,750...

Yeah, I'd say that's right on target given the last couple of Byrne Superman cover sales on clink...  As much as I liked that era and the art, that story was so slimy I just couldn't bring myself to bid.  

That Next Men cover was only $600...  I probably woulda bid on that one but I forgot about it!

Jeez.  And 130 for the Gambit X-Men.  

Well, 4 minutes to go on the FF cover, and I was officially way off base by thinking it would go for 250+...  Unless there is some giant leap in price.  Shows what I know!

I generally won't bother signing the back if I have a pencil piece, like, say, one of those Kirby Heroes and Villains character studies. Instead, I will just go ahead and ink it myself with a sharpie or a ballpoint.  That way I can justify just signing my name in ink on the front, right next to Kirby's!  My providence has been established and I've actually made a contribution to the piece!  Win/win!
 

2 hours ago, SquareChaos said:

We're one comment away from CGC slabbing OA.

This was actually the subject of first ever CGC OA thread on this board back in 2005:  

FF 77 now at 75k.  

Welp, I guess no FF cover for me haha.  I wonder where it will end up.  I think I said 250k earlier somewhere, but I'm thinking of pushing my bet up to maybe even 300k...  

My absolute favorite piece of art is Captain America 212, but I do love FF 200! 

This is indeed a troublesome piece. 

Great image, but I agree, most of the details just don't look like Kirby to me.  

I understand what glendgold says, that he never did breakdowns in the 70s, but I'm just so inclined to think that maybe this was the one great possible exception.  Maybe he was asked at the very last minute to rough out a cover and threw it into a package of art bound for Marvel while the mailman was standing at the door.   I've read interviews with Roy Thomas - I'm very loosely paraphrasing here - where it seemed like he was always trying to get Kirby to do covers and really wanted him back on the FF... Thomas did get him to do quite a few FF covers for the book proper...  Maybe this was to mollify Thomas somehow?   I know a lot about Kirby in the 70's as that's one of my big wheelhouses, but my knowledge is certainly not on the level of the Kirby experts here, so I'd always be willing to defer to them.  But I honestly don't think we'll never really know what happened.  

My opinion, for what it's worth (not much haha), I think the signature in pencil on an inked cover really points to breakdowns and he did it last minute.  Again, I'm only an armchair expert.

A Kirby FF cover would be a big, big get for me - on the level of a Byrne X-Men cover - and ultimately, I don't think I could bid on this one.  Too many questions in the mix.

Now for unsubstantiated rumors, just regarding the presence of the signature - that is, a Kirby signature on a piece that may or may not be by Kirby, not this particular piece.  This is a story I heard a long time ago, it might be a known story, I don't know, but I always thought it underlined the generosity of the man himself, so I apologize if I'm misremembering it if it is, in fact, a known tale.  Story went, someone that Kirby knew - don't remember the relationship or context - presented Kirby with a lightboxed Doom sketch he had bought somewhere.  It looked professionally done, but it was pretty clear Kirby never touched it.  Kirby, knowing this, just shrugged and signed it so the person in question could claim it as an actual Kirby and make his money back if he was inclined to sell it (keep in mind, back in those day, how much was a small, single figure Kirby commission worth - $30-$40?).  So possibly Kirby signed this FF piece after the fact just because he was an amazing human - but he usually signed in pen as far as I know. 

eBay has become the dark web of the OA hobby.  Link after link of garbage and scammers trying to lure in newbies with blatant forgeries; OA that's nothing more than photocopies of art; Coollines and their misleading descriptions or modified art.   "Psst - Hey kid, I heard you're looking for an original Calvin and Hobbes Sunday... Watterson just gave me a bunch because they were taking up space in his attic!  Just step over here for a minute..."  

Fond memories of that cover!  Nightcrawler's looking hella swole!

I know I'm definitely in the minority here, but I'm ok with using "grail" for multiple, select items of a very personal significance.  And I don't mean AF15 or Action 1 - I mean items that have an important, mostly nostalgic association to me.  The term grail has been so abused in the last fifteen years that I've actually learned to roll with it's modernized definition, I guess.   But I don't abuse the word so badly that every Heritage action I see a "grail."  On the other hand, I probably have about a dozen "grails" that I have been on the hunt for over the last several years, with one "holy grail" at the top of the heap which transcends all of them slightly.  

Cornerstone is good, but it just doesn't sound right to me.  Under-grails?  I don't know...

Wanted to throw a line out there and see if anyone knows about this.  A seminal parody of my childhood.

It's a 4 page story from Mad #117, art by Jack Rickard/-script by Larry Siegel.  I labored for years thinking it was by Wally Wood, but I had confused it with an earlier Peanuts parody he did in Mad.  

The story follows Shermie as he returns to Peanuts-land and slowly sees how success has changed all the characters.  It has this underlying Heart of Darkness feel as Shermie attempts to locate Charlie Brown himself.  As I recall, the story is laid out as a series of daily strips.  

I'm just curious where it might be these days and if the owner wants to sell... 

Thanks!

7 hours ago, Lee B. said:

Nice job channeling Ron Graham!  Who is Ron Graham, some of you newer collectors might be asking?  Ron routinely cut up strip art in the 1970s to sell individual panels, and was proud of it.  You can see one of his inimitable ads from the Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom here (courtesy of Glen Gold), if you click on the Facebook link in the upper-right-hand corner of this page:

www.comicartads.com

Toward the end of his life, Ron was featured on the TV show Hoarders, and it was a typically sad episode.  Best, Lee

So much dense text in that ad that I couldn't even begin to read it on my phone.  Had to open it in a web page on my computer.  It's unsettling because you can practically read the madness creeping in, even then...

Reading this thread reminds me of the very first ever CGC original art thread from fifteen years ago or however long that was....  It was - I'm paraphrasing because I'm too lazy to go back and properly reference it - someone suggesting that CGC actually grade and slab comic art.  Could you imagine carrying around giant three feet slabs of plastic everywhere?  

About fifteen years ago I bought a 1950s Peanuts Sunday.  I couldn't quite figure out how to store it properly so I decided to trim it so that each panel was a separate entity, that way I could store it easily, in sequence, in an 8x11 Itoya, one panel per page.  Whenever I desired, I could essentially flip though it like a Big Little Book.  Plus, I could effectively break up the strip and sell it off piece by piece if the need arose.  

Juuuuust kidding.

8 hours ago, Shaun C89 said:

Any estimates on what the Action Comics 593 cover will go for?

Byrne's Superman 13 cover sold around 9k and Action #584 sold for 25k in the same auction a couple of cycles ago on Clink.  I personally think the Action 593 cover is much better than the Superman 13 cover, but it's not in the same league as the 584 cover (historically, at least, as that was his first), so, I dunno... 15k?  Maybe 20k extreme high end?  It's kind of an infamous story, so that might possibly influence the price one way or the other, more so than any of the other Action issues he did.

From an historical perspective, I always thought it would be fun to own that page from Ultimates where the group is sitting around discussing who should play each other in a movie and Fury says Sam Jackson...  

1 hour ago, Bronty said:

More than anything it depends on the specific examples you choose to compare.    The best Byrne AF cover (#1) OK yeah, I can see it.    The best Byrne Namor cover, not so much.

For sure.  Yeah I wouldn't include anything Byrne after his jump to DC/Superman - maybe his first Action Comics (which we all know just went for 25k) and Superman 1 cover if you want - but I'd still go with the AF 1 cover.  Even as much as I love and want a WCA cover, it's not in the same class.  But I'd take a WCA cover over the most awesome Strawberry Shortcake cover!

This is something I've considered for a while.  I have a couple of definitely mid-to-low pack examples from a well known run, and I have grappled with trading them off at one time or another.  But what would that cost me?  A better example would cost a ton of money plus my current example - for the same artist from the same run - so I sit on it.  But trading them for something "lesser," but in a different class?  Well, then I no longer have a piece of a well known run (that I loved).  

I thought a lot about the blue chip mid-pack vs best in class.  My knee jerk reaction is that I would always take a blue chip mid pack and the current example for me is no contest: I have long coveted a Kirby FF cover and I have zero interest whatsoever in 90's X-Men (no slam against 90's X-Men, I just have no attachment to them in any way).  Even if the FF cover went for 20-30k less, I'd be thrilled with it.

But then I think in terms of my own wheelhouse: would I take, say, the Alpha Flight #1 cover over a mid-pack Byrne FF cover?  At one point, AF covers were pretty cheap.  I'd be getting Austin inks and that whole cast of characters, vs probably not an Austin FF cover.  I can't even begin to guess what the AF 1 cover is worth now, but I know there was a terrific Byrne FF cover with the Inhumans that was only 40k on Heritage recently.  So I guess the AF cover wins - but is it a best in class, or is it just an insanely valuable cover you'd be nuts to pass on vs. a Byrne FF cover?

Or: would I take a Byrne FF cover over the very best Kirby post New Gods work, but ruling out some of the huge examples like some of his great post 70's FF covers (I'd take FF 200 in a heartbeat) or Cap 193 because of their inherent value now... Say it was Machine Man 1, Omac 1, the Demon 1, Sandman 1, maybe even Kamandi 1 (but that's a pretty iconic cover now).  I almost included Black Panther 1, but I think even that one is a bit too iconic at this point for Byrne FF covers to compete. 

That's a hard one.  

At one point I would have said these were worth far less than a Byrne FF cover, but now, probably more.  It would really start to depend on what FF cover, and I'd probably have to go with one of the Kirby ones

I guess it really comes down to personal preference and how fueled you are by nostalgia.  That's the problem with this game, even things that seem equal, really aren't equal when you look closely at them.  

Too bad the Batman Adventures #12 cover isn't up for auction.  It would probably fetch more than either!