RabidFerret

Wizard I've checked in many of with no luck. Previews is an interesting thought, although that's almost impossible to track down! Haha. I hope that's not it!

Youngblood #0 and help finding an advertisement Howdy gang! Was turning to a group for help trying to track something down. I'm trying to find where this ad appeared: It was an early Image Comics ad for Prophet. It's got a copyright date of 1992. Could've been used even in early 93. I've gone through 90% of the books published by Image in 1992 and still haven't found this ad. Looked through a bunch of Wizards too. My current best hope is Youngblood #0, but I don't own a copy. Does anyone else have one handy that could check for me if this ad appears in there? Assuming that's not it, if anyone knows where this might have appeared, please let me know:) It's a curious mystery... -j

There are a lot of Liefeld fans and a very limited amount of prime early work. Less than 20 issues at his peak of NM/XF. Highest priced public Liefeld cover was $23k on Heritage. Until there are pricier public sales there's little reason for most owners to sell. - A proud owner of many Liefelds

WTB/LOOKING FOR Batman: Sword of Azrael #2, Page 8 by Joe Quesada & Kevin Nowlan A few years ago a bunch of Batman: Sword of Azrael art was sold in bundles on Heritage. There was one specific page I wanted and I've never seen resurface. If anyone has it or knows where it ended up, please PM me:) Thanks much! Here's the scan from Heritage:

He super-jacked his prices when Deadpool came out. If you think $1k is a lot, check out the 5 figure prices he asks for recent Deadpool and variant covers. Some of these may not have even been published. http://www.robliefeldart.com/about.html

I think Rick and Al were a great team. Al brought a much looser inking style over his work than say, Dan Green, who put down a very slick line. I have a page from 2099 and New Mutants(http://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=99960) and you really see the difference inkers make, and how both of them nailed it but the results were very different. And you can even go back to Uncanny 201 and see his work with Whilce Portacio inks, which looks even cooler! Rick is seriously unsung for how much awesome he produced and how easily he adapted and changed his style.

Rick Leonardi always comes to mind for a style-changing machine. From Uncanny X-Men to Spider-Man 2099 to Amazing Spider-Man and 20 other titles, it felt like he would change his style to suit the book. And it was generally quite awesome! If you took the credits off, I'm not convinced you'd realize it was the same artist.

I like the idea of Mt. Rushmore being artists whose books I'd buy every time they hit the shelves(and did!). So for me at least, it's... 1) Albert Uderzo ~ I love Asterix. Some seriously great art there. 2) Seth Fisher - He left only a small sample of work, but it was all amazing. I've NEVER seen someone move you through a page the way he did. He was a true master. 3) Todd McFarlane - My artistic favorite of all-time. I do concede he can't write and I don't like his horror/gore stuff(which is most of the last 20 years), so he drops a smidge. 4) 1991 Rob Liefeld - I love Liefeld's peak in 1991. Don't care that he's gone downhill since. Don't care what he did before. That year, he was a god. Spoon the haters.

This site belonged to Burton Siu. He used to be a more active collector in the 2000s but has since receded from the hobby. He has an old CAF as well: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=1467 I'd imagine most things on that site are long since gone, except for 267, which he won't part with:)

OK, I gotta admit, I'm a bit proud that a whole thread was started about my eBay descriptions:) Seems an ideal time for self-marketing! For more of my comedy stylings, read my graphic novel series, Farlaine the Goblin: https://www.amazon.com/Farlaine-Goblin-Books-1-3-Tinklands/dp/0989005836/ Also available for parties. I do great balloon animals!

I have only one entry for the Best of 2016, but it's a white whale I've been chasing for 15 years and was thrilled to finally get:) Best of Interior Panel Pages: Don Rosa's 2nd story ~ "Nobody's Business"(1987), Page 1 ~ Uncle Scrooge in the Money Bin! http://www.comicartfans.com/LowryPiece.asp?Piece=8502 Hope everyone has a great 2017! -j

Very interesting topic. For me at least, what's tricky is that I already have that piece! My ASM300 grail is the single piece I'd trade it all for. If I didn't have it? Yes, I'd certainly consider it, even if it was seriously tilted financially against me. It's a personal grail that means a lot to my life, much moreso than any of the other piece of art on the planet. If I just think within comics, there's not a single piece that would tempt me...not AF15, FF1, Action1, SM1, etc. But if I dip outside of comics there may be a very slim temptation if you could get something like Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post paintings(imagine the reflection one??) or Drew Struzan's Back to the Future painting. It still might not be enough, but it would at least be a conversation.

I have no personal knowledge of what art they have and am only speaking to my own experience a decade ago and what was left back then, as well as what originals I've already seen surface in the free market. It's entirely possible the family had kept some great pieces for themselves that hung on the walls and they will sell for crazy prices. I just don't think people should get their hopes up expecting this explosion of 30 MTG originals or anything:)

There are very few people saying this, and most are excited to get a chance at a piece...there should be some available for every budget if there are sketches and such available. The published Magic pieces will be astronomical though ($2-3K floor probably). I'm not expecting a ton of pieces to surface from things like Magic. I remember talking to Quinton years ago and he had a handful of Magic pieces left and none were really exciting(Arcum's Whistle, Karplusan Yeti), so I suspect this is gonna be a lot more prelims and originals from Rage and other CCGs. A decade ago there were Duelist covers around, so those could turn out to be the fun oddities that survived. Will be very fun to see!!

Seconded. Only drawback to the show. Aside from a serious lack of Liefeld discussion;)

Oh yeah! I forgot about that site. It was the biggest tease!! Also reminds me of where I first tracked down McFarlane's art - from his store, The Spider's Web, that still had a stack of picked through pages in 1998.

I'm not so sure about that. There are some guys who don't hit many conventions and don't have reps, so they still have some work left, and there are always stories of inkers having pages people overlooked, but in general I'd say that the vast majority is out in the world at this point. This is fairly accurate. Most 90s guys unloaded their art long ago. McFarlane seems to have a handful of pages left that showed up in his mocca exhibit a few years ago, or stuff he'd simply misplaced and found later. Liefeld has had random surges where he seemed to find an old stack of art or prelims and would list it on ebay, but it seemed more accidental than intentionally keeping it. The one exception is Lee/Williams, because I think both of them were smart enough to hold onto a bunch of it. I remember a quote from Jim once of "I have the biggest collection of Jim Lee art", which we've seen to be true recently with all his Heritage sales. I imagine he still has classic stuff buried away, as could Scott, who seems to pull amazing stuff out every year for SDCC.

As someone who collects mostly early 90s art I love this topic, and having gotten into the hobby in 1998 I'll chime in on my experiences collecting early 90s art since then. It likely overlaps with many other eras and the same experiences as others, but is at least a little more specific to the early 90s guys... When I started collecting I wanted examples of the Marvel work by the Image founders and their ilk - McFarlane, Liefeld, Portacio, Lee, Larsen, Kieth, Keown, etc. This was around 1998-2000 and even then it was shockingly difficult to find some of it. Back then an average page was probably $200 or less for most guys not named McFarlane. McFarlane surfaced here and there, but the great stuff seemed to jump by leaps and bounds constantly. A piece I saw for $500 in 1999 would sell for $2k a year later and then $3.5k a year after that. If you waited for the perfect piece or tried to be picky the market left you behind. That's continued to this day, with the best art leaping again and again at ever higher prices. When I first started collecting I recall seeing two McFarlane full page Spidey splashes sell for $1k/each on ebay. I found only one decent Liefeld X-Force page in the first few years for ~$200. I'd been told that dealers had sold it all in the 90s at higher prices and the market tanked, so most people were underwater on that art and holding it hoping for a rebound. The NM98 cover popped up on eBay and sold for like $7k. I heard the NM87 cover popped up and sold for $10k. The XF4 cover I remember finding only after an ebay auction ended for $500. Jim Lee UXM art was always tough to find and never seemed to appear. For years I was after a solid UXM page and didn't even see them for sale. A handful of the same pages seemed to keep recycling. Nobody wanted a DPS of Deathbird it seemed. If a handful of pieces emerged in a year it was amazing, and it seemed that more XM appeared than UXM. Some artists like Kieth held onto almost all their Image art(but sold his MCP art), but guys like Keown sold off all their Hulk art long ago. When Keown pages appeared, one guy always outbid everyone. On the flip side, Whilce Portacio art was readily available and consistently less than $200/page. XF and UXM covers were listed for $600-800. I remember the UXM282 cover selling on eBay twice for $1k. So it was around, just nobody was really buying it and pushing prices. Whilce had complete Punisher issues 8-9 that he broke up in the early 2000s. Scott had the complete #10 interiors still, that I believe are still owned complete by the buyer. Whilce still had lots of his art on hand. So it depended on each artist where their art was and how tough it was to find. What I also soon started to learn though was that a lot of these artists had big volume collectors that hoarded like mad. A lot of those 90s guys did not produce that much work in the first place, so someone could stockpile pages of art by an artist and in effect own 25%+ of an artist's entire run very easily. There was one guy who bought every Keown page that came out. There was someone who bought all of Mark Bright's Iron Man art. There was someone that got all the best Liefeld art. There were a couple of guys who loaded up on McFarlane art. And generally, these weren't huge pocket collectors with thousands of pieces, just a serious focus on one artist. I suspect a dozen guys ended up owning the majority of memorable and iconic 90s pieces broken nicely into 1 artist collections. Some of those collections are still on CAF to this day and never updated. Who hasn't run across Scott Wingo's 2005-updated McFarlane pile and not drooled a bit? http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=4548 So that was a serious part of the problem - guys that loaded up and had no incentive to sell. People that almost seemed to view collecting art the same as collecting comics - you want a complete run. Some of those guys still have it all. Others though slowly started selling and moving on in life. A few of those collectors went from buying everything to buying nothing to selling. A huge Liefeld collector unloaded everything he had over a few years and the market was suddenly flooded with Liefeld around 2005-2010. There was a point you could look on Burkey's site and see 20 vintage Liefelds from NM and XF to choose from at $500/page. In the case of McFarlane and Lee things really changed when huge sales happened and the market shifted up. The Shamus Collection had a huge impact on McFarlane and Liefeld art at the time, and Jim Lee selling off a lot of his art the last few years has pushed his market up as well, and in both cases freeing a lot of hidden art from people that now found it worth selling. There seems to be a McFarlane ASM page in every major auction now, albeit not always top tier ones. Some guys, like Kieth, continued to hold onto everything, but what little they had parted with - Maxx 1/2 - filtered out through the Shamus Collection on Heritage. In that case, it was a few auctions into the process, meaning many people were tapped out and may not have even noticed it since there wasn't a Maxx market to look to for comparisons. Over those 15 years I kept finding pieces a few at a time, through all different ways, on all different cycles. There was a time where Portacio was easy to find, and another when Liefeld was, and another when McFarlane was. Some artists have never had one of those surges. Others have had multiples. Patience was certainly the biggest part of the puzzle, as well as the luck of being at the right place and/or paying attention to auctions and dealers to spot the rare art, and most importantly knowing when to drop serious money on something special and either take on some debt or sell off some lesser pieces to fund it. The biggest thing I often stress to 90s collectors is that they need to understand how little of this art there really was. This isn't like Kirby or Romita or Byrne where there are long runs and thousands of pages of art. For many, they did a small number of issues, 10-30, of which there were a lot of talking head pages and strange inkers or any number of reasons why there isn't a constant stream of A-list pages filtering out - they simply don't exist.

Congrats to you as well! It really is a cool feeling to finally snag something you regret missing:) Far sweeter than having gotten it the first time!

Blasphemous! Never trust the taste of someone from Jersey!

Thanks gang:) I keep looking at it every half hour to make sure it's real!

I don't share in public often, but this one is special to me:) This is my white whale. The one that got away and I've chased for decades. I started collecting comic art in 1998, getting more serious in 99-00 after college. Back then eBay was the only auction house when this piece popped up for sale. I always loved Disney comics. They were the first thing I'd ask comic shops if they had. Most in the US would give me funny looks and point to some cobwebbed box in the corner that doubled as a trash bin. This also meant that anything you found was often $1. In those days I didn't pay attention to the artist as much, but there was one guy who did weird art that stood out. It was too polished and precise. So when I saw this piece up for sale, something clicked and it was love at first sight. It was also one of the most epic piece of duck art I've ever seen. The opening panel was lifted from Barks in all it's glory, and there were amazing panels of Donald and Gladstone. Rosa himself later said "One thing that Duckfans will be able to easily spot; virtually every Duck pose in this story is copied from an old Barks Duck.". It was the opening splash of Rosa's second story and his first 10 pager(after Son of the Sun). I watched this auction obsessively and decided to bid up to $400 for it. At the time this was by far the most I'd ever considered spending on art. Most art I bought was $200 or less. The auction day finally came...and I was blown out of the water. Completely demolished. It sold for something like $2500. I was floored. From there I sought out Don Rosa himself, now obsessed with finding a page of his. He only sold his stories complete, so I organized two groups of people to buy stories and split them, myself getting first pick for the effort. It partially made up for missing that page, but it was always 'the one that got away'. 15 years passed without a peep. No idea where it went until it suddenly showed up on Heritage auction and my eyes lit up. I set my sights. Most Rosa pages sell for $1-2k, with the best ones hitting $2k+. This page, knowing it had sold for $2500 15 years ago, I expected to go high. I was ready to put in a crazy bid without batting an eyelash. I'd sell stuff to pay for it if need be. I wasn't letting this slip past again. Ideally I'd get it for $3-4k. Worst case I'd overpay. In the end, I overpaid. But boy was it worth it! I am so in love with this page:) Is the piece worth what I paid? Probably not. But in a lot of ways that often makes the best and most personal art. http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1337427

What I find very interesting about MTG art is the pricing differences between old and new stuff. It doesn't always make sense. In some cases brand new art is selling for more than 20 year old art. For instance, this art is brand new for the current series and is already past $4k and likely to go much higher: http://www.ebay.com/itm/112049418780 On the flip side, here is 20 year old Carrion Ants art available for $3500: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Magic-Original-Art-Carrion-Ants-MTG-Legends-Richard-Thomas-Artwork-/331897786426 For all the stories I hear of huge 5 figure prices for classic cards, it amazes me when memorable pieces like this aren't snatched up. There was another $3500 Legends card listed at the same time as this that was snapped up within the day: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Magic-Original-Art-Infernal-Medusa-MTG-Legends-Anson-Maddocks-Artwork-/331897789829 but that seemed a super bargain when compared against the epic prices that get thrown out for other Legends. I guess what I'm getting at is that MTG art seems very inconsistent and tough to figure these days:) Lots of throwing darts on prices and values.

I don't post a lot of new art, but this was pretty fun and unique and figured people may dig it - a classic 90s Venom by Erik Larsen, from the Marvel Universe Series 3 Card Set. http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1318704 http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1318704