Unca Ben

14 hours ago, oakman29 said:

Odds are no he didn't. You only have about an hour at the outset.

Nah.  Very few folks die from snakebites in the U.S. 

But it's good that you didn't get bit.    It's an unpleasant experience.

SOLD!  Thank you!  It's a nice page and I've enjoyed it for a number of years.  

X-MEN 32 page 20  -  Werner Roth on pencils and Dick Ayers on inks.  Twice-up Silver age art from 1965, image size 18½" X 12½",  featuring the original X-Men line-up, Prof. X, and the Juggernaut.
Some white-out for text corrections in word balloons and some white-out in panel 5 on Angel's arm and Iceman's arm, and for panel 6 outline. Slightly toned.  Margin notes.  Tape at the bottom over Letters Section Note.  I can take more pics upon request.

Nice twice-up silver age Marvel page with multiple images of all the original X-Men in costume, plus Prof. X plus Juggernaut.  A nice representative sample if you want all the original characters on one page.

$3750 shipped (Continental US) FedEx Priority w/ sig. req. CONUS.  Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired.  Art will ship sandwiched between 2 pieces of masonite. 
Outside Continental USA, contact me via PM first, as there will be additional shipping fees.
Personal check, Cashier's check or MO are welcome and preferred.
PayPal is great, no friends & family to circumvent fees. 

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! 

Marvel Super-Heroes # 1 Spring Special 1990 Speedball story page with Steve Ditko pencils and Chris Ivy inks.    Image size 10" by 15".
Nice page with Speedball in action with pencils by the legendary Steve Ditko.
The page is toned, except for outside margins.
It looks like (possibly) red ink was used for "speedball" effects in all panels and it has faded.  See photo.
There are just a few dabs of whiteout in the lettering and word balloons.  Signed in the upper margin and in overall very good condition.

$1050 shipped (Continental US) FedEx Priority w/ sig. req. CONUS.  Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired.  Art will ship sandwiched between 2 pieces of masonite. 
Outside Continental USA, contact me via PM first, as there will be additional shipping fees.
Personal check, Cashier's check or MO are welcome and preferred.
PayPal is great, no friends & family to circumvent fees. 

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! 

SOLD! Avengers 17 page 7  -  Don Heck on pencils and Dick Ayers on inks.  Twice-up Silver age art from 1965, image size 18½" X 12½",  featuring the newly-formed Avengers line-up fighting a Robot.  A great 4-panel page including Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.  Great, large panels of Quicksilver running and the Scarlet Witch using her powers.

Don Heck sure did know how to draw beautiful women.

Page is off-white and in great condition. There is a small amount of whiteout in panels 2, 3 and 4.   

A very nice four panel page from 1965.  I really like this page, from the first appearance of the "new" Avengers line-up.  

$3050 shipped (Continental US) FedEx Priority w/ sig. req. CONUS.  Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired.  Art will ship sandwiched between 2 pieces of masonite. 
Outside Continental USA, contact me via PM first, as there will be additional shipping fees.
Personal check, Cashier's check or MO are welcome and preferred.
PayPal is great, no friends & family to circumvent fees. 

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! 

Hi all,

Hope everyone is well in these interesting times. 
I will be listing some new pages and re-listing some other pages at lowered prices throughout the next couple days.
Usual rules.

Unless otherwise specified, price will include Continental US shipping - FedEX w/ sig. req.  Buyer will pay for full insurance if desired.  Art will ship sandwiched between 2 pieces of masonite. 
Outside Continental USA, contact me via PM first, as there will be additional shipping and PayPal fees.

PayPal is great, no friends & family to circumvent fees. 

Personal check, Cashier's check or MO are welcome and preferred.

Buy it, make an offer via PM, or the  seals the deal and trumps ongoing PM's.  Payment due within 7 days unless other arrangements have been made.
Thanks for looking! 
 

Stan's recollection seems okay to me.  What did he get wrong?    

Torch leaves the FF? Check.  The Thing complaining about Reed?  Check.  FF get evicted because Reed mismanaged their funds?  Check.  The FF lose a few fights?  Check.  Sources upon request.

In other news, I have a theory that it was Roz who drew all those pages for Jack.

Gimme some time, and I'll find some facts that fit my theory.  'Cause that's how it's done. 

On 9/8/2020 at 5:01 PM, XxSpideyxX said:

I love the art 

 

Folks keep mentioning Sal.  This sure looks like Big John's art to me.  With the noted facial correction by Romita.

Way too young.  And a great loss for multiple reasons. 

RIP Mr. Boseman.

4 hours ago, bronze johnny said:

Try to imagine the history of the comic book without Jack Kirby? I can’t. Happy Birthday King Kirby!

I can imagine it.  The history would just be much, much shorter.  And much, much less interesting.

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Avengers 19 first Swordsman or X-Men 19 first Mimic

(and I like X-Men 11 first Juggernaut better) 

edit: Not key enough? 

edit again: Jeez what was I thinking

Would this be a case of they'll print it in the notes if you request it?  

edit: just checked, and it looks like it's on the new slabs.  Something added?

Richard Corben. 
When I first saw his work - a story published in Creepy, I believe - I found his work to be awkward and out of place compared to the usual range of style of Warren artists.  At the time I thought it was the worst drawn story in the book.  All of his characters seemed malformed.  As more of his work was published by Warren, I started to appreciate his work.

As a side note I think there's a bit of a difference when viewing and critiquing an artists' work in real time as it comes out, as compared to looking at an artists' work in retrospective.

In real-time, I can only compare the art to what has come out before or to what's currently being published.  That's the only comparisons I can make.

When I look at comic art that was published before I started reading comics, or when I look back on an artists' work, I can't help but to compare it to what came after, as well. 
As an example, under this perspective art that now may seem to be derivative may have actually been ground-breaking at the time.

Because of this I know that my perspective of say, the golden age artists that I only first saw while silver age books were being published, would be much different than if I were around reading those books when they first came out in the forties.

15 hours ago, Memorex said:

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=40415

 

Yeah it's a commision.  The current owner has several other cover recreations with stat overlays and in some of the descriptions he credits James Pascoe for the work. 

edit: to be clear, James  for the stat work.  Not the original art.

No. 

But I do have my OO book with the MMMS coupon clipped, and one with the coupon for the original 6 foot Spidey poster clipped, one with the old Marvel stationary coupon clipped, and lastly one with the b&w photo of Stan clipped (if that one required a coupon, I don't recall).

On 8/26/2019 at 2:01 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Some great plagiarism examples there @catman76  

  

 

 

I don't think that's plagiarism since both covers are by the same artist team - Simon and Kirby.  Unless you can plagiarize yourself. 

4 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

Seems Sturdy Steve wasn't the only Marvel pro to have a negative view of fans back in the day.... here 'Happy' Herb Trimpe lets loose a bit. 

Check it out at 6:18.

His views on people in his profession are pretty interesting too. Also - some classic footage of the Marvel 'Bullpen'!

To be fair - the Herb Trimpe I met a few times at shows was one of the nicest, most respectable creators I ever interacted with, who was very happy to spend time with fans.

 

Interesting video.

One thing that I noted:
It's often stated that the Marvel Bullpen was an illusion created by Stan and that only a few people actually worked together in the offices - the production crew and guys like John Romita when he became Art Manager. But the artists didn't work together as Stan implied.

Yet here we see Herb, Marie, John, and I think Tony M (doing the cut & paste - mebbe it's someone else - Dan Adkins, perhaps?) working and drawing in the same small space.  And certainly other members the (small) production crew were somewhere close by.

Kinda like a Bullpen.  

Now, maybe they didn't work like this all the time - but there it is on film.

20 hours ago, Unca Ben said:

And would he have revealed Mary Jane to us as quickly, if ever?  Steve liked to stretch out the element of mystery. 

14 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

I can't imagine MJ being introduced as amazingly as Romita did it... I wonder what Ditko's idea was behind that build up of her - if it was the same as what eventually happened or if he had a different idea.

I'm of the mind that Steve and Stan created MJ as one of those characters that are talked about - perhaps even heard - but never seen.  It's not an uncommon trope but can be very effective.
Carlton the bellhop in Rhoda.  Niles Crane's wife Maris in Frazier.  The Ugly Naked Guy in Friends.  And so on.  I beleive old TV shows like Jackie Gleason and Jack Benny had characters like that.

MJ was unusually effective as that type of character.  The next-door-neighbor niece that Aunt May desperately tried to set Peter up with.  Flash, Betty, and Liz knew she was beautiful.  I'm sure Aunt May and Emma Watson thought she was pretty.  Even us readers knew she was beautiful even though we never saw her face.  Everyone knew except our star, Peter Parker.  That was genius. 

Would Steve have eventually revealed her?  Who knows?  Maybe he mentioned it in one of his later rants published by Robin Snyder.  I never saw it.

I'm as big a fan of Ditko as anyone, in fact more so than some here.  The 40-some worth of Spidey issues by Ditko/Lee were among the best run of stories ever published, IMO.

I would have loved to see Steve's vision in continuing his maturing of Peter Parker, and his resolution to the Norman Osborne/GG subplot. I believe Steve would have stretched it out more.  Maybe not.  
And would he have revealed Mary Jane to us as quickly, if ever?  Steve liked to stretch out the element of mystery.  Lee and Romita wrapped up those mysteries in their first 4 issues after Ditko developed them for years.

I fantasize Romita taking over ASM after issue 50.

That being said, if Ditko felt that his "handler" - as in Stan Lee, was ruining his art thru sound effects, edits, and dialogue - then I'm happy that Ditko left when he did.  

To see Peter Parker behave more and more like The Question or Mr. A would have been hard to watch.  Steve's vision of a fully-matured Parker would have been much different than Stan's. 

Ditko's stated several times that the idea of a flawed hero with "feet of clay" as a matured product is not a real hero.  Pete's neurosis, that Ditko conveyed so well, was undergoing change. 
I'd bet that we wouldn't have seen Pete still wrestling with his guilt over Uncle Ben, as he resolved that particular monkey on Peter's back in issue 33.  Which I think would have been a good thing.

But there are scenes with Beatniks, Hippies and protesters that clearly were being handled more and more differently between Steve and Stan.  The minskirts, go-go dancing, the Coffee Bean, and the changing view on protesters -all which came after Ditko - would have been much different, if they happened at all, with Ditko.

It's a shame as Steve brought so much to the table in Spider-Man.  But the direction the book ended up going was not conducive to collaboration with Steve. 
Steve was becoming more and more uncompromising.  "Prickly", if you wanna call it.  

Yeah, we read about Steve leaving because Stan quit seeing him in person. 
Which is not how someone in charge acts if they want to keep the other worker around for a length of time.  Especially on a best-selling title.
Hmm.

 

My copy arrived yesterday.   I waited until late evening to open it, enjoying the anticipation.

What a great book!  And the quality for the price...  

A nice representation of his Conan paperback covers, Warren covers, movie posters, and other paperback covers.  Even some Canaveral Press ink drawings.

It put me in a very good mood for the rest of the night.  

And Ditko was easy to work with.  After all, he lasted for years and years  at DC after he left Marvel.  Oh, wait...

I do believe it was quoted as him being "uncompromising."   Which may explain his long tenure at Charlton where he was pretty much left alone, as opposed to the Big Two, where collaboration was essential.  Not to mention his dust-up with Fantagraphics.

And, according to him, any problems with comic book people and fans were always their fault.
I've worked with folks like that.  Briefly.

Steve Ditko and the Comic-Book People
 

On 7/27/2020 at 3:14 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I didn't read both of those essays ... the first (shorter) one was enough for me.

So to sum up:  Two strangers come up to speak with him and, out of an abundance of courtesy and respect, acknowledge his reputation for not wanting to speak with fans with a polite apology.  Ditko's reaction is not to think to himself, "How thoughtful that they respect me enough to consider the question of whether or not I would like to be approached," or better yet ask himself "What might I have done to earn such a reputation?"  Instead he dismisses them as small-minded people who accept as "factually true" something they have been told.

Every one of us receives information constantly, a great deal of it second- or third-hand.  All of us need to weigh the probability that each piece of information we receive is at least partly true, depending on the source and any number of other factors, and act accordingly.  The fans who approached Ditko were not "programmed ... parrots" -- they were simply people who weighed the information they'd received and made a simple calculation as to what approach would most likely yield a favorable outcome in their interaction with this (very minor) celebrity.  If their assumption were "factually true" (side note -- it would seem that it absolutely was, as Ditko comes across like a defensive jerk with minimal self-awareness) then their acknowledgment maximizes their chances of a friendly response from someone who would ordinarily be unwelcoming.  And if their assumption were false, it gives the more welcoming celebrity an opportunity to cheerfully correct them, proving the falseness of said assumption and turning two strangers into evangelists for his reputation.

The calculation those fans made was 100% on target, even for someone who wants to apply game theory and subject it to absurdist analytic scrutiny (as I have somewhat lazily done above).

Or we could just say that they were thoughtful, polite people with a basic mastery of social norms and adequate interpersonal skills, something Ditko clearly lacked.

Yeah, Ditko loved his fans!

Mine's being shipped!