Skizz

Unpublished art seems to present all sorts of grey areas. But in your case, value of the analog version is even higher than in my example. Since nothing has been published, there is nothing to be beholden to. The analog version and the digital version are two separate pieces of unpublished art, albeit similar looking, that are equally valid. I suppose you could call one prelim, but it’s probably just splitting hairs - a rose by any other name and all that. In any case, I’d have no problem buying it. The only concern is, what if the traditional version isn’t as nice as the digital version 😱

I understand that the art for East of West was done digitally. But post publication you could buy a page from the book. The artist Nick Dragotta would then do a recreation of this page on the stipulation that he would never re-create this page again. So this would be the sole existing hand drawn version of the art. If I loved a digitally created comic and this was the only way to get a one of a kind original from that comic, I think I’d be okay with that. Now, the question is what happens if in 20 years time that comic becomes acclaimed and the ‘original art’ from that comic becomes valuable, and the artists decides to do second (or multiple) recreations of an important page from the comic. How would you go about enforcing the original contract that the page not be re-created again. But my instinct is that, even in that case, the first re-creation, done closest to the publication date would command the highest value and be regarded as the quasi original art. So even with that in mind, if the choice is between having no art from a book I love to having an original under these conditions, I’d get the post publication original re-creation.

I just wish UI was a bit more mobile optimised, at least the messaging system.

Wouldn’t that be the equivalent of a collector filling in the black inks on a pen and ink piece that had dried or gone brown over time. If you happen to acquire one of those early Sandman covers and have any such concerns about storing it, I would be more than happy to act as the caretaker for the piece on an indefinite basis. I’m not saying that I’ll be any better at caring for it than you. In fact, I’m almost certain I won’t be. But I will assume the stress of watching it fall to pieces as it hangs in my room, so ... you know, you don’t have to.

THIS THE MOST IMPRESSIVE PIECE OF ART I’VE EVER SEEN !!! I didn’t even know this was CAF. Or even that this is how the art was done by McKean. Thanks for pointing this out.

I can’t seem to be able to find this feature of hiding select dealers from search results. As it stands, coollines just flood my results every time I run a search. Please help !

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1634421 So this arrived yesterday. A page from one of Alan Moore’s early futuristic sci-fi short stories, written for the British comic magazine 2000ad, that is now collected in the Future Shock collection. The art is by Steve Dillion of ‘Preacher’ fame. There really isn’t much panel breakdown or storytelling analysis to be done here. The gags, the dialogue, the art - it’s all right there on the page. This is probably one the best representative pages from the series of short stories featuring the character of Abelard Snazz ‘The Man with the Double-Decker Brain' and his faithful robot butler Edwin. Snazz - a mutant genius who handles “complex problems with even more complicated solutions" - is Moore's first recurring character for 2000ad and one of my favourite Alan Moore creations ... one that I feel doesn’t get nearly enough love as it should. There’s a date written on the back of the page - 12 December 1980. That’s before Watchmen, before Saga of the Swamp Thing, even before V for Vendetta. And I can’t believe that I actually own it !

It’s difficult to call where the hammer will fall on this. The fact is that this is THE most key X-Men comic to come out in modern times, placing it at the uppermost echelons of modern superhero OA covers. The problem is that anymore who would have a real emotional connection to this comic or the character, is too young and unlikely to be player in this right now, unless they’ve have had some early career success. So anyone buying this now, aside from liking the art (which is great), would be paying up for the historical importance and possibly on a speculative basis that there is a good chance that this art will appreciate in the coming decades. My gut feeling is that there is enough ‘perceived’ value built into this page from the speculative aspect alone that it has a good chance of going over what it went for a few years ago.

I tend to open the door to the postman with an exacto knife in hand ... so I can open the package as soon as possible.

Is it the same artist as the one you wanted ?

Oh man, it hurt to read that story.

I second this. But let’s see the page that should have been and also the one that is.

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1633242 So I finally bought this page after pondering about it and staring at it on the Felix Comic Art website for ... TWO YEARS! I know, a real impulse buy. The art is by Tradd Moore from All New Ghost Rider #2. The reason I took so long to buy this isn’t because it was so expensive. In fact, it was one of the cheapest pages by Tradd on the website and I’ll say more on this subject later. The reason I took so long to get it is because it would have been - and indeed is - the first page of modern OA that I have bought and that falls outside of my comic art collecting mission statement. Although I have a very narrow collecting focus, I do read a copious amount of modern comics. I was worried that buying this page would be a gateway drug to completely derailing my collecting mandate, and I’ll just end up haphazardly buying pages from modern OA left right and centre, without any consideration of theme or focus. I had to work out in my mind exactly where this art would fit in my collection if I was to say, set up a museum of all my art. What would be the name/theme of the room that this art would be displayed in, and how would it relate to all the other art in my collection. Just to clarify, this museum only exists in my mind and may never in fact exist in reality. But the idea of this museum and a want list geared towards building it helps me manage my limited disposable income on OA. So it took pondering and ruminating for some two years before I could decide to buy this art. It’s baffling to me that this was still available on the website after all these years. Most of the pages from Tradd Moore’s Ghost Rider that featured the Rider or any kind of action had been snapped up quite some time ago. But maybe because this page on the surface seems like a mundane page, it had been left behind. But if you just scratch beneath the surface, this page features everything that Tradd Moore has come to be known for. This is a perfectly constructed page that clearly and succinctly tells a unit of story, without even the need for the dialogue bubbles. The first panel is an establishing shot that places the protagonist right in the centre. It also set up the overall geography of the place and all the surrounding players. Even the half eaten apple on the teacher’s table helps with the reader’s understanding of the geography of the classroom, whilst also serving a dual purpose of saying something about the kind of school this is. The ‘camera’ in Panel 2 cuts in the opposite direction without crossing the line and shows the meek teacher entering. The placement of the student couple helps the reader quickly understand the continuity with the first panel, where the camera is cutting to and what is happening. The third panel, which is right in the centre of the page, places its full focus on the protagonist (Robbie Reyes). It also sets up the antagonists in the background. The fourth panel links back to the first two panels involving the teacher, before the rest of the page moves onto dealing with the relationship and mood between the protagonist and antagonist. I’d say this page is intricate enough to be Watchmen-esque level of craft. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the best pages in this Ghost Rider comic. It has SO MANY story elements and SO MUCH art to look at and appreciate, that work both as individual elements and as a complete page. That said, if anyone has a “cool” action page with the Ghost Rider busting heads from this series they want to sell to me, please let me know Just note that I might take two years to think about it though Many thanks to @Nexus for an easy transaction.

Were you able to recover the piece.

I feel like when we’re taking about comics, a distinction needs to be made between ‘collecting’ comics and buying comics to read. I read a fair amount of comics, mostly digitally on comiXology or monthly services like Marvel Unlimited or Amazon Unlimited, and sometimes in trade paperbacks. But I wouldn’t say I’m collecting these. If any of these make a real impact and I feel they deserve multiple reads, I’ll buy the collected versions as oversized hardcovers or omnibuses or absolute editions. I suppose that at that point these form part of a collection on my shelf. But even then I wouldn’t consider that I’m collecting these as I readily give those away to friends who show an interest. And I can easily purchase them again at retail (mostly). BUT what I do collect when it comes to comics a some handful of key issues and first appearances. I’m not buying them to read them. And if I do want to read them, I can just read them digitally or in reprint. These comics I’m only buying only to collect.

A few relatively affordable Marvel first appearances. And some signed comics, hardcovers and bookplates by Alan Moore.

After starting collecting OA in 2017 and spending WAAAAY too much (relatively speaking), I took a two year break to focus academics and career development. Those efforts have thankfully proved fruitful and I’ve gotten back into collecting over last month or two. I sat down a few days ago to create my want list below. But it’s a lifetime want list that I expect to be working on over the next 30-50 years, rather than a 2020 want list. I’ll have to balance out costs versus how high up on the list something features when considering future acquisitions. Hopefully however the list will keep me focused and not too trigger happy on impulse buys. Jack Kirby inked by Royer page League of Extraordinary Gentleman page Miracleman (preferably Gary Leach) Watchmen (preferably an Manhattan or Ozymandias page) Tradd Moore pages Will Eisner graphic novel page Spawn page (preferably Capullo) Promethea page from early issues DR and Qunch page Sandman page Bill Sienkiewicz art Mr Magestic Big Chill page V for Vendetta page Halo Jones page Big Numbers page Superman #423 page Detective Comic #549 and #550 Night Olympics by Klaus Jensen page From Hell page Youngblood (Skroce/Liefeld) Killing Joke page Jim Lee/Scott Williams X-Men page Alex Ross painted art (maybe - is it worth the cost???)

Very nicely displayed.

This is an awesome plan! Love the X-Men and love themed / focused collections even more. Looking forward to updates on this thread.

If you search UK based listings on eBay for ‘2000ad original art’, there will be plenty of listings. https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1411591 This page from Skizz was an eBay purchase from a few years ago.

Oh

My friend says the dream is a sign that I’m getting obsessed with OA. Doesn’t get that obsession is part and parcel of collecting OA. That said, I’ve probably been cooped up in the apartment a little too long. Wait, is there such a thing? A Moebius piece written by Moore?

Today, I had a dream about meeting Moebius and getting a commission from him. I mean an actual dream. Not a figurative ‘I have a dream’ dream. I first spoke to a guy called Luke, who was either his rep or claimed to have connection to Mœbius. The guy said that the price of the commission was £310 British pound sterling plus another specific piece of art for trade. I don’t remember what that piece of art was but I remember that I didn’t have that page. But somehow I managed to track down the person who did. I think the guy’s name was Asif. My memory of this part is vague, but I recall Asif being quite willing to do a deal with me. A little too amenable actually. He was giving it away for free or for a ridiculously low value. I asked why he was giving this art away so easily; he said it belonged to his girlfriend Cathy whom he had broken up with recently and was doing this to spite her. I didn’t feel comfortable taking the art under those circumstances, so didn’t go through with the deal. In retrospect, the girlfriend part was something out of the movie High Fidelity that I had watched recently; so it’s likely that the movie was on my mind. In any case, returning to my dream, now that I didn’t have the art to trade for that commission, I figured I’d negotiate further with Luke and see if I could convince him to let me have the Mœbius piece for money alone or if there was something else he wanted. So I messaged Luke and I can’t remember what the contents of my correspondence with Luke were, but somehow I managed to speak to Mœbius directly on the phone. Moebius spoke English in my dream. The details are vague but he was excitedly regaling me about all these interesting new techniques he was considering adding to his art style. I asked if he would include these new techniques in my commission. He said “don’t be ridiculous, you’re not paying me nearly enough”. I guess even in my dreams I’m a cheap a$s and Mœbius is pretty sharp. He then invited me to a talk he was giving in Harvard University and said I could pick up the art there. Now although I’m based in the UK, in my dream, bizarrely I was able to walk to the talk in Harvard. I don’t remember what the talk was about. I think it was a panel of five. I vaguely remember not paying attention to the talk and impatiently texting Luke on my phone, waiting for Moebius to arrive. Moebius came out at some point during a break in the talk and gave me my commission. It was drawn on a pink A4 size paper, folded twice like a leaflet. There were three small pen and ink drawings, one on each of folding of the leaflet. I don’t remember what two of the drawings were, but the one in the middle was a self portrait of Mœbius. He also wrote a short paragraph of inscription in English, that ran across the lengthy of the page. It was signed in shiny glittery pen at the end by Mœbius. But before I could read what the inscription said, I woke up ... disappointed that I was out of a Mœbius commission.

Okay ... so got bored sitting at home. Bought some art and made some changes. The art is from Alan Moore’s Tom Strong #21 by Jerry Ordway (penciller) and Richard Friend (inker).