Unca Ben

Tales to Astonish #52 pg. 2 – Dick Ayers on pencils and inks. Twice-up 1963 Silver Age Art from the early days of Marvel, image size 12.5" x 18.5" featuring Giant-Man and the soon-to-become Black Knight, Nathan Garrett. This is a really nice twice-up Giant-Man battle page featuring a large panel shot of Giant-Man in action, along with the beginnings of a classic Silver-age villain. Giant-Man is in every panel. The Black Knight would soon become a thorn in Giant-Man’s side, as well as joining Zemo’s original Masters of Evil in the Avengers. Garrett would eventually perish in a fight to the death with Iron Man in Tales of Suspense. Page is white and in great condition. There is white-out in panel one for a text correction, and Giant-Man’s antennae in panels 1,2,4 &5 have been repositioned, with white-out over the original antennae. See scans. Otherwise, the page is clean and sharp. $3,800 SHIPPED anywhere in the Continental United States (CONUS) FedEx Priority w/ sig. req. Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired. Art will safely ship reinforced with a piece of Masonite backing inside a FedEx artwork mailer. A NICE EXAMPLE OF TWICE-UP MARVEL SILVER AGE ART FROM MARVEL’S EARLY YEARS FEATURING A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE AVENGERS ALONG WITH THE ORIGINS OF A CLASIC VILLAIN. Outside Continental USA, contact me via PM first, as there will be additional shipping fees and art will ship FedEx International. Personal check, Cashier's check, MO, or bank transfer is welcome and preferred. PayPal is okay, no friends & family to circumvent fees. I will not sell to any Hall of Shamers or anyone on the Probation list. Buy it, make an offer via PM, or seals the deal and trumps ongoing PM's. Payment due within 7 days unless other arrangements have been made. Thanks for looking!

-try some of these again. lower prices. Tales to Astonish #87 pg. 2 – Bill Everett on pencils and inks. Twice-up 1966 Silver Age Art from Bill Evertett’s triumphant return as penciller to his Golden-Age creation at Marvel. Image size 12.5" x 18.5" featuring the Sub-Mariner, the Lady Dorma and the Warlord Krang. This is a really nice twice-up Sub-Mariner battle page featuring a very nice portrait panel shot of the Lady Dorma in panel 2 and the Sub-Mariner being ambushed and wounded by the U.S. Army. This page is all Everett and is the first Silver-age Namor story that he penciled and inked; other artists chipped in and helped pencil and ink some of the later story pages but the first 5 pages are all Everett. (per Nick Caputo and GCD). Page is lightly toned and in great condition. There is white-out on the cheeks of Lady Dorma for an art correction in panel two, also the middle panel 3 on a cannon barrel, and white-out text and word balloon edits in panels 2, 4, and 5. Bottom right corner margin clipped. Bill Everett story notes and Stan Lee edit notes in the margins. $5,900 SHIPPED FedEx Priority w/ sig. req. CONUS. Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired. Art will safely ship reinforced with a piece of Masonite backing inside a sturdy FedEx artwork mailer. If you’re looking for an all-Everett Subby page with a nice Lady Dorma portrait for well under 5 figures, this could be it. A NICE EXAMPLE OF TWICE-UP MARVEL SILVER AGE ART FROM MARVEL’S EARLY YEARS FEATURING SUBBY, HIS LOVE THE LADY DORMA AND THE U. S. ARMY, WITH THE VILLANOUS WARLORD KRANG THROWN IN THE MIX. Outside Continental USA, contact me via PM first, as there will be additional shipping fees and art will ship FedEx International. Personal check, Cashier's check, MO, wire or bank transfers are welcome and preferred. PayPal is okay, no friends & family to circumvent fees. I will not sell to any Hall of Shamers or anyone on the Probation list. THANKS FOR LOOKING!

The story was that the mailman left a package on a doorstep and the dog tore open the package and chewed on some of the contents before the owner got home. The package happened to contain the complete story to ASM #6. This was not recent, but a while ago. I imagine that the dog survived. No word on the Postman. I do not have any before pics since I acquired it after the restoration. But I'll be happy to show an after pic, along with the script from my CAF gallery. Note* I was mistaken about the page number. It appears that it was left off (pretty sure it's there in the reprints). This page, along with my FF #41 splash, is my pride and joy. from the CAF An early twice up Amazing Spider-Man page by his co-creator, Steve Ditko. This page has been restored by a professional restoration-conservator. All four corners had to be recast; the 2 left corners, paper only. The 2 right corners needed a small amount of art redone; panel 3 has the vertical lines above the word balloon and the upper right hand curve of the balloon re-inked. Panel 9 has a small portion of the boards in the lower right of the panel, behind Spider-Man, redrawn. Panel 4 has a small tear sealed, above and to the left of the Lizard's head, and into the tail of the word balloon. Darn dog. I can't imagine the owners expression when he saw what happened.

...which brings up another subject, one which I will probably talk about in a new topic rather than digress here. It has to do with Stan ( ) , editing, the role of pencillers, and books being out on schedule. News at 11.

Like I said, I'm gonna keep my day job over making a living at delivering humor. As far as Jimenez being aware of the Severin cover or not - that's why I used the qualifiers "suggested" and "might" in my statement - to convey that given the information I had at the time, it's not known (to me) if Jimenez knew that Alex Ross's cover was an homage or an original. Was the Ross homage cover clearly attributed "after Severin" or was it mentioned in the comic itself? If not, then it's possible that the artist didn't know. Then again, maybe he did.

As a proud owner of an old Ditko Spidey page from a story that was CHEWED UP BY A DOG, I can say that I'm more than happy with the (fairly minor) restoration that was necessarily done to return the page to its former glory. I would not enjoy seeing the canine tooth hole thru a word balloon, or a corner of the page with chew marks (luckily , mostly in the margin outside the artwork image - a small corner had to be redrawn along with a page number) .

I really liked Ross Andru's work on ASM. Speaking of settings and backgrounds, it's been noted that Ross brought a sense of realism to his Spidey stories by using real buildings and bridges and hardscapes and landscapes in his drawings. He would go around and take pictures of settings and use them as a photo reference for his art. If there was a museum or bridge or notable building, etc., it was drawn accurately. There's a whole topic about this on these boards. And personally I wouldn't label Ross as a journeyman. Spider-Man was Marvel's highest selling comic when Ross Andru was chosen to be the regular penciller - which he did for 5 years. Reliable? Sure. But I'd state that given the fact that they could have picked nearly anyone, they choose an artist that they must have considered outstanding to draw their best selling book. Besides the aforementioned accuracy in settings and backgrounds, Ross was excellent at portraying different camera angles and POV's to tell his stories, especially the Spidey action pages. Now, Ross may not have had as slick or as catchy a style as say a Steranko or Adams, but he mastered sequential art using a straightforward style. No confusion. I never had to go back and review a panel page(s) in order to put together what was being conveyed. It was always clear, and any art experimentation never got in the way of clearly telling the story. When DC and Marvel did their very first crossover featuring their respective flagship characters, it was Ross Andru who was picked to draw it. (with fantastic inks by the great Giordano)

It was a joke. jeez. relax. I figured most would get it ( and at least one did, given the "funny" emoji reaction to my post). And No., I hadn't personally seen the Alex Ross cover, but given the context I did reason that there was a Ross version of this, due to the attribution. That wasn't much of a deductive stretch. Regardless, I didn't need to see the Ross version to recognize this as originally a Marie Severin cover. So I attempted to make a funny. I guess I will stick to my day job. All this does bring up an interesting question: if one creates an homage of an homage, does it make a sound? (hint: another joke)

Yeah that's what I figured. I just found it amusing that this suggested that Jimenez might not have known about Marie Severin's cover. I'm bettin' that he's young. Hence, my snarky "how quickly they forget" as a joke.

-came across this in a CAF email ... how quickly they forget ...

You sure do have one heck of a collection, Hepcat! The Silver Age is my collecting interest, and you have shared quite a wide selection of books over the years. I really enjoy seeing them. Thx!

Spectacular Spider-Man #46 pg. 26 - Mike Zeck on pencils and Bruce Patterson on inks. Bronze Age art from 1980, image size 15" X 10", featuring the Amazing Spider-Man and the Cobra in battle. Page is white and in great condition. "Michael J Zeck" written in bottom margin. A really nice four-panel bronze-age Spider-Man battle page from 1980 featuring a classic Silver-age villain. Four great action shots of Spidey and that huge beautiful 1/3 of a page panel featuring a fantastic shot of Spidey is really eye-catching, as only Mr. Zeck could portray. The first panel is very cool and the full-figure Spider-Man in panel 2 is classic Zeck. Page 27 from this same issue of Spec. Spidey sold last year for a little over $5.K on Heritage. I think most would agree that this page is much nicer. https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/story-page/mike-zeck-and-bruce-patterson-spectacular-spider-man-46-story-page-27-original-art-marvel-1980-/a/7338-95393.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515# $5,100 SHIPPED USPS Priority w/ sig. req. CONUS. SOLD! Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired. Art will ship sandwiched between 2 pieces of masonite. Outside Continental USA (CONUS), contact me via PM first as there will be additional shipping fees and art will ship FedEx International. Personal check, Cashier's check or MO are welcome and preferred. Bank transfer okay if I know you. I'd rather avoid PayPal Fees but PayPal is okay, no friends & family to circumvent fees. Buy it or make an offer via Private Message. Payment due within 7 days unless other arrangements have been made. Thanks for looking!

Wow. I wonder who won it. Congrats to whoever won it. Mike? It'd go nice with his ASM 33 pg. 5 splash. Prolly the nicest, or among the few nicest, Ditko Spidey full-figure splashes/ pin-ups/ masterworks/ whatever ya wanna call it/ out there. Because of the poster, it's iconic. Now that I know that this exists, its prolly my favorite piece. There's some nice Masterworks and a couple of the ASM Annual #1 story splashes are pretty cool, too. Me, I've always been partial to the ASM 2 pg. 1 Tinkerer splash; early Spidey Ditko - maybe before he really mastered the character - but the huge image of Spidey, the dynamic composition, the scalloped webbing under the arms, and lots of detail have always attracted me to this piece. It's now number 2 on my list.

I wonder if Mark and David could have ever possibly realized that their visit to Marvel Comics offices would end up being the most profitable afternoon of their lives.

That is awesome!

Very nice! I especially love the watercolor!

Unfortunately, not that much. Don't know why. Oh, and thanks!

the gorilla shuttle piece was done before the first disaster. it was supposed to be a dichotomy type-thing.

Thanks. I threw away most of my stuff - I drew up until about ' 81- '82 and when I got a job in Electronic Design I pretty well quit drawing for fun. These are from a sketchbook that somehow avoided the purge and are probably near the end of my drawing for pleasure phase. I'm sure that I still have some more drawings (or pics of more of my stuff somewhere). I did a book for a calligraphy class that I posted some time ago with lots of animal drawings. My lettering sucks. I'll post those again if I find them. Some of these are photo reference (like the Reagan portrait & the assassination attempt) and some are just from my imagination, and some are live (like the Tahoe lake-scape).

I ran across this in my closet today. A blast from the past. Like a lot of folks around here, in 6th and 7th grade I drew some comics. The first couple issues I traced a lot of panels or copied them. This is issue #2; a lot of tracing and copying from Colan, Buscema, Kirby, Ditko. By issue 3 or 4 I was drawing my own stuff free-hand. I know that I gave later issues away to teachers and friends. Wish I would have kept one of those. Maybe I will run across one later. Anyways, just for fun...

I think one of the things is that when I ship using USPS, it gets handed off to a different carrier when it gets to the destination country and the different carrier depends on which country. I believe FedEx handles it all the way thru. So FedEx is solely responsible for the entire delivery where the other way 'round can become a game of hot potato if something goes wrong. Also, FedEx has it's own customs (?) which simplifies things. If any of this is wrong, please let me know.

I had a package hit customs in SF and then sit there for about a month (I guess it sat there) I did the usual reports and inquiries. finally it broke loose and made it to Europe in less than a week. This was USPS. had a couple other packages get delayed 2-3-4 weeks with no tracking updates but they did finally make it to their European destinations. I think one was going on 5-6 weeks. USPS. Now I use FedEx International 2 day shipping. costs more but worth the piece of mind. Nothing delayed or lost, so far (knock wood) .

I was thinking about the oft-used canard that without Jack or Steve, Stan Lee never created anything worthwhile, successful, or of note. Off the top of my head, here's a few characters created or co-created by Stan, sans Ditko or Kirby: The Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell), Mephisto, the Mandarin, Ultimo, the Melter, Crimson Dynamo, the Unicorn, Titanium Man, Whiplash, the Kingpin, the Rhino, the Badoon, the Shocker, the Owl, Purple Man, Mr. Fear, the Beetle, the Masked Marauder, Jester, Count Nefaria, the Swordsman, Power Man, the Cobra, Mr. Hyde, Black Knight, the Mimic, the Sons of the Serpent, the Living Laser, the Abomination, Living Tribunal. Boy, if Stan ever did create anything worthwhile, imagine the list!

I'd say that it was Kirby who pioneered the dynamic foreshortening and characters breaking thru panel boundaries in comic books. Adams (like so many others) followed suit.