Daredevil 1 CGC prices in 2002?

[jens25e]

I think Daredevil has some potential to be liked in the future as well and thus the prices may stay stable or even rise. In my humble opinion Bendis and Maleev are the best team of today.

Both their series "Underboss" and "Out" are simply great and I hope the 25 cent issue (I think is is #41) will sell real good. I am going to buy at least 10 to 15 from it for giving away and maybe using it to decorate my room.

 

This title is the main reason I collect comics at the moment and once I got enough of Vol.2 I will switch over to Vol.1 and try to complete that one too.

[fantastic_four]

I'm not at all a fan of Maleev's art so far on comics or any of the abstract artists. I've always hated Sienkiwicz and Miller for the same reason. It's not that I don't think Maleev isn't a good artist. Maleev's style is nice and I like looking at it--I really love that cover with the kid wearing a white t-shirt and reading a daredevil comic (got the t-shirt of that myself because I liked it so much), but I don't think his style is a good match for comics, especially when these artists don't write what they draw.

 

I find it difficult to concentrate on linear narration and lots of dialogue when the art is abstract. It's much easier to concentrate on the story a comic is telling with the artists who try to stay mostly true to the form of humans and Earth's environment, such as Romita, McFarlane, and most artists prior to the current crop (at least 1 in 3 seem to go for their own ultra-exaggerated style in Marvel's current bullpen). When the pictures look close to what we see every day, it's easier to relate to the stories. When the art style is abstract, the story feels as if it's taking place on some totally separate plane of reality.

 

It's not that I don't like abstract art; I love looking at single-frame abstract paintings. But taking the abstract style and applying it to a panelled story is just distracting and conflicts with almost any linear narrative structure. I can imagine a lot of plot and story structures that would blend quite well with the abstract style, but to take such a style and slap it onto EVERY story you draw for is flawed, flawed, ULTRA-FLAWED in concept, and I rarely see artists execute it well.

 

Miller executed it well on the original Dark Knight series. The way he told the story matched his abstract style MUCH better than any other comic I've read by the warped-reality artists. But since he both wrote and pencilled it, he had the opportunity to make sure they were unified. Bendis is a resolute writer with pinpoint, realistic dialogue; blending that with Maleev's loose, unrealistic art is not a good match. This is why I like it when Steve Dillon draws the comics Garth Ennis writes (Preacher, Punisher); Dillon draws with a gritty realism that goes quite well with Ennis's gritty, resolute writing.

[Guest]

just curious why you refer to Miller's style on DKR as "abstract?" I've heard Miller's work on that book described in a lot of ways and abstract isn't one of them...

 

 

[fantastic_four]

Highly exaggerated might be a better way to describe Miller's style than by saying "abstract." He always seems to draw very, very quickly, and his human figures almost always have exaggerated bodily proportions.

 

Ever seen a human with a body that looked anything like the following Miller cover?

 

Compare that to an artist like Romita, who usually depicts the human figure with a beautiful reality. Miller's style in Dark Knight was particularly well-suited to the exaggerated story that was told with a sketchy, almost abstract plotline. With Miller, you don't look at the individual parts as much as the entirety of what he draws and what he writes. If you focus on individual panels or pages of his writing--or on individual figures or parts of figures in his drawing--then it's really difficult to absorb the messages and emotions he trys to convey. You'll get stuck thinking something like "why do the three protuberances from Batman's gloves on Dark Knight #2 look so fat and short?" or "why does Batman look like he needs to go on a diet; his legs, chest, and are too fat!"

 

You have to look at the totality of a Miller drawing or a Miller plotline to get his message. That's why I described him as "abstact"; you have to let go of logic and let your focus blur a bit to absorb his aesthetic.

[awe4one]

Ever seen a human with a body that looked anything like the following Miller cover?

 

Meth???

 

OK that was bad but I couldn't resist....

 

 

Jim

 

 

[fantastic_four]

Hehe, maybe.

 

But the teeth or the width of the ankles/waist/wrists/elbows; nobody looks like that. Miller draws his figures like he wants them to look, not how they actually would look. A lot of comic book artists make their characters overly muscular, but Miller's characters aren't just muscular; they've got overall weird body proportions. He especially exaggerated those mutants that Batman fought in the first few DK Returns issues; they quite often didn't even look human. They look like animals, and it was because he wanted them to. Because they were animals to Batman and society in his story.

 

To me, that's the biggest part of the genius of the DK Returns story--the art and writing blended together beautifully. You've got to have a great relationship between a writer and artist to get that kind of unity in the standard comic creation workflow, and it rarely happens. The artist does what he wants, and the writer tells the story how he wants.

 

This is what is called the "auteur" theory in filmmaking--it's why the director has the final call on all creative decisions in a film. It's because it's a lot easier for one person to make sure all the elements of a piece of art are consistently unified. Comics usually aren't created that way.

[Guest]

ok. that's an interesting take on things. Much different than what I see when I look at someone like Sienkiewicz or (to add more names) Jae Lee or Simon Bisley. What you call "abstraction" I would call expression. I personally wouldn't even lump Miller in with people like that. To each his own, I guess.

 

Out of curiosity. What are your top five artists?

 

[jens25e]

I really love that cover with the kid wearing a white t-shirt and reading a daredevil comic (got the t-shirt of that myself because I liked it so much),

 

fantastic_four,

 

the cover you speak of is the one of #17 done by Mack and Quesada, not by Maleev.

Maleev´s knowledge about light/shadow and anatomy is just overwhelming. His work seems to be done much quicker than other peoples work, but somehow every pencil stroke seems to be in the right place (maybe not every single one, but the majority )

 

 

 

[localshop]

The most reasonable one (and this is all relative of course) I can find is a CGC 7.5 for $1450. After all of the above discussion (other than the art detour), does this seem a good deal or not?

 

Also, and I know that many of you are very high grade lunatics out there, but do you consider VF- high grade or mid-grade?

 

[fantastic_four]

Fair price. VF- is high grade.

[aardvark88]

Double check the pg quality on DD 1 cgc 7.5 b4 sniping. BIG difference btw white pgs vs. cream pgs.

If anyone needs a raw vg/vg+ copy of DD #1, I will be selling 3 copies on eBay in Jan/03.

[localshop]

The page quality is Off-White, which seems to be a reasonable minimum based on what I've read in other threads. I would personally go to Cream to Off-White if it was an otherwise nice looking book.

 

This is kind of a moot point at the moment (as I was pounded by a big tax bill recently), but can anybody else on the list beat that price, or give a good price on an 8.0?

 

 

[ericc123]

FF I must wholeheartedly disagree. I am a high grade collector..I have about 4 comics in my whole collection that arn't 8.5 or better. BlazingBob the king of high grade himself told me at my local show that high grade was VF+ or better and I'm sticking to that. Now don't you feel stupid <---- that was all a joke by the way* But local comic shop I'd say that VF- is mid grade.

 

have a good week,

Ericc123

[fantastic_four]

Well I haven't seen any publication try to define "Low," "Mid," and "High," so how about we all just make one up. Here are two ways to break it out:

 

• 0 to 3.33 = low, 3.33 to 6.66 = mid, 6.66 to 10.0 is high. Rounding those off, VG- would be the upper range of low, and Fine+ would be the upper range of mid.
• There are eight grades--Fr, Pr, G, VG, FN, VF, NM, MT. Splitting these up semi-evenly gives you Fr/Pr/G as low, VG/FN as mid, and VF/NM/MT as high.

I'd call 9.0 and up something like "super high grade," and fair/poor "super low grade". These are all highly subjective terms, obviously.

[Guest]

if VF isn't high grade then there are more books than previously thought that don't exist at all in high grade. VF is, in my opinion, high grade.

[fantastic_four]

Here's another possible way to break it out: split the 25 grading notches on the current grading scale into 3 parts. This leaves you with:

 

• 8.5 to 10.0 as high grade
• 4.0 to 8.0 as mid grade
• 0.5 to 3.5 as low

Three doesn't divide evenly into 25, so I had one grade left over; I stuck 8 grades in "high," 9 grades in the "mid," and 8 grade in "low." This breakout would favor Storms' view that 8.5 is the lower range of high grade.

 

The thing to remember about this breakout is that the 25-notch scale includes a lot more positions for the top end of the scale between 9 and 10 than anywhere else, so simply dividing this scale into 3 parts is definitely biased towards the top end of the scale. Since the designators "low", "mid," and "high" are mostly used by laymen anyway, most of whom aren't interested in high grade, defining the terms like this doesn't jibe with the way they're generally used.

[localshop]

I'd always viewed it as:

 

0.5 to 3.5 - Low

4.0 to 7.0 - Mid

7.5 to 10 - High

 

That is, that the bands get smaller as you move up (3.5 to 3.0 to 2.5). I think leaving 4 points in the mid range is too much.

 

Anyone else have an opinion? Most of this community think that 9.4 or below is a POS, so this may go on awhile

[fantastic_four]

Sounds good to me, that's the way I've leaned for months anyway. Been wondering on and off whether 7.0 would be mid or high, and like you I lean towards mid. Those 2" creases allowed in that grade don't jibe at all with my idea of "high" grade; you can see a defect like that from quite a distance away.

 

Another thread successfully hijacked! I give it a 60% chance all this low/mid/high grade propaganda gets reposted in the grading forum at some point over the next 3 to 9 months.

[Bonds25]

I'd say GD to VG+ is low grade, FN- to VF- is mid grade, and VF to NM+ is high grade.