glendgold

Second earliest cover, right? After FF 55?

I owned the pages on either side of yours. Sigh.

Nan Enihcam!

Wow, that's interesting. I couldn't find any info about that - do you have a link? I have repeatedly heard about attempts to collect Kirby's 2001 work in a hardcover - stymied over and over again by the bonkers rights issues.

If you look at HA results, it seems like someone is interested in 2001 Treasury and #1 pages. Prices have been pretty high on those two books, not consistently but enough to notice.

Every time I think I've excavated all that there is, turns out there's just a little tiny bit more hiding in plain sight. https://comics.ha.com/itm/memorabilia/miscellaneous/mmms-spider-man-poster-production-materials-marvel-1966-total-2-items-/a/121619-12726.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 So this is the production art for the poster. As per the listing, "This specific image was created from a 18" tall stat of the base art image that was then altered with original art shading, and white paint art corrections/alterations on his face." In B&W it looks like this, which I think gives more clues as to the poster's artist. I am reallly curious what was going on with those lips.

Do people remember these? In 1966, Marvel released some "life-sized" posters of their characters that were drawn by unknown hands - possibly Marie Severin? [EDIT: looking at them now, I wonder if Syd Shores drew them. Was he around then?] Each pose is based on an existing cover or splash (the Hulk is from TTA 67) by Kirby, Dikto, Everett, Colan (I think), etc. The ASM was always the wild card, as the source wasn't obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if Ditko's pin up was from 1966 also, given that the other images seem to date from around then. And it's very cool, very exciting, but I also think it shows signs (like where the concentric webbing ends) of Ditko being ready to book. That doesn't make it any less desirable - just trying to date it. BTW, I've always wondered what is up with the cover to ASM Annual 2. A Ditko Doctor Strange/Spidey cover would have been like a five-alarm fire of coolness.

As far as I can tell, these seem to be pieces of art by Jack Kirby - maybe - but to anyone who saw these and hoped that the whole "artist unknown" thing might mean you get a bargain....I mean, again, maybe? https://www.ebay.com/itm/134938630643?itmmeta=01HQ6CDVFDW976QAH23373G8TW&hash=item1f6af819f3:g:WewAAOSw1j5lzqm~ https://www.ebay.com/itm/134938559639?itmmeta=01HQ6CDVFDYDEPRC1WT4Z904YH&hash=item1f6af70497:g:btsAAOSwoshlzpkV Check out what else he's sold, beginning with the splash to Amazing Fantasy 15: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134925086925?itmmeta=01HQ6D5G8Z55SQ93ZBY9TNNWH2&hash=item1f6a2970cd:g:M4UAAOSw-dRluc0x Which he has sold twice so far. Also he has two published feedbacks, one of which says the bidder never received the item. But hey, it's entirely possible I'm just a simpering ninny and you will be massively rewarded. G

Wasn't this unpublished pin up the basis for this poster? The poster is clearly drawn by someone else, but it always looked like it was based on a Ditko pose. Down to the oddball thigh muscles.

I'll take the under.

I think that 181 page in particular was a great example of Miller's sense of composition - it's incredibly dynamic, and you just want to keep looking at it.

Hey, the first time I talked to an art dealer, I said "I would like to buy pages from the Galactus trilogy," please. Now THAT was greeted with ridicule. Don't sweat asking - you flushed out the Clown Story, which is always good to revisit. Kane might be the most forged/faked of all comic book artists (up there with Seuss, Addams, Gary Larson and Schulz).

I'm terrible with predictions, but I think the Mister Miracle splash is nice and iconic, and I wouldn't be surprised at a 30K+ result (given how high that Kamandi splash, which was also nice, went). Because of the composition of the two pieces, I wouldn't be surprised if the Demon splash sells for slightly more than the dps. I like the Black Panther 1 dps better than both of them. (I have no skin in this game, btw - just a fan of Royer inks.)

Less facetiously, I'd say that Kirby prices in the last year (with some exceptions) have been static, or unsurprising, or soft - some combination of those things. When I got into the hobby in 1992, people who had been in far longer said there would be times when Kirby art literally didn't sell at all at conventions, but it always came back. In 2023, most stuff that shows up is B or B- stuff that has circulated around a bit, and Kirby was prolific enough that the supply feels unlimited.Those two Mister Miracle pages (it's okay - I call him Miracle Man sometimes too) are fine but not particularly exciting. Really nice examples like the Fin Fang Foom page that just sold at c-connect do go high. Same with a very nice SkyMasters example at HA recently. For the most part, though, Kirby doesn't tend to skyrocket overnight the way modern art does. Maybe an analogy is blue chip vs. tech stocks.

Correct. Everyone needs to dump their Kirby, immediately.

Wow, that is a gorgeous page! I'm not a Don Heck guy but when Wood inked something, he put his flourishes into it.

I figure this might interest...I dunno, me at least. Maybe a couple other folks. The Treasure Island Museum in San Francisco has a pretty active Instragram account covering the creation and daily life of the naval base that was in the middle of the Bay back in the 1930s and 1940s. There was a base newspaper, The Masthead, and their cartoonist was Joe Maneely. Maybe Michael Vassallo already covered all this at some point but this was new to me. Also they ran Male Call, the Caniff series that was a teeny bit more racy than allowed in mainstream papers.

Oooh, the Terrible Kirby Covers thread? I am SO excited for that.

Oh, thanks for that - and as you can see I ask this question occasionally. I can't remember the story, in part because I'm not a Miller guy. But I found the epic reconstruction of the process to be interesting. And FWIW, I'm pretty much in Scott's camp, with two asterisks - a) I think disclosure of what's actually on or not on the page being sold is beneficial. Might not affect the final bid, for reasons already mentioned, but knowing everything can only be good. And b) if I won this auction and one day the prelim to my page turned up, I'd want that, too.

For people who tracked the revelations over time better than I did - is this a page Miller touched or not? https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/story-page/frank-miller-and-klaus-janson-daredevil-190-story-page-32-original-art-marvel-1983-/a/7341-93080.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

Holy cow! I've never seen this post before - when I held the artwork, I noticed the underpenciling, but didn't really pay close attention. That scan showing off all the extra detail is really interesting. If I'm seeing right, looks like Kirby's original version of Sue is in...some kind of saucer, maybe the FantastiCar?

That ad sold at auction - I also have seen it in person at San Diego. It was owned for a while by a long-time (and very cool) collector. Always thought it was inked by Brodsky instead of Klein but I could well be wrong.

This is correct. Covers were printed at a different plant and were returned to Marvel every three months in a separate envelope. Irene V mentions that when the closet shelves got overstuffed, some envelopes of -- something -- were sent off to landfill. What constitutes "something" is a question we've been wondering about for decades, but given that almost no covers have shown up from before May 1965, it's likely that covers went to the great beyond. Which pains me to say. EDIT: The 1965 covers that have shown up such as FF 40, ST 137, Avengers 16, Journey Annual 1, etc tend to be from within 3 months of each other, so a working theory is that one particular envelope got saved. As per comments above, there are some pre-'65 covers but not the ST 89 mentioned earlier - that's a 1994 recreation. And there are rumors of others, but I'm not sure it's meaningful to report, as they're about as reliable as UFO sightings. @Blastaar - the Hulk 1 cover existed long enough to make this piece of production art in 1966 for Tales to Astonish 59. Pages from Hulk 3, 4, 5 and 6 have shown up frequently, but 1 and 2 haven't popped up in public, at least.

The inked AF 15 cover is not one of the Sotheby's covers. It pre-existed them by a number of years, and I haven't heard anyone call the pencilling into question. (Though this scan is the first time I see the erased arm on the guy he's holding - I wonder who repositioned that.)

Technically this piece was not available in the 1970s because it didn't exist until the 1990s.