Another kid pops his first pill...

[WOXL]

I don't even have my first pieces and I already want more! I can see how this hobby can soon become an addiction. I'm excited about my first purchase, so here's a nice long rambling tale!

 

So for my first OA, I wanted to get something from my favorite artist: John Cassaday. Most collectors have his art in NFS status so I ended up looking through the massive amounts of Cassaday artwork at Albert Moy. Most of the stuff from my favorite series, Planetary, was either far out of my price range or a tad too drab for my tastes, so I settled on my second favorite series, Astonishing X-Men!

 

This was my first time looking at prices for Cassaday's work and I was astonished by how a main character panel appearance made prices skyrocket. I was surprised that even small images of main characters were more expensive than highly detailed action pieces. Is this common place that even fairly drab main character panels go for more than dramatic shots with minor characters or machinery?

 

I ended up picking up three pieces. The first page is the first ever appearance of my favorite new X-Characters introduced in Joss & John's run: Hisako, aka Armor. The page isn't terribly dramatic, but I love Cassaday's faces and it's Hisako's first appearance. I know the character is relatively new, but I was amazed at how cheap this piece was ($100) with her being the only new character to have her own AXM cover. I thought it was really cool to be able to pick up the first appearance of a character but am wondering if first panel apperances tend to be worth much of anything. If the character becomes big in the future, could you see this piece being worth much? (I have no intentions of selling now but am a bit curious - there's a lot of love in the art but you do have to wonder about value when the dollars start getting high).

 

 

The second piece is Hisako's first time Armoring up and briefly kicking *spoon* before old Ord kicks back. I loved this page when initially reading the story - Laura Martin applied a very bold Silver Age like color palette to the top panel that stood in awesomely stark contrast to the subtle shading regularly used in the series. The pencils aren't too shabby either, and seeing Hisako's powers being used for the first time is a lot of fun. As with the first piece, I wonder how seeing a character use their power for the first time affects the value of a page. I read that OA values are oftentimes determined primarily by their artistic merits or portrayed characters over story significance but I for one love the page mainly because of its story significance.

 

 

The third piece is the second page from the first AXM issue. Cassaday does a remarkable job of showing varied emotions on character faces and is able to tell his stories so well. I love the emotion in this scene and also like how it's the first appearance of the main AXM villain, Ord, hiding in the shadows in the final panel.

 

 

Thanks for reading if you've made it this far. Basically, my first purchases concentrated on first appearances of my favorite new Cassaday X-Men characters. Let me know how you think I did on my first purchases. I'm already drooling at the prospect of furthering my collection

 

Bob

[Sharkey]

Hey Bob, those are GREAT pages! Congrats and welcome to the wonderful world of OA addiction. We hold our 12-step meetings on the third Thursday of every month...

 

And the great thing about OA is that it's completely subjective and individual. As long as you pick a page you love from an artist you love, ya done good.

 

As far as first appearances being worth more from an investment standpoint, well, time will tell, especially with modern art. If the character becomes a major player and the artist is a highly regarded artist then it probably will increase in value. Since there's only one of that page, yes, the page introducing a major character could have more value. But there's no hard and fast rule, and OA takes time to build value.

 

Bottom line: nice pages, and you didn't pay very much for them!

[Nexus]

Congrats, Bob! Cool pages from the best X-Men run in a loooong time. I like how you picked the "sleepers". The second page, especially, has the potential to be a key page. Good job!

[WOXL]

Thanks a ton for the complements, guys! Yup, I already took the plunge for some more pages, on display in my CAF gallery. I'm interested in eventually picking up some more AXM pages from Albert Moy - has anyone had any luck getting discounts for large $$ or multiple item purchases?

 

Thanks!

-Bob

[chrisco37]

Nice pick ups. I love Ryan Ottley's work on Invincible.

 

And, of course, love the Cassady stuff. You can always ask Albert if you could get a discount if you bought multiple pages. Not sure if he'd do it or not though.

 

I'd love to get some more Planetary pages, but the later issue pages are really expensive (especially compared to the earlier issues). Never quite understood that.

[WOXL]

LOVE me some Ottley! Yeah, those latter Planetary pages seem to be more expensive than they should be. What do I know, though, they'll probably move at those prices eventually. I'd love to get the talking confrontation between Snow and the remaining of the Four... but $600 for talking heads? Can't quite go there when there are still some nice AXM pieces for quite a lot less.

 

-Bob