2013 May 16 - 17 Vintage Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction

[delekkerste]

I guess I will always associate you with Copper art because of GI Joe.

 

[mtlevy]

I thought $22K for the green lantern page was strong - my memory is that decent Adams pages have been going ~ $5K...so $20k+ is strong but I suppose just emphasizes large difference between decent and special

[glendgold]

 

My condolences to all who didn't get that Everett page. Somebody got a great deal IMHO on an Avengers 17 page w/ Mole Man, classic Heck team, uncredited loose Kirby plot/ layouts...

 

Wait. Why do we think there are Kirby layouts here?

[Bronty]

I thought it was strong as well.

[Bronty]

No kidding! To this day I still don't "get" Jim Lee. To me that's not a great cover at all. But, lots of people seem to like his art.

Really? I like Jim Lee a lot (as do lots of other fanboys from the late 1980s who made him part of the Late 80s Marvel Holy Triumvirate).

 

And that's what I don't get ! Everybody else seems to like him... I guess I'm just on a different page than everyone else when it comes to him

[Bronty]

was soooo tempted to bid on the Williamson/Fraz page...

 

that might be my favorite EC story

[Bronty]

X-Factor 1 cvr = $33.5K

 

I was expecting it to stop at 7k and it just kept going... and going... and going...

[jbud73]

Maybe the Energizer bunny was biding on it. I did like 6 double takes and then rebooted my CPU just to make sure.

[ImageFan-migration]

So, I got outbid on the piece I wanted most - the Schulz Peanuts Sunday. I hadn't had any interest in ever owning one (still don't, really)...

 

At least the consolation is that the piece hopefully went to a fan who truly wanted a Peanuts for their collection, not someone with just a passing interest.

[NightGallery1]

Gene - I'll try to explain my reasoning behind spending the amount that I did on the Green Lantern page, other than what I have already said regarding its historic and artistic merits.

 

Even the best Adams/GL pages that have sold in the past ten years just don't measure up to this one... it's not even close. Looking through every page from the run, there's not another that I would prefer over this gem. I felt that most knowledgeable collectors would value this page somewhere around $15,000, so I added approximately 50% to that figure for my maximum expenditure, because again, there is no comparable example and I don't want a place-holder... I want only the best.

 

When I started really giving page 7 (which is also a great piece) a better look, I began to realize that no matter how good those two pages were separately, they would actually be much more if reunited and framed together. That's why when Jim Steele from Heritage called me today, I told him I wanted both pages, but my limit was going to be 30k ($35,864 w/BP) for the pair. The first page went for 19k ($22,705) and the second for 11k ($13,145), so I was literally holding my breath at the 11k mark, but in the end I got exactly what I wanted for exactly the price that I was willing to pay - how can you beat that?

[drewincanada]

 

My condolences to all who didn't get that Everett page. Somebody got a great deal IMHO on an Avengers 17 page w/ Mole Man, classic Heck team, uncredited loose Kirby plot/ layouts...

 

Wait. Why do we think there are Kirby layouts here?

 

I've seen it credited that way on a few Internet sources, but didn't give it much credence. I don't know what the original source of that claim is, or if it has ever been verified, and I didn't bid on it with any expectations of Kirby's involvement on the interiors. I liked the page as a Heck page, and it's from the first issue I read of the Avengers as a kid. I have a soft spot for Heck's oddly angular illustration style. The hammer price was my max bid. I thought it was an average price for a decent Heck Avengers page in today's wacky market.

 

Glen, do you have more info? LMK.

[Bronty]

congrats on the buy!

[NightGallery1]

drewincanada - Congrats on a sweet early Heck Avengers page. Good work on the max bid too.

[tth2]

Congratulations on winning the GL pages!

[t3quila]

The hammer price was my max bid.

 

I was wondering if should have bid higher. Congrats!

[batman_fan]

Gene - I'll try to explain my reasoning behind spending the amount that I did on the Green Lantern page, other than what I have already said regarding its historic and artistic merits.

 

Even the best Adams/GL pages that have sold in the past ten years just don't measure up to this one... it's not even close. Looking through every page from the run, there's not another that I would prefer over this gem. I felt that most knowledgeable collectors would value this page somewhere around $15,000, so I added approximately 50% to that figure for my maximum expenditure, because again, there is no comparable example and I don't want a place-holder... I want only the best.

 

When I started really giving page 7 (which is also a great piece) a better look, I began to realize that no matter how good those two pages were separately, they would actually be much more if reunited and framed together. That's why when Jim Steele from Heritage called me today, I told him I wanted both pages, but my limit was going to be 30k ($35,864 w/BP) for the pair. The first page went for 19k ($22,705) and the second for 11k ($13,145), so I was literally holding my breath at the 11k mark, but in the end I got exactly what I wanted for exactly the price that I was willing to pay - how can you beat that?

 

Congrats on a great pickup. I agree with others, strong price paid for them but both were incredible nice.

[delekkerste]

At least the consolation is that the piece hopefully went to a fan who truly wanted a Peanuts for their collection, not someone with just a passing interest.

 

Or it could have gone to a dealer. Or a hoarder. Or a flipper. Who knows. Even though spending tens of thousands of dollars on a Peanuts Sunday has never been top of mind (I think it's fairer to say that I never thought about pursuing one, not that I never wanted one), I'm a great admirer of the strip and was a huge, huge fan as a kid. And, with me, you know the piece would be both loved and wouldn't be going anywhere else for decades to come.

[delekkerste]

Gene - I'll try to explain my reasoning behind spending the amount that I did on the Green Lantern page, other than what I have already said regarding its historic and artistic merits.

 

Even the best Adams/GL pages that have sold in the past ten years just don't measure up to this one... it's not even close. Looking through every page from the run, there's not another that I would prefer over this gem. I felt that most knowledgeable collectors would value this page somewhere around $15,000, so I added approximately 50% to that figure for my maximum expenditure, because again, there is no comparable example and I don't want a place-holder... I want only the best.

 

Congrats! Sounds like you knew exactly what you were doing, went in with eyes wide open, and got what you wanted. I guess we're in the kind of market where you have to be prepared to bid 50% more than the consensus to get what you want, especially when you're dealing with A-level pages. And that is what I am lamenting, not so much the art itself, being a big admirer of both Messrs. Adams and Wrightson.

 

I no longer own a copy of the Adams GL issues (though I have read all of them in the past). I may have to track down a TPB and go through the pages myself, as I'm curious to see whether I would agree with your and Chris' assertion that this is the best interior page from the run.

 

Cool X-Files memorabilia, BTW...I know you sold the prop from "Home"; that episode was one of the most memorable of the series...that scene where your old prop is used still haunts me to this day, with that song "Wonderful, wonderful..." playing in the background.

[comix4fun]

Of course if I'm plopping 5 figures on a Neal Adams interior piece its gonna have Batman in it

 

Well, and that.

 

I guess people are also so jaded by this market that $20 and $30-something thousand dollar price tags for interior pages are these days. I guess I just expect more from panel pages that carry these kinds of price tags than other people do.

 

 

$22k raised an eyebrow, but not by much. I expected it to go for a nice number, somewhere in the mid to high teens. I guess someone realized the opportunity to get a page like this was right now and not again anytime soon given all the criteria involved.

 

I don't know how much more a panel page can have than that Adams/Wrightson combo has.

 

It's about as perfect as a panel page gets for composition, pencils, inks, emotion.

 

I've seen Adams covers that make me yawn go for $25k...this is an exciting page from an incredibly rare combo of artists on a title that Adams completely renewed in the same way he did Batman. That's a centerpiece of an adams collection right there. If the best of his covers are $100k plus I don't think one of the best of his panel pages should be shocking at $20k.

[comix4fun]

 

I no longer own a copy of the Adams GL issues (though I have read all of them in the past). I may have to track down a TPB and go through the pages myself, as I'm curious to see whether I would agree with your and Chris' assertion that this is the best interior page from the run.

 

 

 

 

You should. There's some great artwork in that run, but I've held dozens of examples in my hands and, from an art perspective, this is the A+...the Wrightson inks are the special sauce that makes it even more magical and impossible to pass up.

 

When I was looking for Adams Batman examples I did the same thing. I looked at dozens of pages, re-read all the comics, and narrowed it down to a range of about 8-9 comics in the Batman run that were the perfect storm of perfection, then you see the pieces that you can't pass up if you want a perfect example.