glendgold

Gene was famous for not reading the scripts he was illustrating all the way through. He'd read enough to get started, draw a bit, go back and read more -script, draw more, etc. This is why so many of his books end with 47-panel pages. (I wrote the second-to-last story he drew, and that's exactly what happened, which kind of delighted me.) Stan sort of got around this by not giving him notes -- instead, they had verbal conferences that Gene recorded on a reel-to-reel. But Gene would only play back a little at a time, then go nuts drawing. Thus: stuff like Cap 130, which is completely bonkers. (And no, those tapes didn't survive - I wish they had.) G

There are a lot of reasons to hope FF 1 pages show up - geekily, I'm in it for the margin notes. I am of the opinion that Jack wrote -- and dialogued -- the origin sequence as part of a presentation to Martin Goodman (along with the pin ups that appeared in later issues), and then Stan wrote the opening afterward. This is based on the narration in that flash-back sequence shifting from past to present tense a couple of times. I think Kirby wrote it in present tense and then Stan went in and changed it. This theory is based mostly on coffee and having too much time on my hands. I bet the margin notes for that sequence will have Stan explaining the cuts he made. Because the theory includes him cutting one or two pages out of the flashback.

Nicely said. There's a fairly traceable progression with Stan and Jack (with an asterisk): if you start with the earliest silver age superhero stuff, you'll see two kinds of Stan's notes in the margins - brief phrases describing action in a panel, and production notes that can be more extensive, asking for corrections. A few times there are stick figures he draws for editorial suggestions. Later, around 1965, Kirby's margin notes started appearing - it looks like he might have begun doing that when he was doing layouts, to explain what was going on, and then migrated that to his full pencil work. Stan's notes continue to appear, but they're almost 100% production-oriented. (This is for Lee/Kirby stuff -- I'm unfamiliar with Lee/Romita and other collaborations.) The asterisk is word balloons. I've seen both Stan and Jack's handwriting in word balloons in pre-hero and western books, but what that means about authorship is up for grabs. Later, Jack's handwriting never appears in word ballons, and Stan's frequently does. I can't think of having seen Larry Lieber's handwriting anywhere. No early pages really suggest the Marvel method versus a full -script, but I've sometimes wondered if Stan's brief description back then of what was going on in a given panel reflects a conversation he had when Jack was dropping off the pages. Maybe? I'd say Kirby's later extensive margin notes suggest that he was authoring the bejeesus out of those stories by then, and Marvel was methoding up a storm. This is my favorite piece of Stan's margin notes - you see all that Artie Simek writing on this page? Stan's handwriting is in blue all over this page. When Gene turned in the story, Stan had genuinely no idea what he was looking at, and the notes reflect his exasperation.

Apologies, I accidentally got kind of cute with how I defined the "market." It traded hands mmmaybe ten-twelve years ago but in a private (i.e. it wasn't offered around) transaction. The owner before that had it since (at least) the 1980s, as I understand it. In any case, it's cool, it hasn't been shopped around, it's not mine, I can't afford it, and it should do well.

If anyone has ever wondered whether Gene knew what he was doing, here's some aboreal evidence that Gene knew what he was doing.

I have always loved this one, and it's not been on the marketplace for at least 25 years, maybe more.

Ooh, good catch about the date. I also noticed the auctioneer's other items are pretty shifty.

I am not a Schulz expert, so I yield to the list, but I see mmmmaybe four or five yellow flags. Anyone better-informed want to chime in? I am happy to be convinced it's legit. https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/101903185_charles-schulz-peanuts-daily-comic-strip

You have to look at this as an encore of "Master Race." The same folks who bid on that will be bidding on this. 500K isn't a crazy guess.

If the new owner has you sign the page, definitely take the time to fix it.

I'm not sure if he still is as of today, but for years a collector was putting that book back together.

Good luck to all today, consigners, bidders and kibitzers alike.

As long as we can all sit in there and debate the merits of Andrea Dworkin's philosophy of separatism when faced with the realities of capitalistic misogyny versus more contemporary feminists' realpolitik call for inclusion, I'm up for a MLA break-out hot tub session when everyone is properly vaccinated.

Have you asked Denis Kitchen? He would know.

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/99566665_jack-kirby-signed?from=alert&utm_source=SavedAlert&utm_campaign=SearchAlert_20200423_A&utm_medium=email&utm_content=item https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/99566682_jack-kirby-signed?from=alert&utm_source=SavedAlert&utm_campaign=SearchAlert_20200423_A&utm_medium=email&utm_content=item Nope and nope. These are copies of existing Kirby sketches (one of them inked by Frank Miller). They didn't even get the back of the paper right.

Maybe I'm wrong... These are spot illos from the early letters pages. They don't seem to line up with art from the issues, unless someone more obsessed can find them. I'd thought those were Brodsky too, but now they look like Ditko to me.

If you look on the early ASM letters pages, there are spot illos that might also be Brodsky.

Sol Brodsky?

I asked Jeffrey for a "dingy angel" and this is what she came up with.

Also I can't remember anything I have said or not said during the pandemic, so apologies if I've told this story before. In 2003 or so I was in Amsterdam on a book tour (err...I write books occasionally) and my publisher put me up at the Ambassade, the local hotel that loves writers. The deal is, they treat you insanely well and on the last day you're there, when you get your breakfast, you're presented with a copy of your book, you autograph it, hand it back to the clerk during checkout, and then it goes into their mind-bogglingly intense library. So I signed, feeling pretty important, and when the guy ahead of me at the registration desk left, I proudly put my copy of my book on top of the one he'd left there. Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages. Nope, didn't get a good look at him. https://ambassade-hotel.nl/library/

Wow. Think I could get a lot for this?

For those of us intrigued by Kirby's use of PTSD as a theme, this is a pretty cool page. And Wood's inks on the Skull are A+

It's funny what you have memories of - I was about 10 and visiting family in Chicago, and I remember reading this in a diner that faced Lake Michigan. https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/frank-brunner-doctor-strange-2-cover-original-art-marvel-1974-/p/7242-234005.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 I hadn't read the first issue so I was a bit lost, but the Defenders were on the cover so I WANTED it. I know everyone's golden age was when they were 10/12 years old but 1974-76 was a pretty good time to hit that.

I noticed this -thought it was just my browser. Thanks for telling them.