vodou

I'm republishing here what I wrote for the current Comic and Fantasy Amateur Press Association (CFA-APA) mailing.

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A Few Thoughts on Roger Hill

Since Roger and I collected comics material and originals from very different eras, the age gap of him being 25 years my senior meant we simply had different nostalgic touchstones, ours was not the common hobby relationship of mutually aiding and advancing our respective collections. Instead he, to me, was a mentor and The Founder of CFA-APA, and thus a visionary too as he began this thing way back in 1985 which was the same year I was a newly minted teen and nearly a decade still removed from my own first original art acquisition. Roger was buying up all the best EC covers and stories he could swing from Russ Cochran's auctions, visiting the EC original art vault with Bill Gaines, taping long interviews with the artists of decades quickly fading away, and me...well, I was scrounging for quarters to buy extra copies of this crazy new Bill Sienkiewicz “happening” on The New Mutants, that's about all I knew comic art from¹. In 1985. So yeah, the power of “comic Art” was seeping in but I was hardly there yet, and certainly not reading nor writing about it. I was thirteen, and the prospect and distraction of “girls!”² was quickly becoming a reality too.

When I finally joined Roger's CFA-APA, it was right around Thanksgiving 1999, going on fifteen years after it all started, and the night before flying out to Paris for art³. A couple of weeks later I was reading the writings of others in my new member “sample” copy of CFA-APA #50, before writing my own freshman submission for the next mailing, it was Roger's contribution I looked to first, for direction (proper form, etc) and later inspiration, as my own writing and presentation style matured. More than anything anybody has ever written in CFA-APA, it was Roger's stories, his adventures in discovering or being somehow dealt in early to some of the truly amazing “barn find” type discoveries and hoard distributions of our hobby, from a time when the art seeking hobby was largely uncharted and rather mysterious, that got me. Roger had a reputation, a good one, and only built upon it over time, this meant he also made the connections and got the phone calls. People, often older retired artists, didn't always know what they had or what it was worth; Roger helped with that, and in doing so saved some pretty great stuff from ending up in various landfills, along with building out his own collection in ways I'm sure he never could have anticipated seven decades ago when he began.

I'm not Roger, not even close; I don't have his reputation nor his contacts, the hobby was already fast maturing financially, larger and larger prices at auction, by the time I was a serious entrant too, but I do my best to share what I hope are interesting stories from my 30 years with art and 40 years collecting things worth collecting, stories nobody else could write, in each and every mailing I contribute to – in the main body, in the comments too. I think we all have lots of interesting stories to tell, or at least perspectives on hobby-shared experiences, but not everybody puts them to paper; because of Roger, I do. I never mentioned this to him, that he had inspired me this way. I'm not so sure that matters, this is more for all of you, to know that I've been honoring him in this manner already for many years, and will continue to do so.

Roger and I only corresponded outside the pages of CFA-APA a handful of times, but each e-mail was memorable. Even though my interest in the minutia of Bill Gaines and EC comics and original art is minor, it's all a little outside my comfortable budget, I wisely bought his EC Fan-Addict Fanzine direct from him, issues 1-3, I wanted to support his writing and dedicated effort more than anything. Somehow I missed ECFAF #4; #5 just came in a few weeks ago. I've got stacks of stuff, all sorts of stuff, everywhere and in my “retirement” I'm catching up on five decades of too busy at the time (look-it girls, look-it cars, work-work-work, look-it art, work-work, look-it girls!!!) deferred reading. This week I'm working through ECFAF #5, it's surprisingly interesting, even for someone like me that doesn't have a great desire for deep EC lore; I do love a good story though. Roger wrote about half the articles and they're just as good as what I'm used to seeing in our own pages here, with a little more polish. Man, am I glad I have the first three (with a full inch of dust on top of #1, ha ha) to go through next; they're kinda hard to find and pricey now too on eBay.

Many years ago, at least twenty now, but maybe more like thirty, Roger had discovered a very large stash of illustration art, cover paintings for so-called sleaze digests and paperbacks from the 1950s and 60s. They were all out of the Balcourt Agency; the publishers would contract with Balcourt for art, and Balcourt had a stable of artists they would farm the work out to. The publishers returned the original paintings to Balcourt, but Balcourt didn't return them to the artists. Three to four decades later all these paintings were just stacked in somebody's garage on Long Island. Roger became aware of this situation and moved in to save them from the city dump. At some point he turned this hoard into a very long-running series of weekly eBay auctions, all listed under his kidkameron handle, a handle which I quickly saw was one I needed to watch very closely, the quantity and quality of listings was just that good. Only later when I won a painting did I find out that kidkameron was actually Roger!

My recollection is that he was listing five or so paintings at a time, per week, all really nice trash content, and quite well done artistically too. I paid attention to the whole thing, being pretty sleazy myself (ha ha) and won those I could afford, lost so many more by just one snipe bid, oh the pain (and regret ever since), and won a few I really couldn't afford too, requiring some serious scramble to pay for them! Looking at my records now, most of the artists were not identified or attributed, but Roger was able to match nearly all of the paintings to their publication use. The information he had or was able to figure out was written, in his very identifiable hand, on the back of each piece. After he had exhausted this hoard, the weekly eBay auctions finally ended (it seemed they never would, it was surreal at the time), I looked back and realized he'd been doing this almost non-stop for four or five years! Do the math, five or so paintings weekly by so many years, what a tremendous find! What a tremendous save!

I wrote Roger and asked for details on this amazing and large find, it was just so cool. I wanted to know everything I could about these paintings he'd come into, so many and of such fine trashy quality, some of which ended up with me. He wasn't ready to really go into it then but what he did tell me I've written above. Over many subsequent years I brought the subject up occasionally, hoping he would organize his thoughts and put them down in writing, reminding him that, along with myself, the entire CFA-APA really enjoyed his “hoard” stories, would enjoy reading this one too. Clearly, this wasn't a priority for him though, Roger always left it that he would do so someday but wouldn't commit to when. For the last ten years, since I had managed to acquire (aka “overpay” for) the one painting I really regretted being the eBay under-bidder on many years before, a 1953 paperback cover by Walter Popp, letting Roger know about this and what it meant to me, I've been waiting to see him one day publish the full story behind this “hoard find” of his. I'm working through just letting this all go now, that there's so much more to the story which it seems will never be known.

More recently, just two years ago, Roger realized that he could help two people out at the same time. One of them was me; at the end of each of my articles then (and resurrected now) I was posting a short list of CFA-APA back mailings that I needed to replace those that were damaged in a really crummy incident...one I'm still having trouble fully documenting here, dispassionately, the wound is still open. (It's just “stuff”, I really need to get over it!) See, prior to “the incident” I had accomplished the seemingly impossible – building out a complete set of CFA-APA mailings (not including supplements and gifts...truly impossible, if you weren't a member all along that saved everything!) one at a time from eBay, from #49 back, then disaster! and some were lost; I wanted to do it again, get back to complete.

Well Roger, he had a friend local to him with one of those needed mailings, and this fellow was older and on hard times, the entire affair was small money but it was money that would really be helpful to this person. Eschewing my usual hard bargain personality, I simply agreed to what Roger proposed, even sending extra money “just cuz” and Roger took care of the rest. He even included a short hand-written note, right on the Table of Contents page itself...perhaps to dissuade any temptation I might have to monetize the other person's misfortune?

All good, there was a time long ago when self-dealing could have been my underlying motive, but these days my mission was as stated, no ulterior temptation existed, and I consider Roger's longish and considered dedication to be a fine closer to another fun CFA-APA story! Too bad it's not quite done yet though; in the course of our conversation, I did promise Roger that I would write up my disaster! story for CFA-APA, a promise I have yet to fulfill. Even though it happened seven years ago, at the end of March 2017, I'm still not ready to go there yet. Instead of fulfilling my promise to Roger now, just not ready, yet, I'll give my recommended advice, advice that surprised him then as so shockingly obvious yet likely never considered by anybody before, not even by himself, advice that Roger very much wanted every collector to be aware of: it only cost me $1,000, parts and labor, to get a second sump pump added daisy-chain-style above the first, so JUST DO IT!, for peace of mind and in case the lower first goes and the homeowner isn't immediately aware and able to get it fixed or replaced. Spend the $1,000, now; save yourself potentially (and in my case definitely) a six figure tax loss.

A final Roger today: Five years ago I shared⁴ a Steve Ditko original I have, one that appeared in every way to be a cut tier from a 1970s twice up Charlton horror story. At the time I'd already had it for about ten years and, not having any sort of Charlton comic book collection at all, and even less knowledge or familiarity with the subject too, still had no idea what comic or story it was part of, or if it had even been published. This interesting original was just another one of those little hobby mysteries I hoped to solve one day. Being frank, I have hundreds or even a thousand such mysteries lurking in the corners of my mind; it's likely few if any will be figured out in my lifetime. I don't lose sleep over any of them, not really (he lies to himself!)

The next mailing Roger commented back to me: ...that Ditko panel is incredible! I have at least a thousand Charlton comics in my collection, the majority of which are horror, and I'm going to make it one of my dedicated goals to find that Ditko panel and nail down for you which title and issue number it was published in. Ditko remains an enigma of comic's history and one of my top favorites.

What a sweet thought his was. I've been touched ever since by how I was understood by this fellow collector, my strong desire to nail down just what I had and it's place in the hobby, but especially that Roger was going so far as to write publicly that he would help.

An unexpected outcome of connecting with another Ditko collector in Paris just after summer closed last year led me to a blogger (among other things) named Nick Caputo who had been writing a lot about Ditko, that perhaps this fellow might help me identify what I had. Amazingly, Nick had written about my exact panel on his blog in 2017: A spirit in despair over his son's tyrannical behavior. Ditko conveys the father's pain in a long shot as he sits on a gravestone framed by tree branches. And that's how I found out my original was published in Haunted #5 (April 1972), at the bottom of page 6 of the story “This Is How It Is!”.

Can you believe I didn't immediately e-mail Roger to let him know? No, I can't believe I didn't either, but then I was never one to “bother” people I'm not really close to with a lot of direct correspondence, and I had the sense that Roger was, aside from his EC and CFA-APA endeavors, a very private person. I thought he might enjoy seeing the outcome laid out in a future CFA-APA mailing instead. Well the timing just did not line up; I can only hope that he knows I appreciated his generous offer, that his sentiment toward resolving the collector's plight meant much more to me than the actual information even, that I wanted to simply write: Thank you.

That same 2019 mailing where he responded to me, CFA-APA #107, Roger led his contribution: Some of our APA members may not realize it, but through their APA contributions, they are documenting the history of comic art in America. And we've been doing that for 35 years now, which is hard to believe. The passing of time has a way of forgetting history, unless it's written about and published somewhere. For every fact that we write about in these pages, ten other facts will be loss [sic] to the ages, forever. Sounds a bit mellow-dramatic [sic] doesn't it? And it probably is, but I think it's true. Then Roger goes right into yet another of his and I was one of the guys that got called first stories, this time about visiting early and deep Wrightson collector Sandy Blatt in his home and then later when circumstances changed taking on as much of Sandy's Wrightson art as he could swing at the time. Do I really need to keep on going here? No. What he wrote in that introductory paragraph, that was Roger, that's what CFA-APA is about, that's what I'm about: telling my stories, and enjoying all of yours; it's great!

1The very first comic book I ever picked up “just because of the art”, a title I wasn't already blindly collecting, was New Mutants #26 with a cover date of April 1985, meaning it was on stands right around my 13^th birthday in January of that year. I liked that cover so much I bought several copies over the years, as I bumped into them, just because they were dead mint and looked so good. That cover, and man I really wondered how it was physically executed too, was on my earliest GET LIST when I switched over to art too, until Mitch Itkowitz offered it to me in 2000, that or Bill's Moon Knight #1 cover -my choice (but not both), $5,000 each. That was a big number to me then, really big, and it just turned me off enough to both, I felt I was being gouged way above market, that I turned far away to other comic art pursuits and just never had the taste again for either of those pieces since. Still, that New Mutants cover, with actual masking tape used in it's production by Bill, holds a special place in my my memory.

😁

....writes VampiGuy 😉