RBerman

Is it safe to put a thicker board in a portfolio? I got a painted John Van Fleet page from the Jim Young auction. It's on a much thicker, stiffer board than usual comics, and it has a tracing paper lettering overlay page to boot.

"Dear Bill, I took your commission because I foresaw open time in my schedule to do it. But I just got offered a large job on an ongoing series with a tight start date. I need to take this work, so I can't do your commission right now. I want to do a good job for you and not just rush out substandard work to fulfill the letter of my obligation to you. Would you like a refund, or would you like me to hold your deposit and get back to you in (insert estimate in months) to revisit the situation?" I would imagine most people who commission art would say, "Keep the money; thanks for the communication; get back with me in X months."

I hope this doesn't happen, but it probably does. It shouldn't. Regardless of whether the check is signed by Jeanette Kahn or Tom DeFalco or Joe Schmoe from Hoboken, a craftsman who accepts (and indeed requires) payment in advance of services rendered should feel morally obligated to deliver the work in a reasonable time frame, and not to prioritize other customers or consider them more a "real job." Sometimes circumstances will necessitate a delay; anyone working with an artist expects this to happen sometimes. But the onus is on the artist to reach out and say, "I haven't forgotten you" to the client, not make the client feel like a pest who has to ask, "Are you still there? Did you forget me?" The artists themselves have been known to get stiffed, so surely they can understand how nobody else wants to be in that position.

Fun stuff. If it's not too off-topic... where are all of the Watterson originals? Is he still holding on to them? I have my wife's blessing to seek one out.

This one freaked me out as a kid.

Bold statement! Tell us more.

Thank you for reminding us that the way in which fans want to interact with celebrities can be a downside all its own.

In general, there's little upside for celebrities (including comic book artists) to mingle with their fans. The fans love the work, and that causes them subconsciously to elevate the artist in general to a pedestal that no one can live up to in general. Real life can only disappoint, in any encounter longer than a couple of minutes.

No kidding? In the early 80s, Marvel was having surprising success turning dumb kids' toys into memorable comic book adventures. ROM, Micronauts, GI Joe, Transformers, etc. The only bomb that comes to mind is Team America.

"Too much like an oversized comic" sounds pretty good to me. There are cultural values at work here as well. In the USA, everthing is essentially new and transient. In most European countries, if you start excavating to build a new building, and you discover ruins, your future mall has just become a historical site instead of a commercial development. You may not make changes in your home without approval of the local historic homes board, because your ownership of the home is treated as custody of heritage. But in the USA, capitalism is the only rule. If a company is worth more in pieces, buy it, fire the employees, and sell the pieces. Likewise a piece of sequential art. If it can be divided, then divide it and sell the pieces. Gordon Gecko approves!

I'm not sure what direction this thread is supposed to go. Any cheesecake shot of a girl in a bathing suit could be identified as a superheroine out of costume. If I were an artist, it would be more fun to do like Renaissance painters and put contemporary people in super-hero scenes. I thought this was a clever cover for Storm #2 recently, casting young Ororo as the Obama's daughter, but the price went beyond my interest at the auction this week.

Can't be, because Marvel owns the art rights, but Hasbro owns the character rights. IDW had rights to make ROM comics most recently, resulting in some amusing team-ups.

ROM was basically "Silver Surfer vs the Body Snatchers." I read the whole series and enjoyed Sal Buscema's run but couldn't get into Ditko's version. The Dire Wraiths got retooled into more traditional monster aliens before being the subject of one of Marvel's first company-wide crossovers. I wouldn't mind owning a ROM page but haven't seen any at the usual places. Congrats on getting a whole issue!

Right, especially a full 22 page story with a mix of splash pages, characters in costume pages, ancillary characters talking pages, etc. The collectibility of the various pages varies wildly, and 22 pages out of a single book is out of the means of 99% of collectors.

Thanks. I did see the 18x24 on Amazon but thought, "Wow, that's really big." I guess there's no good intermediate between that and 13x19, which I can still keep on a bookshelf.

One very prominent early 80s artist agreed at a con to do a convention but didn't want to discuss details including price and asked me to come back the next day. I did, and eventually he said he really didn't to do anything. OK... Another prominent 90s/00s artist took payment on a convention commission but wasn't able to deliver at the con. OK, better get a good piece than a rushed piece. I emailed him once a month, which IMHO is not inordinate a frequency of communication when work for hire has been contracted and paid. I heard nothing the first month, got a "working on it" email the second month, and got the product the third month. I consider that acceptable, though a "working on it" confirmation the first month would have been appropriate. I assume people here know the story of Michael Golden turning Gerry Turnbull's late commission into an insult opportunity: https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-art-commissions-go-bad-michael.html On the positive side, I'll name a name. Yanick Paquette did a nice job for me, delivered at the same con, and he was excited to talk about his work and the writers with whom he had worked, a list including Moore and Morrison. Erica Henderson was likewise great. Barry Kitson gave me two bonus figures when I only paid for one Triplicate Girl. I posted the results in the commissions thread.

I'm having trouble finding the right size media storage for pages. I got an 11x17 Itoya portfolio, and another one that was 13x19, and thought I'd be good. But then I just got three Swamp thing pages that are 13x19.625, and I can't find a portfolio that makes sense for those.

As a newbie here, I'm intrigued to see that other members are variously buyers, sellers, or both in online auctions. The nature of a basic art sale is somewhat competitive, since buyer and seller have different ideas of what personally benefits them the most. But it's also somewhat collaborative, since both buyer and seller have some incentive to reach an agreement. An auction, however, seems more competitive: A sale is certain (barring reserve issues), so all that's left is competition between potential buyers. So my question is: Do long-time members find that this forum makes them more or less aggressive at auctions, given that you know some of the people against whom you are bidding, and maybe know which pieces they're trying to acquire? Do you bid less, or on fewer pieces? Have you ever had a private conversation divvying up potential auction items so as not to run up the price on pieces of mutual interest?

There's no question that he knew better. He just didn't think he'd get caught.

Interesting. What is the purpose of using vellum, if it's not traced from something behind it? Perhaps there is a now-missing smaller piece from which the vellum page was traced?

Over in the commissions page, I posted my Grell Wildfire from last September. Here's a page I got from his work on X-Men Forever 2. It was mis-labeled as containing Kitty in the auction, because of Lockheed. The dragon is actually sitting on "Ro," the young version of Ororo. Hence the white hair and white eyes.

I got some Kitson pages today from Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes #23. Two sketch pages (one in pencil and one surprisingly in ink) and the corresponding final inked pages. And then.... what is this? It's a shrunken ink rendition of one of the pages, on thick tracing paper. Signed and dated. Does it have some role in the production process? Or something else?

I wish there were more interest in reprints. I'd like to see another volume of Byrne FF Omnibus myself.

Kirby Checklist acquired in print form. It has this to say: It's placed in the section "unpublished work" rather than "unverified work." I guess someone thought its provenance was verified, by means unknown.

Monday night is a terrible time for me. But the weekly auctions have not had a lot of material that I'm passionate about anyway, and I suspect the stuff I want most is way out of my league as well.