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Comic Art Preservation
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23 posts in this topic

I was having a discussion with someone about saving comic art for future generations, and they suggested I try starting a discussion here.

The issue is, will future generations be able to appreciate the "great" stories in their original art form, or will they have to be satisfied with scans of tired old comic books, printed using the cheapest printers the publishers could find in the 1950s, 60s or 70 (or effectively redrawn as part of the process of comic restoration efforts)?

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There's a lot that's been lost.  Toth's Battle Flag of the Foreign Legion, regarded by many as the Citizen Kane of comic book storytelling, is gone, forgotten by most collectors of comic art.  We still have Krigstein's Master Race, although many of us were shocked when the Lucas Museum did not purchase it when it came up for auction, so it looks like we can't rely on Obi-Wan Lucas to be our only hope to save this art form:

masterrace.jpeg.e98ada5ca6347fea5f1f88f7b04e36b4.jpeg

But we can also say that this has appeared in an IDW artists edition, so Scott Dunbier has high-res scans in his database, so if the original pages are lost, even though we won't be able to view the pages in a physical museum, it'll be available for people that possess the artists edition (and comic restorers can use that when they want to produce high-quality restorations of the original comic).

Scott-Dunbier.thumb.jpg.b2b96a373205a3fe508098382f098659.jpg

On the other hand, if we're relying on Scott Dunbier to save all our art, anybody working in IT will tell you that relying on a Single Point of Failure is a Very Bad Idea.

Edited by Taylor G
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Here's another aspect to the discussion: How do we make decisions about what to save or effectively discard?

Right now it's individual collectors and dealers, who make decisions all the time about which stories to keep in their collection, versus which stories are broken up for selling.  Someone made the decision to break up a story that many regard as one of Wrightson's best, that story is now gone:

jenifer.jpeg.34c124eeb7ba225d04259726ae48c855.jpeg

This is regarded as one of Russ Heath's best stories for the same publisher. The story is still together, and if the physical pages are ultimately lost or broken up, at least it has appeared in an IDW artist's portfolio edition, so it has been "saved":

yh.jpeg.f08dfaad74f5608346a3f347caef9891.jpeg

On the other hand, there is no artist's edition or artist's portfolio for the story below.  I have heard several people argue that this is not just the best story that Russ did for them, it was the best story published by that publisher, period:

shadow.jpeg.ba877efcb63f523e8ba57c5a36ebabf4.jpeg

Who is to say who's right?  How do we decide what should be preserved for future generations?  This is why, in film preservation, Martin Scorsese advocates for saving everything.  We should not arrogate to ourselves the decision of what will or will not be preserved for future generations.

If you want to say, trust in the marketplace, Citizen Kane struggled to make a profit at the box office, while the Andy Hardy films made a tidy profit.

Edited by Taylor G
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2 hours ago, Taylor G said:

We still have Krigstein's Master Race, although many of us were shocked when the Lucas Museum did not purchase it when it came up for auction, so it looks like we can't rely on Obi-Wan Lucas to be our only hope to save this art form:

(...)

But we can also say that this has appeared in an IDW artists edition, so Scott Dunbier has high-res scans in his database, so if the original pages are lost, even though we won't be able to view the pages in a physical museum, it'll be available for people that possess the artists edition (and comic restorers can use that when they want to produce high-quality restorations of the original comic).

These pages have been bought by the Boon foundation for an upcoming museum in Brussels, we can imagine that they should be able to take care of them and you will be able to view them in a physical museum. :)

https://comics.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news/boon-foundation-for-narrative-graphic-arts-bids-600-000-for-original-art-for-master-race.s?releaseId=3539

Edited by NicoV
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3 hours ago, heartened said:

Are you asking about preserving complete OA stories?

That’s a pretty expensive proposition. I save scans off what I have, either at 300 or 600 dpi. I doubt I’m the only one. The publishers presumably have them, too, for reprint purposes. That isn’t enough? 

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3 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

That’s a pretty expensive proposition. I save scans off what I have, either at 300 or 600 dpi. I doubt I’m the only one. The publishers presumably have them, too, for reprint purposes. That isn’t enough? 

Correct, for most modern art they have hi-res scans.  For the old stuff, I think those days are gone.  They have mostly been broken up so more people can enjoy them and of course for the profit that someone made by breaking them off and selling individually.  I only have one complete story (LOEG 1st series, book 5) and I also have the cover to it, and am keeping it intact for that very reason.  But if the time comes to sell, I'm quite sure the next owner would break it up.

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19 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

I save scans off what I have, either at 300 or 600 dpi. 

That's great, but Dunbier, who has a lot of experience with this, asks for 1200 dpi scans, otherwise it's difficult to do image processing.  And while presumably most people do their best, some of the scans in the artists editions are woeful. 

If you look at the artists editions, the ones that have complete stories are typically where either someone has kept all the art together (EC is the best example) or has actually gone to the trouble of reassembling the stories.  The Wrightson, Cockrum and Byrne artifact editions contain no complete stories, because Dunbier could only locate isolated pages.  All those stories are gone.  The example I know of where an AE was possible, because someone saved high-res scans, was Mazzucchelli's Born Again.

And then there are the people who don't want to share scans of their art, because fresh to market.  I've even heard of people refusing to share scans just for comic restoration purposes, which was a surprise.

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While not perfect for preservation, I feel CAF is a great step in the right direction. Not all the scans will be perfect, but it's an immense amount of documentation.

What tools would one recommend to get the best scans? I try to document my art well on CAF but would like to up my efforts eventually.

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3 hours ago, Varanis said:

While not perfect for preservation, I feel CAF is a great step in the right direction. Not all the scans will be perfect, but it's an immense amount of documentation.

What tools would one recommend to get the best scans? I try to document my art well on CAF but would like to up my efforts eventually.

If you are asking me, CAF is great for a lot of reasons, but not as a historically usable and transferable library of images. All the art loaded onto CAF are jpegs and not sufficient as archives. You couldn't print out truly high quality images from those types of files for example.

As for best scans? Again, you get what you pay for and high end (expensive) scanners will give you the highest fidelity. I happen to have the same scanner that Scott Dunbier and IDW use for their Artist Editions (the Epson 10000, which I use for work as well as my art collection). Less expensive scanners can do a decent job as well, but the optics probably diminish a bit the cheaper you go. Again, I'm no expert, but hopefully I answered your general question.

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CAF is a great resource for the hobby, but it has its limitations.

For one thing, it's all focused on single pages (with provision for auxiliary images).  For that reason, as I understand it, the annual Best Art "awards" have no category for stories.  The best you'll get is a splash page.  

There's lots of stuff in black hole collections (including stuff that shows up in artists editions) that isn't on CAF, and even people who put stuff on CAF (or 2D) often don't put everything there.  People want their privacy, or they don't want to have to fend off half-assed offers, or they want their art "fresh to market" when it sells, or .....

I'd say CAF is more geared towards showing off and selling pages, but less to building an inventory (let alone a scan database) of what's out there.

There's also the issue of people keeping TIFF images on local drives that fail with no backup, or just get thrown away.

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On 1/7/2021 at 1:00 PM, RBerman said:

Even in the lower price tier, there are preservation opportunities. 

This is great, and it brings up another point.

When dealers think of "preserving" stories, I'm sure they are only concerned with the "classics."  When Master Race went up for auction, someone on this board differentiated it from the rest of the "pop culture memorabilia" because of its historical significance.

Here's an analogy, though.  Imagine people were collecting movies in the 1950s.  You'd look at the Oscars for the popular consensus for what is "good."  You would completely overlook this little film, that most people at the time did not know what to make of, that only got two technical Academy Award nominations, and that for many years was out of distribution and only available for viewing on bootleg prints (illegal copies belonging to collectors)

1024px-Vertigomovie_restoration.jpg

But this overlooked film has in the last decade been chosen by Sight and Sound as the best film ever made, supplanting Citizen Kane (which itself was largely overlooked when it first came out).

So, a couple of points.  First, who is to say what's worth preserving?  Maybe people, who consider themselves diligent, are breaking up stories that will be considered lost classics in the future.

And, as a corollary to Buy What You Like, let's add, Conserve What You Like.  With popular and critical tastes bifurcating, maybe the best we can do is to save the "cult classics" for people that share our opinion of them, and leave the big ticket items like Master Race to the museums (those that are able to survive in our changing world).

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For people with the means to assemble the pages from old stories or maintain complete stories, that's great.  But the vast majority of decades of stories will never be whole again. 

However, to whatever degree is possible, going forward, it would be nice if pencilers (traditional or digital) and/or inkers (traditional or digital) saved good scans of their work.  The publishers would save those images for reprint purposes.  But for shear art appreciation (i.e. non-commercial) purposes, can creators please archive images of their art ??

 

 

Edited by Will_K
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15 hours ago, Will_K said:

can creators please archive images of their art ??

Polls of favorite artist editions consistently rate Mazzucchelli's Born Again as many people's favorite. 

We wouldn't have that AE if Mazz had not saved high-res scans of his art before selling it.

A lot of pre-modern stories are being broken up by dealers, who pick them up at auction.  It would be nice if they could save TIFF scans (not just the low-res JPEGs they put on their Web sites) of the stories they are breaking up and selling off. 

Perhaps collectors could save such scans before selling.  At least, once sold, they don't have to worry about "fresh to market" anymore, so they could share the high-res scans with the rest of us.

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I came across this interesting podcast about the Manx Loaghtan sheep, that people will mainly know from their appearance on rock album covers. 

The_Cult_(Black_Sheep)_cover.jpg

What is interesting about these sheep is that, although they've been around since the Bronze Age, they've come close to extinction several times, edged out by economically more viable breeds. 

What saved them from going out, was that every time they were down to just a few sheep, some eccentric gave the surviving sheep shelter on his farm, and when he died, another eccentric came along and took over their stewardship.  Now they are thriving as the inhabitants of the Isle of Man take pride in this very distinctive breed of sheep.   They survive because of the efforts of literally a handful of farmers who saw more than just economic prospects.

What has this got to do with conserving comic art?  Left as an exercise to the reader.

 

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I have scans of the art currently or formerly in my collection. Mine are at 600 dpi. I can understand the desire for 1200 dpi but they take muck longer to scan and the file sizes are cumbersome to work with. Unless you are going to enlarge the already large OA, 600 is IMO sufficient. I use an Epson 11000 but I have to say they are expensive and their current quality is not what it once was.

I did the scanning of Joe Simon's personal collection. This included compete stories. They were, however, mostly pre-Silver Age and non-superhero so they do not go for the high prices of most of the OA market. Therefore I suspect they are unlikely to be broken down and sold in pieces.

I did the restorations for Titan's Simon and Kirby Library volumes. Anytime I could use scans of the OA in those restorations, I did. Even when it was not a complete story. Restorations from the OA were always superior to working from scans of the comics.

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