Marvel Stamps Mystery 0

[bluechip]

Saw these listed on a web site several years ago and credited as a combo of Kirby, Wally Wood and Marie Severin.

 

They showed up on comiclink credited to Marie Severin. Meant to buy a handful but didn't bid aggresively enough.

 

Some details are fuzzy. Dated 1-9-64, which predates Daredevil 1 yet the picture is of his later later costume. Spidey picture looks like it was drawn by someone who either didn't have access to a published drawing or didn't care (and in either case that doesn't fit with Marie Severin, who had been with Marvel since before Spidey was launched)

 

Some of the pictures looked a lot more like Wally Wood -- like the one of Sue Storm below, who, in this shot, looks a lot like a typical Wood woman).

 

If the stamps were done by Wood that'd be good for the buyer of the Daredevil (not me) because it could be a rare early shot of the new costume by its designer.

 

Later in 1964 would seem right becase that's when Marvel first got into developing its club and merchandising. So perhaps the 1-9 date stems from the earliest image?

 

Never heard of any aborted attempt to do Marvel stamps that early, but clearly the image of Stan Lee is consistent with early 60s.

 

Anyone know anything about them?

 

Edited November 26, 2010 by bluechip

[comicartcom]

that illustration is most certainly not by Wood and Marie Severin would be a good candidate for that art you show.

 

concerning art that shows a date such as the stamp you mentioned that indicates it was done before a certain time frame.. not always reliable. The best example is Bob Kane specialty drawings of Batman (invariably almost never by Bob, but by any number of ghost artists, some of which never worked in comics, but did piecemeal work for Bob). I have seen many drawings that say "Batman.. 1939" when they weren't done in 1939, but are meant to indicate "this is what Batman looked like in 1939".

 

If ComicLink says the art is by Severin, I'm inclined to defer to them.

Did you check to see if the images they sold ARE the actual published images?

They could be preps for the artists to follow

[bluechip]

that illustration is most certainly not by Wood and Marie Severin would be a good candidate for that art you show.

 

concerning art that shows a date such as the stamp you mentioned that indicates it was done before a certain time frame.. not always reliable. The best example is Bob Kane specialty drawings of Batman (invariably almost never by Bob, but by any number of ghost artists, some of which never worked in comics, but did piecemeal work for Bob). I have seen many drawings that say "Batman.. 1939" when they weren't done in 1939, but are meant to indicate "this is what Batman looked like in 1939".

 

If ComicLink says the art is by Severin, I'm inclined to defer to them.

Did you check to see if the images they sold ARE the actual published images?

They could be preps for the artists to follow

 

Here is a shot of the whole stamp sheet. I think if these were published we'd know, so I'd guess it was a project that was started and never went to fruition.

 

 

 

The info about these being dated 1-9-64 is confusing and most likely the date is either wrong or was the date for one of the images but not all of them. Most likely the guy who originally obtained them saw that date on the back and jumped to conclusions, hoping they were all dated at that point, because it would make the daredevil and captain america sketches more valuable. 11-1964 sounds more like it. But who knows. The FF pictures are all similar to the pics in the logos of the comic -- with the exception of the sue picture. When I first saw these I thought they might be printed images rather than art, then saw one up close and tehre is real art there on top of blue pencils. heavily staned from being glued somewhere at some point.

Edited November 26, 2010 by bluechip

[bluechip]

I could be off but I think I saw something extremely similar on ebay very recently. I figured them to be fake as they are dated pre DD #1 (as you said), yet had DD's red costume.

 

If you have a link I'd like to see it. cause they were on clink just a couple weeks ago.

[Shemp]

Five years ago...

 

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=48&Number=1013438&Searchpage=2&Main=55281&Words=%26quot%3BThe+Original+MARVEL+COMICS+Silver+Age+STAMPS+Artwork%26quot%3B&topic=0&Search=true#Post1013438

[bluechip]

Five years ago...

 

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=48&Number=1013438&Searchpage=2&Main=55281&Words=%26quot%3BThe+Original+MARVEL+COMICS+Silver+Age+STAMPS+Artwork%26quot%3B&topic=0&Search=true#Post1013438

 

Interesting. Never saw that original thread. It is odd that such inconsistences wouldn't be noted in the first place, let alone after so long a time (even comiclink's listing failed to correct them). Of couse it makes no sense to draw characters for the first time on stamps; Though, I think the guy who says there's no way these were drawn by bullpen artist is also taking it to the extreme. Whatever failings there are in the art on some of those stamps, many are also dead on, even if they were copied from existing images. And all it takes is a look at some Marvel comcs from 1964 to see that bullpen artists very often cranked out images of marvel star characters that were not only below the quality of these but in some cases bloody awful. (I will refrain from naming names as it really isn't necessary).

 

The most likely scenario seems to be it was a mid-60s early MMMS project that was given to Marie Severin or someone unknown and was aborted before completion. That's interesting enough, but maybe the guy who bought them either paid too much or really wanted them to be much more interesting and talked himself into it. So I'd guess that because these were offered with major discrepancies and likely overpriced that had had a lingering effect that caused them to be somewhat undervalued this time around. I'd've probably bid a bit more for the DD, Cap or Thor headshots if the descriptions hadn't contained the dodgy date.

[comicartcom]

Five years ago...

 

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=48&Number=1013438&Searchpage=2&Main=55281&Words=%26quot%3BThe+Original+MARVEL+COMICS+Silver+Age+STAMPS+Artwork%26quot%3B&topic=0&Search=true#Post1013438

 

Interesting. Never saw that original thread. It is odd that such inconsistences wouldn't be noted in the first place, let alone after so long a time (even comiclink's listing failed to correct them). Of couse it makes no sense to draw characters for the first time on stamps; Though, I think the guy who says there's no way these were drawn by bullpen artist is also taking it to the extreme. Whatever failings there are in the art on some of those stamps, many are also dead on, even if they were copied from existing images. And all it takes is a look at some Marvel comcs from 1964 to see that bullpen artists very often cranked out images of marvel star characters that were not only below the quality of these but in some cases bloody awful. (I will refrain from naming names as it really isn't necessary).

 

The most likely scenario seems to be it was a mid-60s early MMMS project that was given to Marie Severin or someone unknown and was aborted before completion. That's interesting enough, but maybe the guy who bought them either paid too much or really wanted them to be much more interesting and talked himself into it. So I'd guess that because these were offered with major discrepancies and likely overpriced that had had a lingering effect that caused them to be somewhat undervalued this time around. I'd've probably bid a bit more for the DD, Cap or Thor headshots if the descriptions hadn't contained the dodgy date.

 

you really mean he was probably trying to talking other people into it.. to raise his asking price

[Terry Doyle]

Five years ago...

 

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=48&Number=1013438&Searchpage=2&Main=55281&Words=%26quot%3BThe+Original+MARVEL+COMICS+Silver+Age+STAMPS+Artwork%26quot%3B&topic=0&Search=true#Post1013438

 

Interesting. Never saw that original thread. It is odd that such inconsistences wouldn't be noted in the first place, let alone after so long a time (even comiclink's listing failed to correct them). Of couse it makes no sense to draw characters for the first time on stamps; Though, I think the guy who says there's no way these were drawn by bullpen artist is also taking it to the extreme. Whatever failings there are in the art on some of those stamps, many are also dead on, even if they were copied from existing images. And all it takes is a look at some Marvel comcs from 1964 to see that bullpen artists very often cranked out images of marvel star characters that were not only below the quality of these but in some cases bloody awful. (I will refrain from naming names as it really isn't necessary).

 

The most likely scenario seems to be it was a mid-60s early MMMS project that was given to Marie Severin or someone unknown and was aborted before completion. That's interesting enough, but maybe the guy who bought them either paid too much or really wanted them to be much more interesting and talked himself into it. So I'd guess that because these were offered with major discrepancies and likely overpriced that had had a lingering effect that caused them to be somewhat undervalued this time around. I'd've probably bid a bit more for the DD, Cap or Thor headshots if the descriptions hadn't contained the dodgy date.

 

Hi

 

I was the original lister who composed that thread.

 

I've been off-line for quite a while and have now re-subscribed using my real name - which makes a refreshing change!

 

Some lofty claims on behalf of any dealer who has tried to sell these stamps . . . and wishful thinking on behalf of any would-be buyers.

 

Not suggesting they're not without interest, but artistically they're not very good - are they?

[Juswuh]

To me it looks as if someone in 1965 was given a handful of that month's Marvel comics and told to copy the faces - quite possibly someone who'd never seen any of the characters before. (Yeah, there was some crude artwork in early Marvel stories, but did anything as bad as that Dr Doom ever get into an actual book?)

 

They also remind me of the ads for a Marvel board game which appeared in the comics a while later (early 1967?) which showed extremely amateurish pics of Giant-Man and the Wasp, among others.

[Terry Doyle]

Liverpool. England, eh?

 

I used to live in Anfield for the first 18 years of my life . . .

[Juswuh]

When there's a goal at Anfield you can hear it from here.

[Terry Doyle]

When there's a goal at Anfield you can hear it from here.

 

Don't suppose you know Pete Higham?

[bluechip]

To me it looks as if someone in 1965 was given a handful of that month's Marvel comics and told to copy the faces - quite possibly someone who'd never seen any of the characters before. (Yeah, there was some crude artwork in early Marvel stories, but did anything as bad as that Dr Doom ever get into an actual book?)

.

 

If you ask, then you obviously haven't seen Al Harley's work on Thor in an early Journey Into Mystery.

 

 

 

[Terry Doyle]

To me it looks as if someone in 1965 was given a handful of that month's Marvel comics and told to copy the faces - quite possibly someone who'd never seen any of the characters before. (Yeah, there was some crude artwork in early Marvel stories, but did anything as bad as that Dr Doom ever get into an actual book?)

.

 

If you ask, then you obviously haven't seen Al Harley's work on Thor in an early Journey Into Mystery.

 

 

 

Al Hartley's awful artwork for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY # 90 is on a par with these crappy stamps.

 

Maybe these stamps would be of interest to Al Hartley THOR fans?

[bluechip]

To me it looks as if someone in 1965 was given a handful of that month's Marvel comics and told to copy the faces - quite possibly someone who'd never seen any of the characters before. (Yeah, there was some crude artwork in early Marvel stories, but did anything as bad as that Dr Doom ever get into an actual book?)

.

 

If you ask, then you obviously haven't seen Al Harley's work on Thor in an early Journey Into Mystery.

 

 

 

Al Hartley's awful artwork for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY # 90 is on a par with these crappy stamps.

 

Maybe these stamps would be of interest to Al Hartley THOR fans?

 

Actually, the image of Thor in these stamps isn't too bad. It makes a case that these were Severin because the stamp image of Thor is similar to the big head shot Marie Severin drew for Thor 158.

[comix4fun]

These stamps were sold by Verpoorten's family, from out of a stack of his artwork. I can't imagine where all these crazy attributions came from.

[Terry Doyle]

To me it looks as if someone in 1965 was given a handful of that month's Marvel comics and told to copy the faces - quite possibly someone who'd never seen any of the characters before. (Yeah, there was some crude artwork in early Marvel stories, but did anything as bad as that Dr Doom ever get into an actual book?)

.

 

If you ask, then you obviously haven't seen Al Harley's work on Thor in an early Journey Into Mystery.

 

 

 

Al Hartley's awful artwork for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY # 90 is on a par with these crappy stamps.

 

Maybe these stamps would be of interest to Al Hartley THOR fans?

 

Actually, the image of Thor in these stamps isn't too bad. It makes a case that these were Severin because the stamp image of Thor is similar to the big head shot Marie Severin drew for Thor 158.

 

The Thor stamp looks as though it might have been copied from the image on the (revised) top left corner box that appeared from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY # 114 onwards.

 

In fact, if you care to do the research . . . you could probably locate all the original sources (copied from ) for the (badly drawn) stamp images.

 

 

[Terry Doyle]

These stamps were sold by Verpoorten's family, from out of a stack of his artwork. I can't imagine where all these crazy attributions came from.

 

From sellers wanting them to appear something better/more important than they actually are . . . or would-be buyers suckered into that idea.

[comix4fun]

These stamps were sold by Verpoorten's family, from out of a stack of his artwork. I can't imagine where all these crazy attributions came from.

 

From sellers wanting them to appear something better/more important than they actually are . . . or would-be buyers suckered into that idea.

 

 

I remember when they are on Ebay, all on a single piece of vellum. They looked really amateurish and sloppy in a group. Then they got chopped into individual "stamps" and put into ornate frames with engraved plaques as if that would distract from the overall fecal quality they all shared.

 

 

[comicartcom]

These stamps were sold by Verpoorten's family, from out of a stack of his artwork. I can't imagine where all these crazy attributions came from.

 

From sellers wanting them to appear something better/more important than they actually are . . . or would-be buyers suckered into that idea.

 

 

I remember when they are on Ebay, all on a single piece of vellum. They looked really amateurish and sloppy in a group. Then they got chopped into individual "stamps" and put into ornate frames with engraved plaques as if that would distract from the overall fecal quality they all shared.

 

 

it makes a lot of sense to me that John Verpoorten drew these stamps