Mighty Hal

Curt Swan. Bob Oksner. Kurt Schaffenberger. Terrific artists and undervalued in my estimation, especially their panel pages. It could be because so many OA fans love the House of Ideas above any other publisher. If a dynamic 1966 Schaffenberger Superboy splash and a mediocre 1966 Werner Roth X-Men page hit H.A. at the same time, I'm confident the Roth page would command more money. Dan DeCarlo, too. For me, he's the premiere Archie artist. The prices for his work have been blunted due to DeCarlo's lengthy career, an ability to produce at Kirby-like speeds, and a willingness to bring all of his originals to market. Plus, y'know, he drew Archie comics, limiting the collector base. There's a premium for his Humorama cartoons (limited supply + good girl action) and his B & V swimsuit covers (limited supply + good girl action), but his other work goes for pennies compared to some of his contemporaries.

Best of luck with your project, but this probably belongs in the "Marketplace" section. Personally, I find it tiresome to ask for prices. You might have a more immediate response if you priced the pieces.

I don't know if I see the Frazetta touch, but this is crazy good McWilliams. A great example.

A gorgeous page from a terrific series. Risso is such a talented artist. Just looking at your artwork makes me want another original.

As a Stevens admirer, I've really enjoyed your Aurora project from afar. You've collected some terrific pieces. I can't wait to see what comes next!

Always loved Bill the Cat. A terrific art day; congrats.

I was thinking about this very issue just minutes ago. There are four Dan DeCarlo Humorama cartoons on eBay at the moment, and all of them suffer from condition issues. To my untrained eye, these are pretty serious issues but the cartoons are otherwise very nice. If they're salvageable at a decent price, I'm interested. But since I don't know....

Link isn't working for me.

All true fans know, the story reads better in that order.

I do wonder if the hobby might be a simpler joy for me if I only collected one character (i.e., Strong Guy), or one artist (say, Bruce Timm) or a limited series (such as 100 Bullets). It would focus my wandering eye, that's for sure. I've got all kinds of baskets. My OA diversification has nothing to do with investment value, though. There are probably three Strong Guy collectors in the world; enough Bruce Timm material out there that I'll never get back what I paid the dealer; and 100 Bullets has, like so many limited series, slowly faded away. I'll lose money when the time comes to sell, but so what? It's been great fun.

Ardath Bey? As in, the Boris Karloff character from The Mummy? Seriously? Probably shouldn't pull the trigger on this one.

I've wondered about Hugo as well. Along with his OA listings, he also offered to sell his entire OA inventory for what seemed to be a large amount of money at the time -- I forget how much: $100,000? -- and I'd have loved to have taken him up on it. Perhaps anyone else did.

Joe Sinnott worked with Cockrum once upon a time, and did a terrific job on jeBailey's Silver Surfer piece last year. If he's willing, I'd start there.

KG, you have some terrific artwork here but almost all of it is labeled as "NFS". You'd probably stir much more interest if you'd price the pages on CAF. My opinion, anyway. And, while I'm probably doing it incorrectly, I couldn't find the Quesada/Daredevil page.

One of the greats. Nobody did it better.

Okay, so I'm curious: Does anyone here know of an artist who went from pen and ink to digital pencils/physical inks or pencils only, and now charges less for their work because of the transition? Scott, thanks for the info on pencil "fade".

I like your suggested order, even if it often doesn't play out in this fashion. Original pencils -- where there are only original pencils -- can command full dollar. This isn't to diminish the value of a great inker (Danny Miki did beautiful work on a Youngblood poster piece I own), but I've paid full value for a couple of penciled covers and without hesitation. It took me a long time to realize that penciled work can be beautiful, too, but I'm glad I did. My only concern is fading (just as I worry about marker fade on a Bruce Timm piece I'm chasing), but I don't know if this is a realistic concern.

The artwork has sold. Thanks to those who contacted me!

Dave Stevens. Such a terrific artist.

Speaking for myself, I like and enjoy the corner box artwork. I personally think this is a "blue sky" price -- as in, you might as well ask for the sky, because someone somewhere just may be crazy enough to pay it -- but $40K+ is an aggressive valuation. Stick it on eBay, I think it reaches maybe one tenth of that number.

Enjoying the articles. Thanks!

Rolling into 2017, I have an unfulfilled goal from last year: a page from 100 Bullets #3. While I found two other 100 Bullets pages during my hunt in 2016, neither was from the third issue. Although I'd hoped the new acquisitions would scratch the itch, I was wrong. When you have a specific goal in mind, "close enough" sometimes isn't. I've failed to remember this at least twice before. Other than that, I'm still recovering financially from a happy buy at the end of the year. Oh, and I'm excited that a fellow collector has agreed to sell me a DeCarlo pin-up I've circled since last summer -- even if I have to wait another six months before we can complete the transaction. That's not all bad. By then, my wallet should have stopped screaming....

IBTL!!! Still better than the Miller cover.

It's a mug's game, trying to peek into the future. So let me have a turn. There are some really smart people on these boards and I usually agree with most of what they say, but not in this regard. I tend to be cautious regarding the opinions of those collectors who are heavily into GA/SA/BA artwork. They barely acknowledge modern OA, they rarely buy it, so they assume there can't be much interest in the stuff. Moreover, the interest there is must be about to fade because comic sales aren't what they used to be. Right? Sure, but there didn't use to be graphic novels, either. My small town library adds new graphic novels to the shelf every week. Almost all of them are from new series. Brian Hibbs says it's graphic novels that keep his comic stores afloat. Jim Zub writes a terrific comic called Wayward, per issue sales are fairly garbage, but he says the graphic novel numbers allow his artist (Steven Cummings, great work) to focus on the comic for his livelihood. Mr. Cummings hasn't been able to do that in the past. Unlike floppies, graphic novels don't get slabbed, bagged, or boarded. They're read and re-read, and a new collector is born every day. I know there's an audience for modern comics and its artwork; it's just not in plain sight. And, yeah, all of the old stories have been published as graphic novels, too, but it's the new collections that are ending up on my library's shelves. Not that modern comics are as necessarily dead as advertised, either. Go to the Modern Comic Section on the Message Boards, you'll usually find an audience of viewers that's bigger in number than the comic boards for GA/SA/BA. Almost always. I appreciate modern OA, and it's at the heart of my collection, even if it doesn't get much respect here. I think the artwork of the past decade is often better drawn than the standard-issue art of years ago and the story lines are frequently more intriguing. The more popular artists keep bumping their prices up and up...hardly a sign of a diminishing interest. However, if you're only talking investment, buy the single best original Kirby page you can find. Chances are, the family won't sue you.

Give me the cover OA to Tales of Suspense #49 (Iron Man but guest-starring the Angel) and I'm good. I'll take the paintings off of the walls, give you my portfolios, and we'll call it even. You'll lose money on the deal but, hey, you'll have made a fellow collector very happy. It's all nostalgia. Many years ago, my much older cousin had one wall of his bedroom lined with old comics -- before he hauled them all off to the dump, a couple of years later -- and he let me read the first comic he pulled out. It was, of course, ToS #49. I was, maybe, ten, and the nearly-powerless Angel somehow grabbed my attention. I was a comics fan before the last page turned. An X-Men/Angel fan, too, but only old school; you know, the team that no one else cared about, the one that didn't set any sales records. So, yeah, that one cover, I'm done.