RBerman

With some "Breakfast Club" thrown in on the side.

A mix for sure. Online auctions are always running. So are artist web sites. But conventions are a convenient opportunity to encounter good artists that you wouldn't have thought to look for, often cheaper than the artists that were already on your radar. Some of my favorite pieces have been acquired that way.

The reason there's a "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" is that Marvel had a specific visual language for their unrealism in the early Bronze Age. Proportions are skewed and joints improbably flexible. This is long before the infamous "broken back" poses of the Copper Age. It's also why some people (not me) complain about the realism of Alex Ross, which hearkens back to the marketing illustrations of the 1950s and 1960s. Galactus does look like more of a weenie with normal human proportions if we're accustomed to seeing him Marvel-style.

An Alex Ross page finally came up in my price range. Ray Palmer is recuperating from one sneak attack with his wife Jean, while Giganta enters the room disguised as a nurse, preparing to attack again.

I thought it might. I'm surprised never to have seen that before now. So what does "internet but not Heritage Live" mean? Where do the phone bidders fall?

Watching the anime/manga auction today, I saw a new bid type. Usually there's just "internet" and "Heritage Live" but today I also saw "floor." What does that mean? Is it the opposite of a chandelier bid? I guess "Heritage Live" bid refers to the use of the Heritage web site's live feed section. What is "internet" apart from that?

Andy Belanger DPS from the sci-fi ghost story "Southern Cross." This has rapidly become the second-most commented piece on my CAF account.

He did in fact receive a 2022 CAF reward for the volume of his posts, but in the award ceremony, discussion was about the overall quality of his posts as well.

Zag when they zig!

I'm still new (3.5 years) into collecting, and I mainly get pages that I enjoy looking at, regardless of how familiar I am with the artist or character, or whether it's an action scene, a posed shot, or talking heads. That means my collection skews towards new works, many from the last five years. I do have a bucket list of older favorite artists from whom I want a nostalgia piece, and I'm resigned that it's not going to be one of the pages that generates a feeding frenzy on Heritage.

Nice! Who are they by?

Something a little different for me: A pair of early 1990s album covers from "West Coast Diaries Vol 2 and 3" by musician Charlie Peacock. The art was done by his guitarist, Jimmy Abegg. First he did a painting, then photographed it, made 11x14 prints of the photograph, and then painted those further. The result was three album covers, one for each volume of West Coast Diaries. The red cover sold years ago, but the artist still had the yellow and blue covers.

I recently bought a piece of traditional art said to be a new cover somehow related to some NFT issuance of Avengers Annual #10, the debut of Rogue, with Michael Golden art. I've not been able to find said NFT of the Avengers Annual on the web, though, so I'm not sure how it relates to the original publication. Oh well, I like it just as art anyway.

What's the total census of Marvel 60s pages anyway? As I recall, DC was distributing Marvel at the time and only allowed them a small number of titles each month. Whereas DC had more titles but apparently shredded a lot of the OA. Judging by the pages I've been able to afford, it seems that DC work is about twice as available as Marvel work today.

... Here's a fun page from Dr. Horrible by Scott Hepburn. Behold, the Evil League of Evil!

Here's another great example of "tight pencils, affordable art." It's an action sequence from Wonder Woman #47 (2015) by Miguel Mendonça. Every page was in the Morlock budget. Even the DPS as whole. It has plenty of captions and dialogue in the printed version but also plays just fine as a silent film.

I picked up a couple of commissions from another collector; one is by Michael Netzer, and one by Nate Pride. Both homage John Byrne's cover to X-Men #141.

Every day I watch my Bruce Timm piece inch toward the day it will overtake my older E. Basaldua piece in total views. It's my spectator sport. None of mine have even 1000 views, but I'm happy with my collection. The main sharing satisfaction I get is from showing pages to artists themselves.

It works even better with two extra zeroes.

I won one by accidentally having an extra zero on my original bid weeks ago. Oops!

Also at Dragon Con, I got a whole bunch of Sean Chen pages from the series Avengers Academy. They hit my sweet spot of nice art for a nice price. Also kudos to Chen and writer Christos Gage for clear storytelling.

This shows that subject matter counts within the strip. Here's a $20,000 sale of a 1935 strip with tons of action: Compared to a talky 1937 strip that sold for $550: 40x spread between the two prices! I'd also expect Dragon Lady to jack up the price, while the presence of the Asian stereotype character Connie likely makes some buyers uncomfortable.

A few I commissioned at Dragon Con. First, Bob Hall did a Vision/Scarlet Witch color piece. He also remarqued my Squadron Supreme omnibus, despite some weird glossy black paper in the front of it. I got one Shadowcat piece from Karl Moline: And another Kitty commission from Anthony Fowler, Jr.

I got several pieces at Dragon Con 2022 that fit the bill for this thread. One was this pencil version of an ink cover I already possessed. It's for White Widow, by Chris Ehnot, rendered in landscape format, though it was published rotated portrait-wise.

Dragon Con 2022 report, part one! Lots of great folks there. Frank Cho, JRJr, Starlin, David Mack, Bogdanove, Bendis, Bagley, and more. Then at a party, I got to see hundreds of Roy Krenkel sketches of jungle men and sabretooth tigers. Hundreds! I thought I would never buy a monoprint, but it turns out if it's really cool, I will. Here's a huge party at the Hall of Justice with over three dozen heroes being serenaded by Superman. To sweeten the deal, artist Yanick Paquette rendered a large Wonder Woman remarque on the back side since she apparently wasn't invited to the party. She's resting her foot on the crimped seal.