RBerman

90s, era of the tiny head... I blame Liefeld, but Art Adams too.

In cast anyone wants to see some up close shots of various parts... I see a small area on the left foot, more obvious on the photo than with the naked eye, which looks like a bit of erasing. Other areas show a bit of underlying sketch.

I did not know about this book but have now ordered it, thanks. If the sketch is in the book, then at least that supports the idea that Kirby did draw a sketch which looks just like the one I bought. Hopefully the very one that I bought. Kublak's powers do not appear to include invisibility, so I assume the fading left leg is just for effect/unfinished. It doesn't look erased. Here's his apperance in Phantom Force:

I mean, artists can ask. But they too are trying to have it both ways if they want to sell the art for one price now and get a cut of profits from future resales. Whoever bears the risk of trading liquidity for art will also reap the future rewards of appreciated value, if any. There are certainly creators holding on to some or most of their work anticipating a future bonanza, and that's their right.

Thank you, Grapeape. I'm particularly interested in Thibodeaux's thoughts about the art quality seen here compared to, say, Super Powers. I know Thibodeaux was privy to Kirby's Phantom Force pencils in the period in which this pin-up would have been produced. How does it compare?

Yes, my newbie take is that sketches can't be trusted, which is really too bad since they're good for the artist (more income) and good for the fan community (new art with potentially interesting new poses and character combinations). But they're too easily subverted by the unscrupulous to fleece the gullible (a group which may include me). For those seeing this thread without the benefit of the decades of knowledge alluded to above, here are some relevant direct links: https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/10/original-art-stories-mystery-of-jack.html https://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/10/19/greg-theakston-sothebys-and-the-great-jack-kirby-scam/ https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/dynamics/2011/10/23/re-shame-on-you-danny-boy/

I purchased two pages (one Hellraiser by John Van Fleet, and one from Marshall Rogers' "Safe Streets" from Bizarre Adventures) in which the text balloons and and captions are on a piece of tracing paper taped to the top edge of the original art. The tracing paper is not pristine, with some cracks and folds, but the underlying art is fine. Obviously leaving it "as is" preserves both pages most reliably, but then the art pages are quite obscured. Is there an accepted way to separate the pages and then store the text page so the art can be seen? The three options are "cut the tape" or "fold the tracing page behind the art page" or "never mess with original art."

This thread makes me a bit queasy. Last month, I was led to the Cool Lines page from Comic Art Fans. I inquired about a New Mutants page that had an actual price listed, not just "Inquire." I got back an email with a listing of many New Mutants pages avaialble for sale, with prices. An impressive collection. The email price for the page I was interested in was five times what the web site said. Not the first time a web site has failed to reflect actual available art and price, but still a little annoying. I gues the market is in flux enough that large collections are difficult to keep updated prices on the web? Also, some of the pages were listed by their page within the published issue instead of sequential art pages, and a couple of the descriptions did not match what I knew the contents of the page in question to be. An email exchange cleared that up, and I ended up buying two non-splash pages ($700 and $1350 for pages 4 and 19 respectively) from New Mutants #10, a personal childhood favorite by Sal B and Mandrake. Got a reasonable discount on shipping for buying two at once also. Still, stories like this make me leery of looking for more in their admittedly impressive collection. And leery of buying non-published pages in general.

New collector here, just getting my feet wet in the last couple of months. The thread about the fake Shuster got me a little spooked. Last month at the Profiles in History action of "a distinguished collector," I picked up a pin-up purported to be by Kirby of his late (late 80s/early 90s) character Kublak. It came without CoA or details of its origin. The page is 14x7.75 inches; I cropped the white sides off the image below. I assume that at this point it would be impossible to prove that it is Kirby's work, but does anything about it cast doubt?