Are prices still climbing or have they eased up a bit??? 43 43

[KCOComics]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:12 PM, paqart said:

 that I much prefer is Walt Simonson. His drawing, particularly his compositions and inking, make him my favorite artist from that era.

Walt is so very underappreciated!!  I feel like he was walking with giants. He was doing his best work right as Adams, Bernie, Sterenko and others were really coming into their own. Just an incredible era for comic book artists. 

I really appreciate his wife's work to! A very talented family! 

[paqart]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:28 PM, KCOComics said:

Walt is so very underappreciated!!  I feel like he was walking with giants. He was doing his best work right as Adams, Bernie, Sterenko and others were really coming into their own. Just an incredible era for comic book artists. 

I really appreciate his wife's work to! A very talented family! 

I met him at a convention in San Jose in 1977, when I was 11 years old. He was working on the Manhunter backup feature at DC at the time and I already knew he was going to be a big deal before long. I met him again in Maine, at a tiny convention in around 1992. That time, I had just started working as a comic book artist myself and was also a guest at the con. My table was right beside Simonson's, so we chatted throughout the day. Really teriffic conversation as I remember it.

[KCOComics]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:35 PM, paqart said:

I met him at a convention in San Jose in 1977, when I was 11 years old. He was working on the Manhunter backup feature at DC at the time and I already knew he was going to be a big deal before long. I met him again in Maine, at a tiny convention in around 1992. That time, I had just started working as a comic book artist myself and was also a guest at the con. My table was right beside Simonson's, so we chatted throughout the day. Really teriffic conversation as I remember it.

That's very cool. It's always nice to hear that that these guys are gracious to their fans.

 

[paqart]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:42 PM, KCOComics said:

That's very cool. It's always nice to hear that that these guys are gracious to their fans.

 

I don't know if I've ever met an artist or writer who wasn't. The one that takes the prize for most gracious though is writer Dan Chichester. He isn't just friendly, he makes people feel better after they've met him. It was amazing to watch the way he interacted with people and how he always managed to think of something to say that made them feel good. I've never met anyone else who could do that, or that even came close with such natural ease.

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:12 PM, paqart said:

 

That's all fair enough. I remember when it came out, how everyone was making such a big deal about McFarland. At the time, as now, I wasn't fond of his work nor did I ever like Venom as a character. McFarland and JS Campbell make the same kind of drawing errors, though admittedly with some style. Starlin is like that also; loads of drawing errors but stylish. Venom was like a shark with legs: an eating machine. That said, I'm glad other people like the character and I did enjoy the movie. McFarland's drawings just don't sit right with me. Someone else from the same period that I much prefer is Walt Simonson. His drawing, particularly his compositions and inking, make him my favorite artist from that era.

Simonson gets his due with Thor 337

Granted it’s only a $1000 book on its best day

But Thor isn’t Spider-Man.  Beta Ray isn’t Venom. It’s not a double thick double anniversary issue. It doesn’t have a black cover.  And it definitely doesn’t have everyone’s favourite web-slinger looking cool as hell in his black costume. 

 

 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by THE_BEYONDER

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:10 PM, COI said:

I understand the logic of high supply = unappealing to collect. It's why I avoided buying it for so long. But I'm starting to think that with enough demand, a high supply isn't necessarily a bad thing. The book is easy to buy and easy to sell, and that liquidity makes it not a very risky proposition, especially for collectors who are new to buying slabs. With so many copies trading hands all the time in every grade above VF, most people will not be overpaying by definition. And multiple copies in every grade are available for those who like to hoard. 

Well, I didn't say the book is "unappealing" in any way.  I love the book ... here's mine.  I bought it for exactly $2K during the prolonged period when this was a steady $2K book month in and month out.

I agree with the points made above about the reasons the book remains in high demand.  But, since this book is being used in a narrative about the poor unsuspecting collectors/speculators who bought a copy for $6K and are watching it fall to $4-5K, I'm simply saying that anyone paying attention could have seen that this is precisely the kind of book you shouldn't be buying in an overheated market.

I've chased (and arguably overpaid for) plenty of books ... but generally they are books where I know I'm buying one of a very small number in the census -- 20 or less, 10 or less, even 5 or less in some cases.  I would not recommend chasing a book that is growing on trees.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Sweet Lou 14

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:01 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Well, I didn't say the book is "unappealing" in any way.  I love the book ... here's mine.  I bought it for exactly $2K during the prolonged period when this was a steady $2K book month in and month out.

I agree with the points made above about the reasons the book remains in high demand.  But, since this book is being used in a narrative about the poor unsuspecting collectors/speculators who bought a copy for $6K and are watching it fall to $4-5K, I'm simply saying that anyone paying attention could have seen that this is precisely the kind of book you shouldn't be buying in an overheated market.

I've chased (and arguably overpaid for) plenty of books ... but generally they are books where I know I'm buying one of a very small number in the census -- 20 or less, 10 or less, even 5 or less in some cases.  I would not recommend chasing a book that is growing on trees.

I prefer 252 personally, as that was the book that brought me back to Spidey after a prolonged break from comics(I think I gave up on Spidey in the 220s) Saw it on the newsstand, and was back. Stuck around until the costume was gone and lost interest again.  That copy came back an 8.5 

 

I didn’t experience McFarlane in real time. 

I don’t own an ASM 300 currently, simply because there’s no need to.   Book is available 24/7

 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by THE_BEYONDER

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:12 PM, paqart said:

 

That's all fair enough. I remember when it came out, how everyone was making such a big deal about McFarland. At the time, as now, I wasn't fond of his work nor did I ever like Venom as a character. McFarland and JS Campbell make the same kind of drawing errors, though admittedly with some style. Starlin is like that also; loads of drawing errors but stylish. Venom was like a shark with legs: an eating machine. That said, I'm glad other people like the character and I did enjoy the movie. McFarland's drawings just don't sit right with me. Someone else from the same period that I much prefer is Walt Simonson. His drawing, particularly his compositions and inking, make him my favorite artist from that era.

I love Simonson too.

I'm not trying to compare MacFarlane to Kirby, whose storytelling and universe-building are unmatched in the history of comics.  But if you want to pick apart artists based on the technical "errors" in their work, there's plenty to criticize in Kirby's work -- but that doesn't prevent him from being the seminal artist of his era.  MacFarlane's impact on the industry is huge for slightly different reasons -- his enormous success as a businessman stands in stark and tragic contrast to the creators who came before him -- but sticking strictly to the art, there's no doubt (in my mind) that at its best his work just jumps off the page and has that certain magical quality that the great ones have.

[COI]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:01 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Well, I didn't say the book is "unappealing" in any way.  I love the book ... here's mine.  I bought it for exactly $2K during the prolonged period when this was a steady $2K book month in and month out.

I agree with the points made above about the reasons the book remains in high demand.  But, since this book is being used in a narrative about the poor unsuspecting collectors/speculators who bought a copy for $6K and are watching it fall to $4-5K, I'm simply saying that anyone paying attention could have seen that this is precisely the kind of book you shouldn't be buying in an overheated market.

I've chased (and arguably overpaid for) plenty of books ... but generally they are books where I know I'm buying one of a very small number in the census -- 20 or less, 10 or less, even 5 or less in some cases.  I would not recommend chasing a book that is growing on trees.

Nice copy, and I would agree with you. But it's looking as though the market was overheated for most things, common and uncommon alike. 

The upside on this one is demography. The guys and gals who want this the most will keep the demand up for the next several years, even if it dips a little here or there. Beyond that, who knows?

[paqart]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:01 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Well, I didn't say the book is "unappealing" in any way.  I love the book ... here's mine.  I bought it for exactly $2K during the prolonged period when this was a steady $2K book month in and month out.

I agree with the points made above about the reasons the book remains in high demand.  But, since this book is being used in a narrative about the poor unsuspecting collectors/speculators who bought a copy for $6K and are watching it fall to $4-5K, I'm simply saying that anyone paying attention could have seen that this is precisely the kind of book you shouldn't be buying in an overheated market.

I've chased (and arguably overpaid for) plenty of books ... but generally they are books where I know I'm buying one of a very small number in the census -- 20 or less, 10 or less, even 5 or less in some cases.  I would not recommend chasing a book that is growing on trees.

I just had a conversation with my wife about stock prices that isn't much different from this conversation. She was worried that some of our stocks have dropped from their peak back in May of this year. I reminded her that it was still higher than when we acquired it, and better than cash because it is part of something tangible, a blue chip company. Money becomes worthless long before things lose their value. The only time to sell when prices are going down is when you are certain they will go to zero or you have to avoid a margin call or something like that. There are stocks that go to zero, I worked for such a company once, but this stock is a company that has been around for about 150 years and likely will be around longer than any of us. 

With comics as investment (an odd concept), my only concern is that someday, people won't want the clutter of physical objects around them. Some things need to be a part of our environment to remind us why we should be interested in them. If comics as an art form was supplanted by something else, as vaudeville was by film and television, then we'd be looking at a tulip market. Until then, I'm not too worried because part of the fun is tracking these things down. All by itself, that is a reason to collect. The movies and TV shows just give us ideas sometimes, or reminders of things we'd forgotten about.

[paqart]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:17 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I love Simonson too.

I'm not trying to compare MacFarlane to Kirby, whose storytelling and universe-building are unmatched in the history of comics.  But if you want to pick apart artists based on the technical "errors" in their work, there's plenty to criticize in Kirby's work -- but that doesn't prevent him from being the seminal artist of his era.  MacFarlane's impact on the industry is huge for slightly different reasons -- his enormous success as a businessman stands in stark and tragic contrast to the creators who came before him -- but sticking strictly to the art, there's no doubt (in my mind) that at its best his work just jumps off the page and has that certain magical quality that the great ones have.

It took a long time to warm up to Kirby. When I was a kid, I really disliked his work. Stan Lee's constant praise of him was, in my opinion, pure showmanship and no substance. My favorite artists at that time all worked for DC: Simonson (Manhunter), Adams (Detective/Batman/Green Lantern), Wrightson (HOM and Swamp Thing), Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, Jim Aparo, and MR. Giordano. Eventually, I accepted Barry Smith on Conan, Steranko on SHIELD, Starlin's Warlock, and then went all in with Marvel when Byrne came on the scene. Still, I looked at all the Kirby work as pure history but "bad art".

In 1984, I was 17 and about to start school at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. The LCS there was Golden Apple on Melrose Ave. One day I was in the shop and the kid behind the counter, a guy named "Scott Free" (or who called himself that) told me that several comic book pros came into the shop. I asked him how I would contact one of them so I could get advice on breaking into the business. Without hesitation, he gave me Mark Evanier's phone number and said, "he lives right around the corner from here."

I went outside and called Mark from a phone booth outside. Across the street and some distance to my left was a huge TV studio (CBS or NBC). I later learned that Mark worked there as a writer. At the time though, I had no idea who he was. Scott had to show me a copy of Groo to convince me he was legit. About ten minutes after I got off the phone with Mark, I was knocking on his door. He graciously invited me in and brought to his dinig room where he asked me to open up my portfolio and show him what I had. I did so, and pulled out 3 enormous 18" x 24" pen and ink drawings of faux comic book covers, each with hand-lettered cover logos. One was a Fantastic Four, another was Superman as a werewolf (before the famous Bolland cover), and the third I don't remember. 

"You are never going to work with art like that," he said. "You have no idea what comics are about, do you? It's all about storytelling, not pretty covers. Anyone can can do covers and splash pages but very few can tell a story in pictures. The guys who can do that, they have a career in comics."

For the next 2-3 hours, he showed me an amazing quantity of original art that he'd accumulated over the years. "Who do you like?" he asked. "I have just about everybody, so name it and I'll show you the art." I was less surprised to hear that after walking by what looked like the original cover art to Journey into Mystery #83 in his hall but I still didn't expect he could follow through. I said, "Wrightson, Adams, and Barry Smith".

Mark was disappointed with my choices. "I have maybe a couple hundred pages by Adams, and a few by the other two but these guys really aren't the best examples if you want to learn storytelling. The artists you should be looking at are Jack Kirby and Curt Swan. Those guys are two of the best storytellers who ever drew a comic. Them and Dan Spiegle."

I had no idea who Spiegle was. Kirby and Swan were a joke to me. I thought Mark had very odd tastes when it came to art. Nevertheless, as I pored over his cache of Adams pages, he kept slipping in a Kirby here and there, telling me why Kirby's art always outsold Adams. He said that sales on comics with Adams covers were so low compared to Swan that he was in danger of not getting any more assignments. "Collectors might like Adams but the general public do not, and they buy more comics than fans like you and me. Adams draws well but his panels try to do too much. He often makes these crazy shapes for panel borders or uses extreme angles when drawing the characters. They had to draw arrows all over his pages just so readers would know which panel was first and which came second."
"Kirby and Swan aren't like that. Kirby always used the same panel structure. It doesn't mean he lacks creativity. It means he knows better than to irritate the reader. And look at the dynamic action in these poses and then compare to Adams or Wrightson or one of those other guys you like so much. Kirby is just hands down a better storyteller."
"What about Frazetta and Williamson? Or how about Johnny Craig? Or Carl Barks?"

"Frazetta was never a very good comic book artist. He did some great illustrations for covers but his interior work was never that strong. Barks was an excellent storyteller."

So that was when Mark laid down the law to me on Jack Kirby. He spent a few hours trying to convince a stranger off the street that Kirby was actually not a bad artist, not to mention a great comic book artist. He didn't succeed.
I stayed in touch with Mark over the next several years. By 1990, I was sending him my sample pages every week for critiques by phone. All that time, he kept talking about Kirby. Finally, he suggested I trace some Kirby panels to get a sense of his action. That was when I finally understood. From that day on, I couldn't care less about the knobby knees or any other anatomical peculiarity in his drawings. Kirby's drawing were powerful, period. Not only that but they were very hard to imitate in a way that came close to echoing the energy in his compositions. 
The difference between Kirby's anatomical "errors" and McFarlane's, is that Kirby's drawing are solid but McFarlane's are not. Kirby's are very three-dimensional, McFarlane's often look like 2D cutouts. Kirby might draw anatomy in an idiosyncratic way but he always draws it the same way. If you think of them as toy designs instead of people, he always drew the same toys. In McFarlane's case, and Starlin, Jim Lee, JC Campbell, and others, that 3 dimensionality and action just aren't there. The closest I've seen in recent years are the drawings of Chris Samnee or Darwyn Cooke.
Nowadays, I love Kirby's work, and Curt Swan also. Some years ago, I had the pleasure of hiring Dan Spiegle to do some production art for me on a couple of video games and he was fantastic. I also hired Mark Royer on one of those games and he was great also.
I still like Wrightson but am less fond of Adams than I was. Gil Kane and John Romita have shot up in my estimation to well above the Adams storytelling standard. Regardless, I love my Avengers 93-97, and am very pleased with my recent purchase of one of my all-time favorite Adams covers, on Superman #307 where Supergirl drops the bottle city of Kandor as Superman yells, "Supergirl! What are you doing? You've just killed seven million people!"
My tastes have changed but I well appreciate that we all have our reasons for liking what we like. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by paqart

[Steven Valdez]

Neal Adams' comics did sell extremely well, it's just that many of the sales were unofficial, i.e. off the back of distribution trucks directly to comic book dealers. See 'Secret Origins of the Direct Market' in Comic Book Artist 6, 1999.

Walt Simonson's art always had that flat 2D paper cut-out look to it for me, as did Jim Lee's.

 

[paqart]

On 10/18/2022 at 12:39 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Neal Adams' comics did sell extremely well, it's just that many of the sales were unofficial, i.e. off the back of distribution trucks directly to comic book dealers. See 'Secret Origins of the Direct Market' in Comic Book Artist 6, 1999.

Walt Simonson's art always had that flat 2D paper cut-out look to it for me, as did Jim Lee's.

 

Regarding Adams' sales relative to Swan, that is different from saying that Adams sold well or that he was in no danger of getting fewer assignments. According to Mark, Adams did not sell well compared to Swan and he was in danger of getting fewer assignments, or none, based on Mark's conversations with editors at the time. Maybe his stuff did sell well of the back of a truck, though I don't know what you mean by "comic book dealers" for the time period I am thinking of, around 1965-1969. Maybe both are true. One thing that comes to mind is that the kind of "sales" you describe don't sound like the type where DC would ever see the money, so they would have no way of knowing about them.
You're right about Simonson but I think he makes up for it with his dynamic inks. Quite frankly, comic book artists make loads of drawing mistakes. My guess is that it comes down to 2 things: 1) time, 2) reference. Unless you have Superman and Batman duking it out in your studio, then holding still while you draw, there will always be something off. This is why (I think) the best artists don't even try to be "realistic". They just aim for telling a story. The best of them don't let their drawing style get in the way of the story. This is why my favorite comic book artist of all time is Carl Barks. He is the only artist I can think of whose drawings and storytelling mesh so perfectly that readers can become fully immersed in his stories without distractions from odd panel borders, unnecesary pin-up poses, easter eggs, failed attempts at "realism" or strange lighting.

Another example is Scott Adams, whose Dilbert cartoon is all about the joke, not a realistic visual depiction of office cubes and their inhabitants. Without anything resembling visual realism, Dilbert is the most viscerally real depiction of office life I've ever seen. I can't imagine any other artist, From Frank Frazetta to Leonardo da Vinci, doing it as well as Adams. When I look at McFarlane, my attention is constantly drawn away from the story by his panel border manipulation, his propensity for unnecessary splash panels, and the loads of details he piles into every crevice of his drawings. Those things may make for a nice looking single image but they don't do their job in the story.
 

[Steven Valdez]

On 10/18/2022 at 4:00 PM, paqart said:

Regarding Adams' sales relative to Swan, that is different from saying that Adams sold well or that he was in no danger of getting fewer assignments. According to Mark, Adams did not sell well compared to Swan and he was in danger of getting fewer assignments, or none, based on Mark's conversations with editors at the time. Maybe his stuff did sell well of the back of a truck, though I don't know what you mean by "comic book dealers" for the time period I am thinking of, around 1965-1969. Maybe both are true. One thing that comes to mind is that the kind of "sales" you describe don't sound like the type where DC would ever see the money, so they would have no way of knowing about them.
You're right about Simonson but I think he makes up for it with his dynamic inks. Quite frankly, comic book artists make loads of drawing mistakes. My guess is that it comes down to 2 things: 1) time, 2) reference. Unless you have Superman and Batman duking it out in your studio, then holding still while you draw, there will always be something off. This is why (I think) the best artists don't even try to be "realistic". They just aim for telling a story. The best of them don't let their drawing style get in the way of the story. This is why my favorite comic book artist of all time is Carl Barks. He is the only artist I can think of whose drawings and storytelling mesh so perfectly that readers can become fully immersed in his stories without distractions from odd panel borders, unnecesary pin-up poses, easter eggs, failed attempts at "realism" or strange lighting.

Another example is Scott Adams, whose Dilbert cartoon is all about the joke, not a realistic visual depiction of office cubes and their inhabitants. Without anything resembling visual realism, Dilbert is the most viscerally real depiction of office life I've ever seen. I can't imagine any other artist, From Frank Frazetta to Leonardo da Vinci, doing it as well as Adams. When I look at McFarlane, my attention is constantly drawn away from the story by his panel border manipulation, his propensity for unnecessary splash panels, and the loads of details he piles into every crevice of his drawings. Those things may make for a nice looking single image but they don't do their job in the story.
 

There were certainly several bulk comic book dealers in the late '60s (and beyond), check their ads in the Silver/Bronze comics. I used to buy from one of them in the '70s, he had seemingly endless piles of mint, unread Silver Age Marvels, dirt cheap. And indeed, Marvel and DC had no idea about the 'back of truck' sales - those were 'no sales' as far as the publishers were concerned. 

Back to the artistry side of things....

Kirby was never a master anatomist, but he deteriorated in that regard throughout the '70s due to health and eyesight issues. Despite being my all-time favourite artist, his later work is hard to look at and even harder to read.

McFarlane I think has always been more interested in flash than slavishly studying anatomy and references. Pretty sure he's said he hates having to draw actual guns and vehicles, preferring to make up his own. I like a lot of his stuff but his recent Spawn spin-offs are just incoherent and nonsensical to me. He doesn't draw those, but he co-writes and/or edits them.

There's definitely room for both realistic and cartoony artists in comics, depending on the subject matter. Alex Ross is the most realistic comic artist I can think of. As far as I know, he uses references for almost everything he does, other than things that don't exist in reality.

 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Steven Valdez

[seanlinc]

This thread has been an interesting read. I collected comics as a kid then again in the early to mid 90s. I just started again sometime last year and had no idea I was looking at prices in the middle of a Bull run. Luckily I only added a few lower priced semi key books(not asm 300 but a nice asm 316 instead) and mostly concentrated on getting my comics graded. granted I also didn't realize how long ccs took so some that made sense valuewise to grade then don't so much now but oh well.

[KCOComics]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:01 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Well, I didn't say the book is "unappealing" in any way.  I love the book ... here's mine.  I bought it for exactly $2K during the prolonged period when this was a steady $2K book month in and month out.

I agree with the points made above about the reasons the book remains in high demand.  But, since this book is being used in a narrative about the poor unsuspecting collectors/speculators who bought a copy for $6K and are watching it fall to $4-5K, I'm simply saying that anyone paying attention could have seen that this is precisely the kind of book you shouldn't be buying in an overheated market.

I've chased (and arguably overpaid for) plenty of books ... but generally they are books where I know I'm buying one of a very small number in the census -- 20 or less, 10 or less, even 5 or less in some cases.  I would not recommend chasing a book that is growing on trees.

 

Growing up during the heart of McFarlane hype, ASM300 was one of the books I really went after.. That, along with ASM129 and Hulk 181 and early Siler Surfer books were among the first books I ever collected.... Total 90s kid.

Anyway, I bought ASM 298 -300 all raw and unslabbed for $60 I think.  They were sold to me as NM and to my unsuspecting 19 year old eye, they looked the part!! When I got them graded (early days of CGC) the 298 came back as a 7.5, the 299 was restored (I didn't get this one graded and only noticed the restoration after owning the book for 20 years) and the 300 came back an unpressed 9.2

I ended up selling the 300 during all the hype because my interests had changed and the money went towards a low grade (.5) AF15.  

I haven't missed it, but if the right opportunity presented itself I wouldn't mind getting another copy.  Same with the ASM129 which I recently sold.  

[DC#]

From the book of head-scratching results comes this She-Hulk last night on Heritage.   Not even a newsstand and sold for 3x what copies have been trading for this month.     Someone really loved that finale episode last week.....

.

Edited October 18, 2022 by DC#

[paqart]

On 10/18/2022 at 1:38 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Alex Ross is the most realistic comic artist I can think of. As far as I know, he uses references for almost everything he does, other than things that don't exist in reality.

 

 

There are a lot of different ways to describe "realism".

I remember telling a friend about Neal Adams in 1980. My friend was an elderly gentleman named Alan who owned an antique camera store in Santa Barbara. I was 15 and made extra money selling collectibles for a neighboring store. On this occasion, I described Adams as a "photorealist" to Alan. He laughed and said, "he is not photorealist. There are no comic book artists that can be described that way. As soon as you use black lines to outline the figure, they don't look like a photo." Alan was right. Around 1989, I bought a six by nine foot painting by the Photorealist artist David Parrish. If I hadn't been convinced by Alan's argument, that painting was enough to convince me. There is no such thing as a "Photorealist" comic book artist.

Here is the painting, for sale by whoever bought it from me at Christie's, now at Sotheby's: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/contemporary-curated-3/see-the-jaguar. Speaking of concerns about losing money on comics, I lost a lot of money on this painting. I paid $42,000 in 1989, sold it for $25,000 around 2006, and now it's expected to fetch between 6,000-9,000 British pounds at auction. I've never had a similar experience with comics. I liked the painting but its size was a huge problem. I had to keep it in mind whenever I moved, and insuring it was more expensive than I liked.

Speaking of "Photorealism", owning the Parrish, and seeing other paintings by similar artists, taught me how unPhoto-like even Photorealist art is. A reproduction of these usually do look like photographs but the originals do not. Not even close. Richard Estes is an excellent example of this. His work has very splashy brushwork that is really distinctive when you look at an original. Because his color choices are so carefully calibrated, all those jagged brushstrokes disappear when you reduce the painting to reproduction size.

Getting back to comics, or rather, getting slightly closer to comics, I would describe Boris Vallejo's paintings as more realistic than Frank Frazetta's but Frazetta's are far more appealing and dramatic, to me anyway, because of their lighting and color choices. The Hildebrandt brothers paintings remind me of the work of N.C. Wyeth, father of painter Andrew Wyeth, and an excellent illustrator. Their work isn't particularly "realistic" because they caricature almost everything they paint and use over-saturated color. However, the work has considerable visual appeal and everything they paint is very "real" in the sense that it well-describes their fantasy version of the worlds they illustrate. Richard Corben has many things in common with the Hildebrandt brothers. I don't like the subjects he illustrates but admire his style.

Neal Adams, Trevor von Eden, Jackson Guice, Paul Gulacy, and other comic book artists use a lot of photo reference. The difference between Adams and the others is that Adams is far more flexible with the way he uses it than the others. Some artists cannot go beyond what they see in a photo and must slavishly copy it. Adams doesn't do that. Personally, I normally dislike the "traced photo" look. One place where this is particularly evident are in modern comics where the superheroes have the faces of all the artists' best friends, or himself. 

The best comic artists will use photo reference but they do not copy it. There is a big difference between drawing exactly what one sees in a photo and using the photo to determine the 3D structure of something and then drawing it in a different pose and a different angle. Artists who can do the latter can draw faster and generally last longer in the industry. Examples of this mode of working include just about anyone who ever worked for EC Comics in the 1950's, like Jack Davis, George Evans, Reed Crandall, Johnny Craig, Harvey Kurtzman, and others. All of these artists were able to flexibly utilize photo reference to incorporate realism into drawings they constructed first without the benefit of the specific reference needed to finish the drawings. This is something I've never seen Alex Ross do.

In my case, I could draw from live subjects competently when I started drawing comics but couldn't draw without essentially copying photo reference as-is. Yes, my earliest comics contain many portraits of the guys from my local comic book store. I decided to cut the cord on a fill-in issue of Deathroke I did for DC (either issue 12 or 27, I forget which). This was the first time I didn't use any photo reference for the people. Or at least, that was the idea. I remember getting reference for a couple of poses I had a hard time visualizing. This is my least favorite comic of the comics I've drawn, primarily because it is my first attempt to draw figures entirely from memory. It worked in places, not in others. The next time I did it, some fill-in pages on Teen Titans, worked out a lot better. Now I can draw like this without difficulty but there are others who can do it so much better, like Lee Weeks. The kind of drawings he does from memory, I would need reference to make.

What I call the "illustrator" class of comic book artists are the artists who are literally making illustrations for the sake of making each panel into a work of art. A few examples of these are: Berni Wrightson, Frank Frazetta, Jose Garcia-Lopez, Moebius (Jean-Giraud), and even Todd McFarlane. After this, you have the "Storyteller" class of artist. These are the guys who usually sell the most comics. Some examples: Curt Swan, Carl Barks, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, John Buscema, John Romita, John Byrne and Gil Kane. These artists use as much reference as needed to tell the story but they aren't that worried about realism.

John Romita (sr), for instance, draws people as if they are made of round balloons attached at their ends. His knowledge of anatomy, or the way he draws it anyway, makes it seem he is only aware of how many joints are in a human body, not what the muscles look like, where they are, or what they do. His son, John Romita Jr, expresses strong knowledge of anatomy in his drawings but is, in my opinion, a weaker storyteller than his father. The way Romita stages a scene; his choice of camera angle and the action depicted on panel, make me think of the kind of choices made by a seasoned and gifted film director. I enjoy his son's drawings more as art but less as story.

Personally, I tend to shy away from the more "realistic" artists because they are usually far less flexible than the storytellers. Also, there is a difference between the realism of a photo of, for instance, a car, and the drawing made by the industrial designer who designed the car. At the time the designer made his drawing, the car didn't exist. He made it up. After he made his drawing, other people copied his drawing to create the object. That is what Romita, Kirby, and Kurtzman do. They design their own version of anatomy and everything else (take a look at Kirby's machines, for instance) and then they draw those completely faithfully every time. There may be no real people walking the streets who look like their drawings but they are faithful illustrations of their people.

Artists like McFarlane and JC Campbell tend to be inconsistent in the way the draw things, as if they have no fixed idea what something should look like. One thing that bothers me with McFarland is his inconsistent use of crass-hatching. It is as if he has the notion he should use cross-hatching but isn't sure where it belongs. Romita, Gene Colan, MR. Giordano, or almost any of the more prolific artists of the 1970's wouldn't have that problem because their art directors ensured that all of the artists working for them knew that cross-hatching is for drawing either shadows or texture from a consistent light source. McFarlane puts them all over the place as if there are forty badly placed lights in a scene.

I'm no stranger to Photorealism myself, as you can see from four of my paintings that I've attached below. See if you can tell which one of them had no photo reference at all. When it comes to comic books, I prefer to draw as much from memory as possible because it gives me more flexibility in designing the story flow. In the end, I only partly succeed at this because sometimes I can't help myself and I turn the panels into detailed illustrations, as you can see from this panel from a Civil War story I recently did.

What Ross does, and artists like him, such as Adam Hughes or even the Dodsons is heavily dependent on photography as a source. Personally, prefer the Dodsons to Hughes or Ross, because their compositions are more interesting to me and they seem less tethered to their reference than Hughes and Ross, whose compositions never struck me as being very interesting. Ross lights his subjects in pretty much the same way every time and that is his style. I was very surprised to see his pencils for a Hulk cover recently. Surprised because I liked it a lot. It made me wish he would pencil a comic and leave the inking and coloring to someone else. 

Speaking of inking, this is what makes a page of comic art worth buying as artwork, not the penciller. On this basis, Klaus Jansen towers above almost all other comic book artists, I don't like his pencils but his inks are sublime. I recently saw some of his originals, inks over Romita Jr, that to me were Jansen, not Romita Jr. His inks are so distinctive, fluid, and interesting that they swamp anything added by the penciller. In some ways, they reminded me of classical Chinese paintings from the Yuan dynasty (about 1,000 years ago). Wrightson, Frazetta, Jeff Jones, Walt Simonson, Harvey Kurtzman, and lately, John Byrne, are all amazing inkers. There are very few full-time inkers like Jansen who can make any penciller's work into their own. It is here, at the inking stage, that I lose all interest in McFarlane. He has other faults but this is the biggest one for me.

Speaking of inking and Jack Kirby, it is hard to find a better example of an artist who has provided more inkers with an opportunity to shine. My favorite Kirby inker is Mike Royer, who made the cleanest version of Kirby that I've ever seen. Colletta and stone just about ruined his pages, while Sinnot was clean, and George Roussos just strange. Sometime I like Roussos' inking, sometimes not. It depends on how much he distorts the underlying pencils. His inks are dramatic but sometimes at the cost of the drawing.

And so, to get this back on topic, I do think that McFarlane is over-rated but the Venom character is undeniably important to the history of Spider-Man. On that basis, the value of ASM 300 may not be so high after all, particularly given the similarities to Wolverine's first full appearance in Hulk #181.

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by paqart

[The lips]

On 10/18/2022 at 1:27 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Fantastic accomplishment.  I won't be surprised if you eventually decide to stretch it further ... #325 gets you to the end of the MacFarlane run (plus there is #328) and of course #361-363 is the Carnage trilogy which is frankly overrated.  By the end of the 300's you're into the truly awful clone saga stuff and #400 is the "death" of Aunt May.  I ended up going through #400 slabbed, and I also have #401 through #700 raw since I bought them in real time.

I’m currently about 70% complete on a ASM run. I’m bowing out at 375 for the reasons you mention. 
375 with the Venom foil cover seemed the right issue to stop at for me. 

[mjoeyoung]

On 10/18/2022 at 9:41 AM, DC# said:

From the book of head-scratching results comes this She-Hulk last night on Heritage.   Not even a newsstand and sold for 3x what copies have been trading for this month.     Someone really loved that finale episode last week.....

Who the heck is buying this? Or the other one on the list for $2300?  Are these examples of Heritage and Comic Connect bidding on their own stuff?