What is the rarest - Kirby inked OR pencilled pages?

[Niblos!]

So, original art-wise- which seems to be the rarest - Kirby inked OR pencilled pages? Kirby did a lot of inking in the first 20 years of his career but there's not a lot of that original art around. There seems to be LOADS of Kirby pencil art commissions and production pieces of various degrees from his end-of-career work in animation. I am interested in hearing what the forum members have to say?

[AKA Rick]

The answer to the question is... ALL ARE EQUALLY RARE

 

That's because Original Art are all unique ONE OF A KIND pieces.

 

There's only one "Captian Victory #2 page #4" just as "Fantastic Four #1 page #12" so to speak... so from a population standpoint... they're both "one of one"

 

The real question is more based upon the laws of supply and demand... and I think you're asking maybe based on value and popularity.

 

I think Kirby Penciled pages are generally more popular than his inked work, since using a music analogy, he's a "lead singer" not a "back up singer" nor "drummer" - - so, most people like to own his penciled creations.

 

So, original art-wise- which seems to be the rarest - Kirby inked OR pencilled pages? Kirby did a lot of inking in the first 20 years of his career but there's not a lot of that original art around. There seems to be LOADS of Kirby pencil art commissions and production pieces of various degrees from his end-of-career work in animation. I am interested in hearing what the forum members have to say?

[jick]

I'd have to say a page that was pencilled, inked, and colored by Kirby without any help from assistants or ghost inkers/colorists. Not sure if such a page exists though.

[glenbru]

Kirby pencils are much more rare in terms of what is available in the marketplace. They just don't tend to be valued as highly as the inked pieces with a few exceptions. Peak Marvel pencils from the late 60's early 70's would go for a premium. As well as 70's DC peak pencils. And some of his better pencil commissions generally before 1980.

[Catwoman_Fan]

Not sure about scarcity, why disregard pages penciled by him, but inked by others (Sinnott, Royer, etc) ? Sure there's tons of (50s?) 60s and 70s inked pages - and they can be very valuable!!!

 

Personally, I'm partial to his pencils over his inks, to me it has the Kirby look that comes to mind (especially when it's his Marvel/ DC characters).

 

[drdroom]

The answer to the question is... ALL ARE EQUALLY RARE

 

That's because Original Art are all unique ONE OF A KIND pieces.

 

I don't think that actually is the answer to the question. Niblos! didn't ask about individual pages, but about categories of pages, i.e. "is the set of existing Kirby inked pages larger or smaller than the set of existing Kirby pencil pages?" This is a theoretically answerable question, but practically it might be hard. A lot of S&K pages were PARTLY inked by Kirby, but, as the OP pointed out, a lot of them may not exist anymore. From what I've seen, very few stories or pages appear to have been inked by Kirby alone. It wasn't how he preferred to work. On the other hand pencils were always inked for publication until the very end of his career in comics, so until the Super Powers era (early 80's) the only pages left in pencil were pages rejected for publication. So not many of those either. But throw in pencil sketches and my guess is fully Kirby inked pages are more rare.

[drdroom]

Kirby pencils are much more rare in terms of what is available in the marketplace. They just don't tend to be valued as highly as the inked pieces with a few exceptions. Peak Marvel pencils from the late 60's early 70's would go for a premium. As well as 70's DC peak pencils. And some of his better pencil commissions generally before 1980.

 

Glen, I would normally defer to your expertise on the marketplace, but the only Kirby-inked pages I can recall seeing on the market in the last few years would be that Alarming Tales splash on Ebay last month, and wasn't there a big Surfer/ Galactus poster-type piece that Jack inked offered somewhere? In contrast, there have been six or eight Super Powers pencilled pages on Heritage, and Burkey sold a pencil page from a late issue of FF a couple years ago as well.

 

[jick]

Kirby pencils are much more rare in terms of what is available in the marketplace. They just don't tend to be valued as highly as the inked pieces with a few exceptions. Peak Marvel pencils from the late 60's early 70's would go for a premium. As well as 70's DC peak pencils. And some of his better pencil commissions generally before 1980.

 

Glen, I would normally defer to your expertise on the marketplace, but the only Kirby-inked pages I can recall seeing on the market in the last few years would be that Alarming Tales splash on Ebay last month, and wasn't there a big Surfer/ Galactus poster-type piece that Jack inked offered somewhere? In contrast, there have been six or eight Super Powers pencilled pages on Heritage, and Burkey sold a pencil page from a late issue of FF a couple years ago as well.

 

I myself got a Kirby Super Powers pencilled page recently.

 

http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=981327

 

It is pure pencils, on 13 x 20 oversize comic paper, and features perhaps the biggest assemble of DC Comic heroes in one Kirby page. All of these scream as recipes for rarity and value.

 

But I got it at a very fair and affordable price that surprised me for a Kirby page.

 

Glen's comments about pre-1980 Kirby being more sought after, and the subsequent comments about there being more pencilled Kirby pages sold at auction makes me wonder why these Super Powers pages don't fall under that category.

 

Perhaps Kirby lost some of his touch and dynamics in this late stage of his career? I'd be the first to agree on that, scans of his Marvel pencils show more brilliance for sure.

 

I guess the rarity of Kirby pages don't always have direct proportional relation to their market value. Some rare Kirby pages can be had for a reasonable price.

 

 

[drdroom]

 

 

I guess the rarity of Kirby pages don't always have direct proportional relation to their market value. Some rare Kirby pages can be had for a reasonable price.

 

 

IMHO "Rare" is not a good description of this page (or most pages). Super cool, yes. Rare, no. AKA Rick's comments above are applicable here. Pencils pages are scarce (I conjecture) only relative to pages personally inked by Jack. Rarity is a funny concept. You could say its Rare to have all those characters drawn by Jack on one page, but that is really just a distinction of the page. Somewhere there's a page with the most word balloons of any Kirby page, or the most trees, and while that might be less exciting, it is equally "rare", that is, one of a kind.

 

Re-reading the thread I think there is some confusion going on. I suspect that Glen read the OP as referring to pages inked by ANYONE, as opposed to pages inked as well as pencilled by Jack himself. Or maybe I'm the one who is confused.

[Pete Marino]

The answer to the question is... ALL ARE EQUALLY RARE

 

That's because Original Art are all unique ONE OF A KIND pieces.

 

 

No offense, but I hate this saying. I think it's the biggest lie in OA, and used to jack up prices.

 

True there may only be 1 Captian Victory #2 page #4, but how many pages are there that Kirby did that are similar... Heck even in the same issue of a comic you can find 3-4 pages that are equal examples of the art most of the time. Much less when you have an artist that does 20+ issues.

 

It is RARE for a page to be truly unique imo.

[drdroom]

Pencils pages are scarce (I conjecture) only relative to pages personally inked by Jack.

 

I AM confused. I meant to say Kirby inks are scarce relative to pencils, not vice versa.

[Niblos!]

Interesting thoughts. I do appreciate you guys weighing in on this subject as it has been on my mind for a while. While I have seen numerous pencilled Kirby pages over the years, it is very seldom I see actual Kirby inked pages offered. I know it has been stated before, Kirby either didn't like the inking process or he simply wanted to move on to the next page since he was making more on pencils than he normally would inking.

 

In my eyes, Kirby pencils or inked pages are a collector's dream so I tend to see them as being equally cool but I just wanted some opinions from the board.

 

 

[glenbru]

My comments were referring to raw Kirby pencil pieces vs Kirby pages inked by inkers other then Kirby. Not Kirby pencilled and inked pages.

 

I hope that's clearer.

 

Glen

[drdroom]

I would in general much rather have a pencils page, as I think Kirby pencilled brilliantly but his inking was just ok. Pencilled Kirby versus equal page inked by Sinnott or Royer is a closer call, but I would again go for pencils due to scarcity.

[Koa]

The answer to the question is... ALL ARE EQUALLY RARE

 

That's because Original Art are all unique ONE OF A KIND pieces.

 

 

No offense, but I hate this saying. I think it's the biggest lie in OA, and used to jack up prices.

 

True there may only be 1 Captian Victory #2 page #4, but how many pages are there that Kirby did that are similar... Heck even in the same issue of a comic you can find 3-4 pages that are equal examples of the art most of the time. Much less when you have an artist that does 20+ issues.

 

It is RARE for a page to be truly unique imo.

 

Jack was one of the most prolific comic book artists ever. Even if one Narrows down his best work to a 5 year period or one specific inker or title, there are probably hundreds of examples. If he only inked a handful of published pieces, I'd say those are probably rare in terms of his body of work.

 

I love Gil Kane covers but he did close to a thousand during the 70's alone. Rare is a very overused term when it comes to monthly artists.

 

 

[glenbru]

Rare can simply mean seldom seen in the marketplace, despite being plentiful in number.

[dgarthwaite-migration]

I feel like my brain decayed at an accelerated rate while reading this thread.

 

DG

[Jordan27-migration]

I love this topic...especially about Kirby. There is a great new website www.comicartdb.com that I use to check things like this. So far the oldest Kirby FF page in the database is from issue #20 but I am watching to see if anyone posts older FF pages because I would love to know what is oldest FF pages that exist and which ones were destroyed. No one for sure seems to know. The oldest covers for sure are believed destroyed.

 

The site does have many Kirby pages from the 50's...but I am monitoring for the post 1961 stuff.

[Koa]

I feel like my brain decayed at an accelerated rate while reading this thread.

 

DG

 

I felt the same way when i read my earlier post "who is that insufficiently_thoughtful_person!, oh me"

[Koa]

My comments were referring to raw Kirby pencil pieces vs Kirby pages inked by inkers other then Kirby. Not Kirby pencilled and inked pages.

 

I hope that's clearer.

 

Glen

 

So have we figured this out yet?