Skizz

I wrote here about my experience of walking into comic shop in a village in France whilst on my holiday and finding a bunch of comic art including some pieces by Moebius. I had no way of confirming if these were authentic. Also my knowledge of European art is limited, so I didn't now if price was a fair value. The main issue was that I spoke very little French and the owner spoke very little English, so I did not understand everything he was saying. But the owner seemed genuine and I liked Moebius enough and didn't think I'd get another opportunity like this to own a Moebius piece. So I took the risk and bought the piece below for €400. The owner also gave me a certificate of authenticity, image of which is below. He said that this was a part of other pieces that were separated. The image of the certificate is also below. But the certificate is in French and there doesn't seem to be any way to be sure that the certificate is for his piece. Could anyone here confirm if this is actually an authentic Moebius / Jean Giraud. Also, is anyone familiar with the where it was published or seen it in its published form. Accordingly to the certificate, it was on page 36/37 of the magazine L'Echo de Savanes no12. Any help would be appreciated.

Update: Okay, so instead of live with regret, I took a risk and bought the piece below before I left from my holiday in France. I still do not know for sure if what I have purchased is legit or a fake. The shop owner seemed genuine and assured me it was authentic. I can only hope. On a side note, I've had quite a few people message me to ask where this shop is. I thought I'd leave the info here for anyone interested. The shop is called Bulles Magiques in a town/village called Piriac in the west of France. They don't take card or have a website. Cash or cheques only

I wanted to take pictures of a some of the art, particurly the Neal Adam sketch (which was only €100). Because of the language barrier, communication was a bit difficult. But it didn't seem like the owner was too keen on letting me take photographs. And without photos there was no way for me to verify if these were originals. One of the reasons I walked away empty handed ?

I'm in a small town in France at the moment. We were just waking around the local shops and bars yesterday evening when I walk past a used book and bande desinee (French graphic novel) store. I see a few photocopies of original art hanging off the counter including a Neal Adams spiderman sketch, two Silver Surfer and Galactus pin ups by Mitton and even a pin up by Moebius. I ask the guy if he has the originals and he pulls out three folders full of art by French and Italian artist. Amongst that folder were three or four sketches by Moebius, priced between €400 to €1000. The original of the pin up I saw over the counter was €3,900. We struck up a half hour conversation although he didn't speak English and I didn't speak French. But the gist of it was that he knew someone who was an old friend of Moebius and that's how he was able to acquire all this art. I didn't have the cash to buy any of the Moebius sketches. I already feel like this is going to be one of those decisions I regret.

This thread has placed me in an existential crisis. The obsessive compulsive in me says everything must fit perfectly in a folder. The preservationist is me says thou shalt not tamper with original art pages.

It doesn't seem to me like the seller did anything untowards here. The seller wasn't to know how the bidding might have gone in the last few seconds. Sounds like somebody took the initiative to make an offer for a sum that the seller thought was reasonable and so he sold it there and then for a fixed sum, instead of taking a chance on the auction.

That's one hell a collection. Totleben Miracleman, Watchmen, Swamp Thing Anatomy Lesson! Thanks for sharing.

That's a great page. Love to see your CAF gallery, if you got one.

The page above is from Alan Moore's Judgment Day for Awesome Comics, illustrated by Ian Churchill. I love this page. And I also hate this page. Love it because it is a crucial portion of the story where * spoilers *. I was amazed that it was still available to buy directly from the artists website after all these years. From a visual perspective, it has everything I love about 90s art (energy, detailed rendering) but thankfully without the excesses of that decade. But I also hate this page. Because it is exactly the kind of page that is ruined by the lack of speech bubbles and caption. Without the captions, it's just feels like some random images in a page and there is no story there. But then again there are also no spoilers here for anyone who hasn't read 90s Alan Moore penned series.

This was my first time watching a Heritage auction. In fact, I accidentally bid thousand of dollars, money I didn't have to spare, on a page I didn't want. Thankfully I was outbid. That hiccup aside, it was an very educational experience. And heartening too. Heartening because my only experience with higher end art prices so far are those of dealer websites or EBay BIN/high start prices (usually from coollines listing). So the auction results actually seemed reasonable in comparison. The first Alan Moore penned Swamp Thing for less than $2500, a pretty good Jack Kirby for just over £1,500. Hell even a Watchmen page for £10,000. i am nowhere near ready to throw that kind of money at art. But watching this auction in real time and learning how Heritage works went a long way to convincing me that stuff I wanted was gettable. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow - but one day

I should have said, I bought as it had the 90s Marvel house style (or at least what I remembered it as being)

Welcome mate. I'm fairly new here as well. As I have heard others here say before - picture or it doesn't exist.

The page below is the very first page of comic art I ever bought (or even saw in person). It was one of three pages I bought five years ago, before changing my focus to writing comics instead of collecting. I had no idea what it was from and the dealer didn't even know who drew it. I bought it simply out of nostalgia because it looked like the X-Men comics from when I was a kid. The page is from Issue 19 of Marvel UK's Death Head II. But the series was cancelled after issue 16, so this is an unpublished page. Liam sharpe was the main artist on the series; so I contacted him to ask if it's his work. He said it wasn't him and suggested I ask Henry Flint. It wasn't Henry Flint either. It was then suggested to me that it might me Salvador Larocca. So I contacted Salvador Larocca, who thought it was probably him but he'd need to see the page in person to confirm. Hopefully I can ask him at a convention some days That said, part of me likes not knowing. Especially because this page is unique my admittedly small collection in that it is the only page I have bought without having read and loved the books.

I couldn't say for sure if only because it's been nearly a decade and half since I read the original Ultimates. That said, I know feel a little strange about having a prominent Ultimate Nick Fury page on my wall because then I'd also have to reconcile that with having a picture of Sam Jackson on my file. Given the choice, I'd prefer a page without Ultimate Fury. Something like ... Warning: slippery floor. Drool everywhere !

That sounds completely valid. I guess the biggest sin in storytelling is losing the audiences' interest. Anything that disrupts the reader's immersive experience is a problem.

Congratulations on getting your grail mate. I've never read Howard the Duck or Steve Gerber's writing, but your write up makes me wanna some Gerber.

And don't even me started on how much pizza he ate.

I agree. In fact, if I see any Ultimates 1 pages for few hundred, I'd be all over that.

Hi guys, thank you for the warm welcome. I imagine I am in the minority here. The interesting thing for me about comic art as opposed to say illustration or fine art is that a page of comic art works as a unit of storytelling. A page can be a story beat that lasts just a sec (like a splash of somebody getting punched) or it can span a lifetime (a series of panels taking us through the course of someone's life panel by panel). Other types of art don't have that. And if they do, then as far as I am concerned, that painting is just a silent one panel unpublished comic art. P.S. Panelfan1, I also heart panel pages. I heart panel pages very much. I should consider myself lucky. It was getting that Swamp Thing and Skizz page in the early part of my collecting that made me think that regardless of what everyone says about comic art being inordinately high, it is still possible for me to get the things that I want. It does help that often times the things I want, others don't seem to care as much about. Hopefully that will continue to be the case. I'm realising that. Just in the last four month, I've already spent waaaaaay more than I should on luxuries like art (relatively speaking of course).

I have to say, I have only seen a few pages from Ultimates 2 come up for a few hundred. I haven't seen any from Ultimates 1, at least in the few months that I have searched. But if it is true that Ultimates is underpriced, I might posit a theory for that. As edgy as Ultimates was at the time (it certainly brought me into comics), looking at it with some hindsight and objectivity, I would say that everyone in this story was kind of an A-hole. All the aspirational character we look up to like Captain America, Iron Man etc, pretty much everyone in it was self-serving and/or callous in their attitude towards human life. Art is supposed to be a mirror to society and may be our own image that Ultimates showed us is not a very flattering. If this is the case, then the normal response would be to ignore it and forget it exists and go back the original Marvel universe where the heroes act like how we expect heroes to act. Just a theory, but may explain why Ultimates to underrated and not talked about much. Regarding photo referencing, I am in two minds about this. Ultimately, comics are a storytelling medium and photo referencing is just a tool. An interesting question to ask is that as long as the page makes an emotional impact to the reader, does it matter is any portion of it was photo referenced? If I am not mistaken, Bruce Timm and Alex Ross used to be good friends in the early days and they used to critique each others work. But ultimately Bruce Timm Tim felt that Alex Ross's work was overly photo referenced and was stifling as a result of this. Alex Ross disagreed that felt that Bruce Timm did not understand that he was trying to bring in almost a Renaissance style of painted quality to comic art which it was lacked up to that point. Arguably both are correct.

My introduction to original comic art was through the movie ‘Unbreakable’. The character played by Samuel L Jackson in that movie owned a comic art gallery called ‘Limited Edition’. But this initial introduction to comic art did not lead me to becoming a collector. Instead, it lead to me writing comics in the British small press scene – see www.untoldvoyages.com. And although I’ve owned some pages of original art in the past, mainly from artists I’ve worked with, I did not become “collector” until recently. In the spring of 2016, Avatar Press did a Kickstater for the anthology comic Cinema Purgatorio by Alan Moore et al. I decided to back it and got a hardcover of the book signed by Alan Moore. And now that I had one hardcover book by Alan Moore, it was naturally imperative for me collect every Alan Moore book in existence. It seemed like a mammoth undertaking at the time, one that would surely take a lifetime. A year later, I had every (almost every) Alan Moore book, and nothing more to look forward to in life. And the only way I could fill that hole in my heart was with (1) drugs, (2) unconditional love or, (3) upgrading to original comic art. Like any sane person, I chose the latter option. This was the first page of original art from an Alan Moore book I acquired. It’s from Issue 25 of Saga of the Swamp Thing, which features the first cameo appearance of John Constantine. Admittedly, this page itself does not feature John Constantine. Nor Swamp Thing for that matter. But it does feature the creative output of the trio of Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben. But more importantly, it features a complete unit of storytelling. In a single page, Alan Moore and the artists tell the whole backstory of these two minor characters, whilst foreshadowing what is to come in the ensuing pages. That’s efficient storytelling at its finest. And the caption at the end of the page, is about as effective a page-turn transitional technique as I have seen. This is a page from Alan Moore’s (in my opinion, underappreciated) 90s Image work in WildCATs. The art is by Jason Johnson and Terry Austin. I would join the chorus of those who lament the loss of speech bubbles and captions on original art pages to digital technology. But what’s interesting about this page is that it works perfectly as a series of silent panels. Without the dialogue and captions, it turns into aspect-to-aspect transitions that set the mood as the eye of the wandering camera focuses on different aspects of the place and time. Just to demonstrate (perhaps unsuccessfully) that my interest in comic art does not stop alphabetically at A for Alan Moore, here is a page that I own from the 90s Marvel comic ‘What If Wolverine Led Alpha Flight’, with art is by Bryan Hitch. Bryan Hitch is one of those artists whose art I feel extremely schizophrenic about. What I mean by that is that there are times I feel he is a modern day Michelangelo who widened the scope and canvass of comic art and heralded the modern cinematic style storytelling in comics. And there are other times I feel he’s just a photo tracer. At the time of writing this, I feel the former. I’ve been reading up and lurking silently on the CGC boards for a few months now. I thought a good way for me get more involved with the comic art hobby is reach out to my fellow collectors and write this journal to document my comic art collecting journey. What’s ironic is that although I write and work with artists to create comics and exhibit at most of the comic cons in the UK, I don’t know many comic art collectors. In 1946, humans announced their presence to the galaxy by transmitting radio waves of the sound of tolling bell into space. So, this is me ringing the bell into web space to my fellow collectors. … Rudra My CAF gallery