glendgold

In fact -- here's a $395 Gene Colan piece which I had Steve Leialoha ink. You might note that Gene, as required by some internal law I would never question, gave Doom one leg. And the raven over Doom's shoulder? One leg.

And I answered that ad, and the one before ($325) and the one before that ($250). Those prices were bargains back then, too.

I bid just the right amount on that one. Speaking of impossible to value: Palmer lightboxed a lot of Gene's cover pencils (and some of Kane's on ToD). Apologies for the ancient scan. The discoloration in the center is an result of joining smaller scans. I was lucky enough to buy this a while ago - lucky also because I knew what it was and the owner priced it accordingly. This looks a lot like the cover to HtD 12, and it...is? Was supposed to be? This is the cover Tom lightboxed and sent back to Marvel. It got lost in the mail, so Tom had to lightbox it a second time, and that's what got published. (Because it always works this way, the second Palmer lightbox - i.e. the published one, but also sorta kinda a recreation of the original cover - had just shown up at auction so I had a sense of what the market thought the published version was worth.) So this is an unpublished, lightboxed cover, and it's also the original version of the cover, but it's not the pencil cover, which I would value higher than either of the lightboxed versions. Whew. I value my unpublished lightbox at eleventy jillion dollars.

Then there was that time a year later when Medusa took him down a peg.

Nah, I'm saving up to buy a share of a banana and duct tape.

One last forgery for the decade, but it's a two-fer -- it's not by Kirby and it's not by Royer: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/-1-c-33A4E13827

Solution to what?

Okay, fine, I'm posting a big win. There's a story goes with it: https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=148374

Right. Agree. I think we were cross talking or whatever you call it - I didn't know about the argument that Ditko handed in inked pages. I'm intrigued by those dialogue balloon numbers, but can't really read the pages clearly enough to make any sort of guess as to, oh, y'know, who was generating text for those. This is really cool to see.

This might be middle-age brain, but wasn't that how the Marvel Method worked? I feel like I've seen Kirby pages in that state, too.

Those ASM 31 pencils are a revelation. I'm not sure seeing giant versions of printed art is something I need, but the dialogue boxes and handwriting are fascinating. The cover text looks like it's in Ditko's handwriting, right? Reminds me a lot of the atttitude behind Amazing Adult Fantasy, the magazine that respects you, the reader. Does this mean Ditko wrote the dialogue, too?

Also: it's peculiar how well taking stuff down works. A few friends, long time collectors, have asked me where certain pieces are, and I've said "Don't you remember - they're in X's collection, and he had them posted until a couple years ago." Nope. I can't comprehend how people feel fine relying on their their documents, music and photos being in the cloud when they're doing the same with their memories.

When CAF was young, I posted pretty much everything, thinking, "Wow, anyone anywhere can see this." Recently, given how the internet has grown up, I thought, "Wow, anyone anywhere can see this," and I took it all down.

But Gene, they both finalize AND finish. Can't tell you how long I've looked for one place to do both. EDIT: You did us a disservice by not linking to their "publicity" tab: https://www.beverlypacking.com/publicity/

1. There's already a BIN on this. https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/jack-kirby-and-joe-sinnott-fantastic-four-83-story-page-8-inhumans-original-art-marvel-1969-/a/7212-94119.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 2. That BIN has changed at least 3 times since I spotted this a week or two ago. I saw $40K, then $36K, and now $39K. Mercurial.

"How much was that Wrightson?" "Ten bananas." <Whistles> "Wow, I remember when it was only three bananas."

I am imagining Fung Fang Foom as the Bat-Mite of the Foom-i-verse.

I think my day job ("Making Stuff UpTM") is either helpful here or it gets in the way. I can envision a last issue where Ditko is clearly on autopilot (you ever read that story?) and trying to get through it as fast as possible, annoyed at not getting remunerated for Spider-Man properly, turning the book in with Spidey un-inked. The figure just looks weirdly flat to me whenever he appears. But I suspect that if he really did that, we would have heard about it. I can't imagine, say, Marie Severin never referring to that in an interview. So it's probably just me.

I've always thought he didn't even finish inking ASM 38. The Spidey figures strike me as someone else's work, but I might well be wrong.

Why are we worrying about whether these guys take our hobby seriously? What would "seriously" look like? Oh.

I'm sure HA will do a press release on it eventually but does anyone have intel on what the "Great American Comic Strip" auction on Feb 26th is all about?

The other thing about Fedex (and UPS) these days - the estimated arrival time shown when a package leaves no longer has any relationship to the day it actually shows up. Not sure if that has to do more with the season or the general feeling among businesses that they no longer have to do anything as promised, as there are no longer consequences for such things.

In your HA account, can you set your local Fedex as your default shipping location?

Comic artwork is done for commercial reasons, which sullies the deep purity of the fine art market mindset. (Insert irony emoji here.) I think fine art looks at arguments for the legitimacy of our hobby -- at best -- as it would for the legitimacy of bbq or drive ins. Not art, but sure, if you want to claim it really *is* art, they will at least think the idea is cute.