MyNameIsLegion

I bet $1 on all of them. It works on The Price is Right.

Very cool! I have a lot of my comics bound, and have considered dressing them up with Dust Jackets, like you did with the Atlas set. How did you go about getting those DJs made? I followed this tutorial for the 1975 books - Dustjacket Tutorial Phil Very cool site, I had no idea so many people love doing the same thing I am doing in binding their runs. Its giving me a lot of great ideas, thanks for the link! I've been a mod on the site for 10 years, and it's a pretty polite board with lots of helpful people and informative info. anyone that is into binding their own comics or magazines should visit the Marvel Masterworks Fan site- it's broken up into several discussion boards, and it is devoted to all things related to Collected Editions: Omnibus, Archives, Masterwork Absolute Editions, Trades, AE's, and yes, creating your own bound volumes. There are 2 binding forums, one is just an archive of the active discussion board for enthusiasts to use as a reference- thats what was linked to up thread here: Binding Vault The Active discussion board is here: Uncollected Editions: The Homegrown Hardcovers Binding Forum if you go to the Uncollected Editions page- there are some stickied threads at the top of the page that serve as an FAQ- lists of Bindery Houses that specialize in comics, custom logo creations, maps for different volumes or characters, all sorts of stuff to do DIY books. It is the biggest resource and community that I'm aware of in the hobby. It's been going strong since 2005. Even some of the HA guys have been on there, like James Halperin.

very cool- and a nice shout out to that stinkininkin fella.

and.... MTU #11. Subby 46,51-54,57,58, Hulk 228.270

check that feedback, all those cancelled sales for the same thing. Pretty shady.

it sure looks that way....(but doesn't work) "Voting is still active - change your votes"

Would you be talking about your own impression made based solely on your own experiences or the ones made by others that you made yours from? Because the later is no way to go through life making impressions of people, places, or things. I don't need to stick my hand in a fire if I see some other poor do it first and get burned.

my votes: Brian- I suggest having a way for voters to review their choices after the fact so they can share them- if I hadn't taken screen shots, I'd forget, and sharing your vote is half the participation. Also, the change your vote function isn't working, so you can't go back to review that way. I forgot to take a screenshot of one category, so I don't remember exactly what I voted for. [img

Pablo Marcos over Bucker:

Tony Dezuniga used damn near every kind he had on this:

Great post. I don't think it is incongruous to anything I've said - we agree a lot on some points, and just have different degrees of agreement on others, as will the broad spectrum of participants in the hobby. would that be: diffadegreement?

24-year old collector receives his "vintage" art purchased off eBay in the mail: "Cool, word balloons. Wait. Why are are half of them peeling off? This one just fell off. Oh man, why are the panels all yellow? I wish the seller had written in the description that these paste-ups were falling off. So do I glue them back on? Is that allowed? Do I use Elmer's glue? Where do I buy rice paste? Do I hire a professional? How much would that cost? Where do I find a professional? Is this conservation or alternation? If I leave it as is, does it affect the value of my art? If I paste the balloons back on, does it affect the value of my art? Do I have to come clean about it or will the Boards tar and feather me if I don't? Oh. I knew I should have bought that wordless Manhattan Projects page." this happens to be hanging in my room, I chose it at random because I liked the inking. Do you see any yellowed, peeling word balloons here? No you don't because Aparo lettered it himself, right there on the art. I will concede however, that I've passed on many a page where the pasted on word balloons were all yellow, and it really detracted from the page. One of the reason I've never really coveted covers is because they are often the most likely OA to have stats, glue, corrections, tape, stains, discoloration, etc.

hmm, where did I say that? I never said ANY Modern OA will be inferior to ANY BA art. That's patently ridiculous. This is what I said, which echoes what Gene has said as well: Basically, older art has a larger "middle class" of good art. You don't have to have Kirby or Ditko LA. You could have an iconic Sal Buscema Captain America or Spidey panel page, or a Cockrum second run X-Men page and have it easily clear 3-4K. why? because the art is "iconic" (hate that the word has gotten diluted, but it remains true) Beyond simple sale auction price performance, just consider the individual pages of art themselves. I bet any one of us that have read a title over the years, when presented with a random panel page from 1965-1993 could ID the exactly issue, or at least within a 5 issues span the exact issue number just by looking at the art without needing to know the artist or inker. Pick a modern decompressed page, even with the artists as a clue, and odds are you will struggle to pin it down. Modern art is BORING, and bereft of context. Outside of the cover, a splash, a pin-up, there simply isn't that much substance to take in. It could be well rendered, and there are some fine modern artists, but they will never be the BWS or Wrightson's of the future, with the same exponential price page growth, because there will be very few pages that stand out. Comic art collecting is a mixture of nostalgia and aesthetics - modern art has diluted both dimensions for the reasons outlined above. Unless you start producing books exactly the way they were done 30 years ago, they will never follow the same market trajectory as they have in the past. This is not merely grumpy old man talk, and we haven't even factored in stratification of entertainment mediums and changes to consumption via technology that will take a bite out regardless. The only "hope" for the future, like with the vinyl resurgence, is that a younger audience will tap into the longing for more genuine, substantive, tactile objects, but the fact remains, as Gene has pointed out - the next generation will have less time, space or money to really accumulate and curate the sorts of collections older guys have now. So that reduces the market to an even smaller niche, with less velocity, I suspect the oldest art, pre compression will retain much more value but Modern art will never break out in a similar fashion at any point in the future. you've missed the main points here, about the iconography of older non-compressed art having a larger middle class, not from an aesthetics viewpoint, but from a nostalgia potential and thus price potential aspect. You guys are getting your modern art panties in a wad needlessly, I'm not trashing the art or the artists, or the stories they tell, I'm trashing the general nature of the physical object's COLLECTIBILITY in a day and age where the confluence of economics, demographics, culture and technology conspire to render, on the whole, a less collectible object. Another person asked about less documented instances of readership via trades and libraries and such, yeah that occurs, but as I said before, there's a BIG difference between consumers and collectors. Casual consumers aren't likely to collect comic art. If they didn't collect the comics, didn't buy the trade paperback, read it online or while waiting for a movie to start at Barnes and Noble, they are not going to take the leap to looking online for that one special page, was seared into their brains, that made such an impression on them in the 30 seconds they glanced at it and turned the page or swiped their finger to the next page. Nostalgia requires familiarly, familiarity requires exposure and repetition. You guys are glossing over the fundamental psychology of collecting. It's one thing to be a fan or a consumer, another to be a collector. OA is the black tar heroin of collecting, but comics are the gateway drug, you skip that step, and its all Nancy Reagan "just say no" to Modern OA.

There's a difference between a story designed to be told without words, and just zapping all the narration & dialogue out of a story! Yes, older collectors have biases', but I think it's being a bit overblown here. The reality is that Modern OA is simply less complete than vintage in portraying the finished product. Comics are words + pictures, not just pictures. Can you imagine if strip art OA was missing the dialogue because it was lettered digitally? I don't think one has to be steeped in older OA to miss the absence of narration and dialogue on the Modern OA board and recognize that it is a limitation on its appeal. Anyone who reads a modern comic is going to see that the art is missing a lot of vital components from the published material. Sure, if you love the source material enough, it won't matter - definitely not disputing that. But, I do think it limits the appeal, because not everyone will fully accept the limitations. Also, I'm not surprised that you've sold so many complete Modern indie books. I feel that fact actually bolsters my argument! Yes, when you buy a complete Modern story, you're still missing the words, but, over the course of 22 pages, you have something that feels more substantial and is easier to both present and contextualize. I was looking over the Paper Girls art you posted the other day (someone gave me the first TPB as a Christmas gift). I'm sure there are many younger fans, and those who don't have lots of money to spend on this hobby, who would just like the best piece of the series that they can afford. But, I consider myself to be a reasonably serious OA collector - if I just want to get one example from a particular run or series, I want something that presents well, is very representative, works well as a standalone, something I can be happy with as a "one-and-done" example. It is simply very hard to find that in Modern OA interiors due to the nature of decompressed storytelling, and I think the Chiang art you posted was not an exception. Which is why I think owning a complete book helps alleviate a lot of that problem - while it may be hard to find one page that encapsulates everything you'd want in an example of a Modern title, owning a whole book usually does the trick! +1- I've been saying pretty much the same things as Gene all day, he's just nicer about it, and I've had more caffeine than sleep so I'm not sugar coating anything (but I'm not especially annoyed with anyone either, it's still a fun debate)

Yes, if we are strictly evaluating the art on aesthetics alone. But so much more to consider, including nostalgia...which, in the thread, is the greatest variable of all. I'm just not sure how many realize it, or will admit it? I absolutely acknowledge nostalgia, in fact it's the basis of my argument- because the physical object has changed, and the storytelling style has changed, and the method of telling and selling the stories has changed - all those factors combined with the point of this thread (technology fragmenting pop culture) result in Modern OA, more so than any previous era of comic collecting) NOT producing the same potential nostalgia quotient that would make a 12 year old in 2005 now covet that issue and remember it fondly and seek out the art in 2025, because that "art" will not resonate on a fundamental level in the same manner or degree as a 12 yr old kid looking at a comic in 1995, 1985, 1975, 1965, 1955, or 1945 would have. This isn't about my particular set of rose colored glasses that think modern OA is . I also thought most GA art was from a purely aesthetic POV. I think modern OA is because of the object itself and how it is produced. You are completely sidestepping that reality, choosing the wear your own rose colored glasses. If modern OA was penciled and inked much like it was the last 50 years I would buy it (and I have bought some, and I have lots of art without word balloons, look at my gallery, much of the Marvel Magazine art has the type on an overlay) My point about consecutive pages with lettering was simply to make a point- you can read the damn thing. Give me an entire issue of OA for a modern book and I can't tell WTF is going on- mostly people standing around looking constipated or concerned. And for the record, I've read a decent amount of modern comics, and having recently processed a 30,000 issue comic collection from late 50's to 2015 I've seen it all. Aesthetically, modern OA is far superior to the average art produced in the early to mid- 90s, especially by the big 2. I think DC now has the most consistent and stable content and standards, but man, did it drift every which way for 10 years. Comics are far most sophisticated now. Nevertheless, that does not mean a kid will drop 5k on a panel page in 25 years. The odds are against it. Odds are they wouldn't even recognize it if you held it six inches from their face. now get off my lawn!

I will also continue to beat this one dead horse however, because it's the most relevant detail in this entire discussion IMO. Modern OA as compared to older OA. The page you saw as a kid in that comic cannot be experienced in the same was as it once was by purchasing the OA. I have sequential pages of multiple books, and I can pretty much read the entire story just from the OA, just like reading a Marvel Essential or a DC Showcase in B&W. Try doing that with Modern OA. Do you collect the pencils, with the inked blue line, and then xerox a page from the comics to see WTF was going one? Not to mention the digital color effects that were added, so most of the backgrounds in the OA are blank? That's what I mean by soulless. It's just . Let's not mince words. It's a novelty at best. Maybe some 25 year old will drop 200 bucks on a page or two, but they are never going to amass the sorts of collections some of us have, because they didn't start with collecting boxes and boxes of comics. They are consumers of content, not collectors. They read them on their phone. It's disposable entertainment. Fleeting, like Gene's bad Chinese food.

yeah, pretty much, we're just quibbling over the details of a gradual extinction of a hobby as it stands today. It had a good run 60-70 years, but its morphed into something else. Perhaps that's good, depends on your perspective, and I think that may in fact owe some of it's current lifeline to the very technology this thread was originally premised on: Movies. Our ability to make movies and other tantalizing spectacles out of these funny book ideas is what's keeping the medium on life-support. Contrast that with newspaper strips. Dead and buried. No Hi and Lois movies, Blondie and Dagood TV show. No Hagar the Horrible cartoons. Dead. No conventions, no cosplay, no halloween costumes. Dead. No OA either. Bloom County is back, and it's all digital. Dead. Some great art was produced, and if you have vintage Peanuts or Alex Raymond Flash Gordon, they will command a princely sum, but they are the exception, and in a generation, prices will flatline there too. Hobby's have a lifespan, that lifespan is determined by the medium and the culture it intersects with. As they evolve, natural selection takes over in the marketplace and they make it or they don't, but nothing lasts forever. Just look at comicstrips, pulps, stamps, sports cards, and, while not a hobby, the Greatest Show on Earth.

You need to patronize better Chinese restaurants. I"m going to have to disagree with your forecast here- namely because modern art is inherently an inferior object compared to GA/SA/BA/CA art- because of: 1. Lack of word balloons, digital effects, computer generated titles, etc... 2. inks over blue lines, and pencils without inks dilute the one of a kind-ness of the OA 3. decompression of storytelling= decompression of price appreciation potential. If modern OA did not have the 3 factors above working against it, I would be willing to consider your outlook as possible. The changes from large art to modern did not fundamentally alter the content. Basically, older art has a larger "middle class" of good art. You don't have to have Kirby or Ditko LA. You could have an iconic Sal Buscema Captain America or Spidey panel page, or a Cockrum second run X-Men page and have it easily clear 3-4K. why? because the art is "iconic" (hate that the word has gotten diluted, but it remains true) Beyond simple sale auction price performance, just consider the individual pages of art themselves. I bet any one of us that have read a title over the years, when presented with a random panel page from 1965-1993 could ID the exactly issue, or at least within a 5 issues span the exact issue number just by looking at the art without needing to know the artist or inker. Pick a modern decompressed page, even with the artists as a clue, and odds are you will struggle to pin it down. Modern art is BORING, and bereft of context. Outside of the cover, a splash, a pin-up, there simply isn't that much substance to take in. It could be well rendered, and there are some fine modern artists, but they will never be the BWS or Wrightson's of the future, with the same exponential price page growth, because there will be very few pages that stand out. Comic art collecting is a mixture of nostalgia and aesthetics - modern art has diluted both dimensions for the reasons outlined above. Unless you start producing books exactly the way they were done 30 years ago, they will never follow the same market trajectory as they have in the past. This is not merely grumpy old man talk, and we haven't even factored in stratification of entertainment mediums and changes to consumption via technology that will take a bite out regardless. The only "hope" for the future, like with the vinyl resurgence, is that a younger audience will tap into the longing for more genuine, substantive, tactile objects, but the fact remains, as Gene has pointed out - the next generation will have less time, space or money to really accumulate and curate the sorts of collections older guys have now. So that reduces the market to an even smaller niche, with less velocity, I suspect the oldest art, pre compression will retain much more value but Modern art will never break out in a similar fashion at any point in the future. We must remember that appreciation of art is subjective, and collectors will individually assess the merits of Modern versus older art. Some may enjoy the larger, less cluttered panels of decompressed storytelling; or like that word balloons no longer obscure or distract from the art; or prefer the varied styles of Modern artists versus the sometimes homogenized look of older art. Why and what art a person finds memorable, is a uniquely personal affair. Do note, I'm not predicting that Modern OA will have the reach or appeal of '90s-and-older OA. What I am saying is that demand for Modern OA will naturally increase as new comics attract fans. I expect BA-and-older OA collectors to dwindle, as those with an emotional connection to the source material step away from the hobby. There will definitely be some younger collectors who step in to collect based on artistic and historic appreciation, but I don't expect them to fully replace those stepping away. My forecast is based on readership, age demographics and expected nostalgia. As noted in my article, "Present day 30-something year old collectors who were in their formative childhood/adolescent years when they read these comic books in the early-‘90s, are now hitting their prime income-earning years. As nostalgia for childhood pursuits kicks in and their spending power grows, this group of collectors will spend increasing amounts on OA (and other collectibles) from the 1990’s. This demographic also represents the last time that there was a critical mass of young comic book readers. From the late-‘90s onwards, youths tended to favour electronic forms of entertainment, and comic books increasingly targeted adolescents and adults." @DeadPoolJr. - Great insight into the younger generation! Ok, fair enough- but I think a 25 year old in the hobby now will have a dramatically different experience than that 30 year old- their wonder bread Years will be fully immersed in the modern OA style, as I outlined above, so the physical object of the OA is fundamentaly different than every collecting generation before it, augmented by a comics medium that no longer values continuous runs of books, but manufactures 4-8 issues story arcs and reboots the entire universe every 2-3 years. Continuity is dead, thus further fragmenting the collecting experience. We are well beyond "art is a subjective thing" No. this is not apples to apples, this is apples to kiwis and mangoes. this is a paradigm shift. Modern OA now is more akin to storyboards than sequential art. There will be a marked difference in how the baton is passed to the next generations, because the baton has morphed into a virtual pokemon creature of nebulous, fickle, transitory qualities. Comics of old were ever a gateway drug to collecting- you collected every serialized issue, there was continuity, dozens and hundreds of issues. that is all mostly gone. Now it's just some corporations or some individuals creator's incubator for a story idea (storyboards again) to adapt to Television, Streaming video, or The Big Screen. The OA in that regard is a distant afterthought. Its increasingly digital too- first the coloring, then the lettering, now sometimes the inking on a separate blue line, and sometimes all digital. Sketch covers may be the only thing left in 10 years, to give fans that tactile experience that they can buy at conventions and get signed, witnessed, slabbed, indexed. How soulless.

You need to patronize better Chinese restaurants. I"m going to have to disagree with your forecast here- namely because modern art is inherently an inferior object compared to GA/SA/BA/CA art- because of: 1. Lack of word balloons, digital effects, computer generated titles, etc... 2. inks over blue lines, and pencils without inks dilute the one of a kind-ness of the OA 3. decompression of storytelling= decompression of price appreciation potential. If modern OA did not have the 3 factors above working against it, I would be willing to consider your outlook as possible. The changes from large art to modern did not fundamentally alter the content. Basically, older art has a larger "middle class" of good art. You don't have to have Kirby or Ditko LA. You could have an iconic Sal Buscema Captain America or Spidey panel page, or a Cockrum second run X-Men page and have it easily clear 3-4K. why? because the art is "iconic" (hate that the word has gotten diluted, but it remains true) Beyond simple sale auction price performance, just consider the individual pages of art themselves. I bet any one of us that have read a title over the years, when presented with a random panel page from 1965-1993 could ID the exactly issue, or at least within a 5 issues span the exact issue number just by looking at the art without needing to know the artist or inker. Pick a modern decompressed page, even with the artists as a clue, and odds are you will struggle to pin it down. Modern art is BORING, and bereft of context. Outside of the cover, a splash, a pin-up, there simply isn't that much substance to take in. It could be well rendered, and there are some fine modern artists, but they will never be the BWS or Wrightson's of the future, with the same exponential price page growth, because there will be very few pages that stand out. Comic art collecting is a mixture of nostalgia and aesthetics - modern art has diluted both dimensions for the reasons outlined above. Unless you start producing books exactly the way they were done 30 years ago, they will never follow the same market trajectory as they have in the past. This is not merely grumpy old man talk, and we haven't even factored in stratification of entertainment mediums and changes to consumption via technology that will take a bite out regardless. The only "hope" for the future, like with the vinyl resurgence, is that a younger audience will tap into the longing for more genuine, substantive, tactile objects, but the fact remains, as Gene has pointed out - the next generation will have less time, space or money to really accumulate and curate the sorts of collections older guys have now. So that reduces the market to an even smaller niche, with less velocity, I suspect the oldest art, pre compression will retain much more value but Modern art will never break out in a similar fashion at any point in the future.

Even if you prefer Coke, sometimes you just feel like having a Pepsi to change it up a bit. Or, to put it another way, just look at Hugh Grant - even though Elizabeth Hurley was his girlfriend, he just needed to get some Divine Brown out of his system as well. :whatthe: So THAT'S what they mean by taking the Pepsi Challenge...

Very nice Richard Uhh, I don't think this is Richard, at least not Richard Evans of Bedrock City Comics (MrBedrock) in Houston (I was thrown off at first myself by this post, because if Frazetta and Boris are Coke and Pepsi, then Richard is Coke:

Continued.... More guys started to arrive- Tom Coker was running late, as was Mark Nelson, so we had to bide our time looking at a tub of art, or should I say, the MOAB (the mother of all art bombs) that someone brought (fortunately we were in a windowless room, so the impact didn't shower us with broken glass from the concussive force) along with all the other Itoya portfolios strewn around the table: PRC looking at a cover by some guy named Willie, Woody, I forget.... Lots of art to look at: I took a selfie to make sure I wasn't dreaming:- Speaking of dreaming, I didn't seem to get a pic of the greatest collection of Sandman Keith art I've ever seen....such is the elusive nature of Dream. It doesn't get any better than this: All in all, about a dozen guys floated in and out during the day- about 5 hour of time. I was most pleased to see artist Mark Nelson attend- having an artist that knew many of these artists over the decades, as a pro, and as a fan gave things a new perspective, and he really enjoyed seeing all the art in way that's much different than most of us. So we will have to start thinking ahead on when and where to have the next gathering of the Texas Triangle, and promote it a little more and earlier next time. Perhaps along I-35, SA or Austin in the Spring. Thanks everyone that came out, lots of illuminating conversations about people, dealers, auction houses, artist's, and all things in between. And a huge thanks to Mr. Bedrock for hosting and having such an excellent space for the gathering. It will be hard to top that.

Texas Triangle Comic Art Report: Saturday around 12:30 we arrived at Bedrock City's flagship store- as soon and Weirdpaper and I walked thru the door, Mr. Bedrock's staff saw us with portfolio's and immediately ushered us into the warehouse, where Mr. Bedrock, ever the consummate host greeted us and showed us his very nice boardroom space for us to meet in, a few guys had just arrived as well that were local, with more on the way. Before we kicked it off, those of us that had not been in the store in some years since they moved across the street has to first take a gander at Richard's Sanctum Sanctorum were he had a few choice pieces hanging: Just the earliest known Superman Cover: Richard and some painting by some guy that did some stuff:

Report is forthcoming- I may or may not post some of the dozen or so pictures I have- maybe if you say "pretty please".... But the art assembled in one room yesterday rivaled the Next HA Signature Auction and Comiclink combined, both in quantity and quality. Maybe half a dozen auctions in certain respects.... ok, ok, I will post one teaser.....