Sideshow Bob

My favorite time of the year! A chance to go through and pick your favorite 5 pick-ups from the prior year. 2018 was a lot bigger than I expected, but with that came a lot of unexpected happy-happy. Even though I really beefed up my Don Newton Batman collection this past year, this year I wanted to showcase a couple different pieces. COVER: Batman: White Knight #2 variant cover by Sean Murphy - A very cinematic feel to this variant cover. Sean had penciled in a working title on the cover that was then changed to Batman: White Knight, but inked in the final title after publication.Love the take on the Joker and the blending in of the cover elements. The Joker design is the basis for an upcoming Black & White statue. PANEL PAGES: Dark Knights: Metal #6, pg 24 by Greg Capullo and Jon Glapion - A Joker, Batman, and Batman Who Laughs all on one Capullo/Glapion page? Done! SPLASH: Detective Comics #600 pinup by Mike Zeck - Bought this issue at my LCS! Brings back lots of great memories, but also, damn, its a Zeck Batman from the late 80s! Doesn't get much better. SPLASH: Camelot 3000 #1, pg 9 by Brian Bolland - A dramatic full-page splash from Bolland. Sets the stage for this great 12-issue series. SPLASH: The Cape: Fallen #2, pg 22 by Zach Howard - Not a well known series, which is filling in a gap during the lead character's absence from the original Cape mini-series by Joe Hill. Demented story, and a insane bit of work here by Zach Howard. His inking is off the charts, and this splash should highlight that. He has a project that is more mainstream coming up in 2019, so I hope you all can see more of Zach's insanely detailed work that he pours onto the page!

Excited for the McCay pieces...will there be any advance list of what is being displayed and/or for sale?

In the future, maybe don't lead with "As far as the signed illustrations and original art, we have only named and specified works and artists where we are absolutely certain will hold up under the highest levels of scrutiny and certification standards" and then claim you're "certainly not error-proof".

Hard pressed to believe this is a Mike Grell illustration... I'm looking specifically at, say, the signature. Or the art. If you're looking at the inking on the arm as your Mike Grell signature, that's just texture on the arm. Find out who wrote the APR under the arm. Mike's signature would look more like this:

The frozen hat in midair in the foreground is a nice touch. Plus, living in NYC, seeing a well-drawn rooftop water tank warms my cold heart.

Don Newton - Detective #520, pg 3 $59 (2018)

I have a "sold but not forgotten" folder that is not public. When I sell a piece, I move it to that directory. In the couple instances where I have re-acquired a piece, I just move it back to the active directory.

I loved that Ten Nights of the Beast mini-series, and remember being blown away by Zeck's cover work. Its firmly in the peak nostalgia zone for me, and I was only a DC-only kid back then so Batman (and Aparo) were IT for me. I like the idea of a first appearance, and in particular this page with KGBeast; the first in-costume page is a couple pages later in the same issue. So I paid up (sorry, underbidder), and the bidding history reflects there were just two of us over $800. It only takes two fools... For the Aparo side of it, you definitely have some pent up Aparo demand from people like me who are hungry for the Batman pages that might surface from that run, but also those Spectre fans that love the Adventure series (myself included). I don't think that Aparo hunger is going to go away with this or the next couple auctions, but if its a deluge of Aparo at every auction at HA and CL, then (like everything in this hobby) the cream will rise and you'll see middling results for the generic pages. And I passed on the Newton Deadshot page...there was an oddly drawn leg/arm in the top panel that I just couldn't get past, even though I have the preceding page from that issue. Its a great fight scene regardless, and worthy of the $1200 price tag.

Haha. That KGBeast was my too pricey buy. It goes into my collection alongside a Zeck cover recreation on #420, and two other production covers from Ten Nights. Excited to see it pop up. Bob

Without trimming any fat, it is an impressive and focused collection creating a greatest hits OA list of the modern-era Batman (Tim Sale/Greg Capullo/Jim Lee/Jock/SGM). Drool-worthy.

Courtesy of Google Translate, which I hope gets the gist of it: "I did not know anything about Master Race myself, whereas I've been a fan of short comics and short stories since I was a teenager, and I had discovered the exact copies by chance over a year ago. the Paris exhibition "Shoah and comics" at the Holocaust Memorial. Absolute love for this story and the way it is told! The specifications of this kind of publication implies an effective twist and there I was trapped as a beginner! The specialists and the media will mainly remember the historical interest of the subject of the story told, but it is reductive. If we love comics, this story is magical and the opportunity to acquire it was unexpected in the context of my future activities."

Picked up the first one. It’s stunning! Thought about going for the rest, but was content at that point. I remember selling my mini-series in 1991 to help pay for a limo to prom, so to say this is peak nostalgia is an understatement!

Yeah, I thought they were strong too; between taxes, risk-taking and education, he hits on some universal appeal but some of the pieces from a year or so ago were superb in comparison. A Rarebit Fiend at $19,200 was another firm performance for Little Nemo's younger brother.

Haha...a "quiet year" my ! Little did I know that this year would coincide with someone selling almost half of all Don Newton's Batman and Detective output, likely his friend that received the half from his estate. Its been a slow water torture of two or three pieces each week on eBay, and it hasn't stopped. On advice of several people, I stepped up and paid what needed to be paid on the issues that I loved, and I couldn't be happier. Also, took the opportunity to participate in the Walking Dead liquidation to get a couple choice Tony Moore pieces, which hasn't been an option with the super-hoover sucking up every piece for years. Rounding it out, I picked up two Mike Zeck pieces (a cover recreation from Ten Nights of the Beast and a pin-up from 'Tec #600), three pages from Bolland's Camelot 3000 including a tremendous splash, and a couple more early YTLM pages. Whew! With new books, continued riding the Sean Murphy train and got a couple sweet pages from Batman: White Knight, some covers from Geoff Shaw on Thanos Wins and Cosmic Ghost Rider, a Terry Moore SiP-reboot cover, and more gorgeous Zach Howard pages from The Cape and Wild Blue Yonder. A couple more Batman/Spectre commissions arrived, with two more on the way. Refined my directions to the artists, and it seems to be having the desired effect I also consigned a whole stuffed portfolio of covers and pages, which will be spaced out over a year.

I might. There are two Black & White statues where I also have the art, and that is pretty cool to put side-by-side. I don't collect Risso's art, or I'd be telling others to back off right now!!! GLTA!