RBerman

I am super-slow on the uptake but just realized that this page which I purchased from Los Bros last year had its vellum surprint cut out and glued directly to panels 4 and 5. I noticed it was a different kind of paper, but it didn't register that they wouldn't/couldn't have achieved this effect at the printer unless the vellum was on a different sheet during production.

That's awesome. Not just that you have such a collection, but that you would try to reunite such a key issue. I hope you succeed.

IIRC = "If I recall correctly"

Now the Alex Ross page from Justice got pulled. Bummer.

So the order of events was: 1) Sienkiewicz painted a particular Joker/Batman piece. 2) That piece was stolen. 3) The owner of the stolen piece had Sienkiewicz make another that looked similar to the stolen piece. 4) That second piece was put up for auction. 5) The auction house used an image of the stolen piece instead of the current piece. 6) The owner didn't check to see whether the image used was of the original piece or the new piece. 7) Someone noticed that an image of a stolen piece was listed for auction, and reported it, and now the cops are involved. Is that it? Commissioning a recreation of stolen art seems like asking for trouble. Moreso in retrospect.

If I were auctioning a piece valued at five figures, I would check the web site early and often to see what the listing looked like. I would notice when the image didn't match the piece in my collection. Maybe that's just me.

Case in point, this overnight commission that Yanick Paquette did for me at Dragon Con last fall. I just said "Bulleteer," and he came up with a more interesting scene than I would have thought of if I had tried to limit his expression.

If new collector blood is entering the market more than collectors are leaving (i.e. demand is increasing for a fixed supply), or if a fixed number of collectors finds their discretionary income increasing, then the price increases are organic and likely to sustain within the lives of the collectors in question. Is that what's happening. Heritage and ComicLink surely know a whole lot about who is new in their market, who is petering out, who is spending more than they did last year, etc. Much analysis could be done if depersonalized data were available.

Did Bob ever get back on his feet?

He has stuff by other artists?

Colleen Doran reported losing stacks of art to a leaky roof in the workroom on her farm.

What's CBSI? Doesn't bode well for a hobby that the hobbyists don't want to talk about it! It happens, I guess.

What other online comic book communities are you a part of? Over at the Classic Comics Forum (https://classiccomics.org/forum) we were discussing our stagnant membership, and it occurred to me that other comic fan communities might be experiencing the same thing. Where do you go to chat about your hobby? CBR? Facebook forums? Artist-specific bulletin boards like Byrne Robotics? Where else?

On ComicLink, it says "Reserve not met yet." So perhaps the ComicLink contact allows it to remain on eBay until the reserve is met. Stay tuned...

A slew of Swan/Anderson pages from early 70s Action Comics and Superman issues have been making a steady stream on Heritage Auctions for the last month or more, but not for $999. I guess there's always the hope of an eBay buyer who doesn't know where similar pages can be had more cheaply. If not for COVID-19, I probably would have picked up one myself.

Profiles in History asked me whether I was a dealer (and thus exempt from sales tax) or not.

Is there a business review site on which comments can be registered about their practices? Some businesses have Google Reviews or Facebook Reviews baked in, but for some reason this one does not.

When my commission package from Daniel Cvammen arrived, it had two more watercolor freebies in it. The one on the left is some kind of plant woman who works in an office. The one on the right seems to be a first draft of Warlock in Cvammen's usual style, before he apparently decided to accept the challenge of a more Sienkiewiczean Warlock, as seen a few posts upthread.

Wow, that's a lot for a print which, according to the auction offer, "was sent from Universal Press Syndicate to newspapers that carried the strip." That's a lot of newspapers, thus a lot of prints. Maybe many weren't well preserved, but still...

I love Paul Smith and John Cassaday for their simplicity, and Art Adams for his complexity. Jack Kirby draws the best machines. I love Ross' photorealism, but moreso when the background is filled with Easter eggs.

Daniel Cvammen turned in a nice Warlock commission for me, at a very affordable price. If you dig his techno-mutated style, check out his web site. Here is Daniel with his work.

Yup. The leg fade makes perfect sense in the context of the Rahmin drawing since he seems to be entering through some dimensional portal with bright light obscuring. Not so much for the decontextualized Kublak sketch. The line-by-line similarity of the knees is another giveaway, unless other drawings show this was a Kirby stereotype or something.

Exactly. Freakanomics discusses how brokers hold out for higher offers when selling their own homes but encourage you to take lower offers on your own home, so they can move on to the next client.

Update: A user on CAF saw the sketch on my wall and pointed out this very similar sketch which appeared in Kirby Collector #21. It's a character named Rahmin described as a concept drawing for some animation project. The pose is the same as my Kublak piece. The lines are essentially identical from the ankles down, and the face as well, minus the Kublak mask. Would Kirby have copied himself in this way, or is it more likely to be someone else lifting different details from different Kirby drawings to make a new forged composite? Here is the Kublak sketch again for easy comparison of the lines.

The Sesnsational She-Hulk issue references the Alpha Flight issue.