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

14 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

I will echo this comment. I was that newbie collector more than a decade ago who bought a (supposed) Kirby Thing piece and Glen provided valuable guidance on the error of my ways, which helped me to return the piece and get my money back. Thanks again @glendgold!

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

1 hour ago, LenCat said:

Looks like the public caught on. The piece didn't sell. Last I saw it was $5kish and didn't meet reserve. Now it's available to "Make offer to owner" starting at $12k. I don't know if the owner believes this is Kirby but you would think someone at Heritage would be knowledgeable enough to point out to the owner that it is not.

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

1 hour ago, batman_fan said:

That one is definitely better 

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/

19 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

 

Agreed, I would love more on the backstory @glendgold

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.

7 minutes ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

I was interested, but the reserve was too high...

Yeah, it was, uh, aspirational. 

Whoah. The ASM 32 pages passed. 

21 minutes ago, bluechip said:

Sutton's style may have dominated a bit more than the average Kirby fan would like, but I'd always heard that Jack liked doing the Brand Ecch pieces.  Especially love the 1st issue FF parody and it appears to be detailed Kirby pencils ,

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.

38 minutes ago, RBerman said:

Piles of money have gone through his hands, doubtless. Is he unloading some of the most famous comics pages ever because his cash reserves are overflowing? Hmm...

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;

2 hours ago, RBerman said:

So when Chris Claremont sells X-Men pages, it's not like he has a hundred more at home. He must really need the money.

I'm pretty sure Chris Claremont is doing okay.

14 minutes ago, J.Sid said:

Was there a time when writers (Marvel) received artwork from books they worked on?  Or has it always been penciller/inker?

(asked out of curiosity sparked from the two Claremont Byrne X-Men pages in HA)

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

36 minutes ago, AnkurJ said:

That was a quick one! Also I’m sure there is buyers premium as well.

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

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.

1 hour ago, delekkerste said:

No idea what that $212K sale is referring to; I never heard anything about it nor can I find any documentation or attribution on the Internet.  I wouldn't be surprised if it's an erroneous statement. @pinupcartoonguy do you know the deal??

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

9 minutes ago, Varanis said:

I agree, but I think influence is both a strong variable in calculating nostalgia as well as being a less important but still non-zero variable in pricing. I think nostalgia is and will be the primary driver for Kirby still; it just won't necessarily always be direct nostalgia for the Kirby comics themselves. The x-factor for Kirby is that Marvel is going to be nostalgic for more generations than essentially any IP in history. If Disney decides and promotes the idea that Kirby is the progenitor of the IP, then Kirby originals are suddenly a collectible understood and desired by the mainstream. 

While Eisner and Kirby are probably fair to compare in terms of influence, I think the nostalgia engines behind each are totally different beasts and are patently incomparable.

A side thought: Generally I'd think influence would be a strong factor in long term value and nostalgia a stronger factor for short term value or fluctuations. Influence is more akin to inherent worth whereas nostalgia reflects emotional value.

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. 

2 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

I'm not sure Albert's advice would hold up so well anymore. Think of the prices of artists who have gotten hot over the past 25 years. Byrne, Sinkiewicz, Jim Lee, etc., percentage-dollar wise, he would have made a killing. 

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.