glendgold

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/steve-ditko-strange-tales-117-story-page-5-doctor-strange-original-art-marvel-1964-andlt-/p/7229-85001.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Interesting. I'm kinda sorta bearish on where this will end up, but hey that's just one day into the complete societal economic collapse. Maybe things will be looking up in May. Did the pages from this story vanish into a black hole or is the ownership of any of them known? G

Oh, thanks - I'm glad to hear it.

Wait - looks like it did sell for $12K, unless I'm mis-reading.

I didn't know this till having seen the above issues for the first time, but is my favorite Aparo Deadman Phantom Stranger cover:

Wow, this auction house is problematic. Here's another one: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/-1-c-09541FAA19?utm_source=inv_kwalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=keywordalertlive&utm_term=2 This is copied from the "Roz" sketchbook. Scott Eder just sold the real one on eBay a few weeks ago. The auctioneer is no stranger to problems with attribution: https://westfaironline.com/118133/california-woman-sues-mount-kisco-charity-shop-over-hermes-birkin-knockoff/

I'm a little vague on details and am sure someone else here was paying better attention at the time, so chime in. Broke up mmmmmaybe 20 years ago? Not every page surfaced. Lotsa talk at the time like "Sure it's a #1, but look at all the different hands in it" so pages sat a bit. I think people almost instantly regretted doing that.

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/82464918_signed-pencil-drawing-after-jack-kirby-silver?from=alert&utm_source=SavedAlert&utm_campaign=SearchAlert_20190911_B&utm_medium=email&utm_content=item This is copied from this: https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/illustrations/jack-kirby-1975-comic-art-convention-program-silver-surfer/a/7066-93280.s

Wow, what a great page! I remember when this book broke up there was a lot of concern about how oddball many pages looked, since Everett was late and other artists had to finish the pages (iirc,Ditko was involved), but this one is really 100% on-target. I love the Golden Age feel to it.

Yeah, it was, uh, aspirational.

Whoah. The ASM 32 pages passed.

The FF parody in issue #1 is definitely full Kirby pencils. But by issue 5, it's much more sketchy.

I'd say "layouts" is a strong possibility, given those arrows pointing to all the floating heads, with the chopped-off text that suggests Stan or someone was pointing out who each character is supposed to be.

If you know something, cool. But otherwise: auctioning for tax reasons; for estate planning reasons; because his kids don't want it; because two or more people have asked for those pages; because he's Marie Kondo-ing his life; because he finally realized he had art by THAT John Byrne; because of a gypsy's curse requiring he only unload during a pandemic; because he's funding Kitty Pride's trip back to 1978; because he's using HA credit to bid on those 5 bottles of 2005 Domaine de la Romanee Conti La Tache; he regrets every decision in his life and is looking to unload evidence of his shame; he's had therapy;

I'm pretty sure Chris Claremont is doing okay.

Yes, there was. Around that time period, Jim Shooter was allowing writers to receive art. There was a point in 1978 when he had proposed an every-other-book trade off with the inker, but I think that didn't fly with the artists. I'm not sure how many pages writers ended up with, but there was a cbg ad in the early '80s where Gerber was selling all of his pages to fund his legal battles.

Ahhh the circle of life. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sal-Buscema-Joe-Sinnott-Original-Artwork/184189523564?hash=item2ae28d166c%3Ag%3ANrAAAOSwLlleWKqZ%3Asc%3AUSPSPriority!90039!US!-1&LH_BIN=1

Holy cow, the buyers premium is 25%. So that's 10K.

This is aspirational, or aggressive, or something: Sells for $2640 in a Feb 14th ebay auction: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sal-Buscema-Joe-Sinnott-Original-Art-The-Hulk-Wolverine-Capt-Marvel-Iron-Man-/254494832247?nma=true&si=SdO%2BevSJNJcYgh%2FbM45ehaAmZQY%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 And now it's up for auction at a different place, with a minimum bid of $8000: https://natedsanders.com/LotDetail.aspx?inventoryid=57493

Russ produced the first original artwork catalogue I ever saw, Graphic Gallery, the predecessor to his auctions. I'm fairly sure the first one I sent away for was #4, in 1974, when I was ten. This was the first time I saw Frazetta art for sale - pen and ink pieces for the massive sum of $75. It shaped my understanding of what all the adults who had $75 were interested in - Foster, Raymond, Herriman, Barks etc. There was some boilerplate in them about how they weren't just displays of items for sale, but were to be catalogues, too, of artwork you might never see again because it would end up in permanent collections. I was just leafing through a couple of his catalogues and this description turns out to be TOTALLY ACCURATE. Or, at least, accurate until the Lucas Museum opens up.

I think they mixed up Rio and Bold.

Nagel went out in the most '80s way possible, heart attack 15 minutes into a celebrity aerobics-a-thon sponsored by Playboy. While I was looking him up to confirm this memory, I learned something Gene would like us to know: "In 2017, his Japanese canvas version of Duran Duran's Rio album cover broke an all time record, selling for US$212,000." BUT that might not be the OA to the album, right? Sounds like he started painting after the album came out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Nagel

About Eisner: my hunch is that the market is stronger and narrower than you might think. Sure, he was an early adopter of graphic novels in the '70s, but the work that people actually want is for one character in one short time period. Plenty of pages from The Spirit, 1946-52, have shown up but very few A+ pages, much less stories, have traded publically. So I'm not sure what that market actually looks like. Disney looks like they're talking a lot about Jack as The Eternals winds up. Curious to see how that pans out, but it's not going to move the needle for fine art folks one bit. Since Kirby drew for commercial purposes, fine art folks might understand he can be studied, like drive-in movies, or prized, like old French advertising posters, but he's never going to be embraced.

The part of this ball point sketch that I keep staring at is Thor's boot's...tongue, I guess? That slashing diagonal line of shading is divided into two sections to indicate that the fabric is bending, which is pretty advanced for a forgery...unless it's copying something Jack did that all the time. Which he didn't. I've been combing over Thor pencil pieces and he seems to have done the shading on this part of the costume every which way, horizontal, vertical, etc. So...I dunno.

Yes, if only Albert had made a killing in the last 25 years. I figured Albert was savvy enough, even in his first interview, to give advice that would get people to his table. Dude has Duveen-level marketing skills, chapeau bas.

EDIT: Someone I respect tells me he thinks it's fake. He doesn't like the writing, nor the weird details like the strap. So my position is . Nonetheless, if someone wins this, get it out of that frame, carefully - the peril of being up against glass is probably equal to the peril of the acids in that cardboard backing.