'Bad pages'

[cmixer]

Is there a market for bad pages, like MALIBU comics of background characters? I would personally pass on these pages at even $5-10 per, but do some people like collecting 'bad' pages? Do people but them in bulk if I could get 10pages like this?

[Garf]

I can't see how there would be a ready made market for these, even at $5 - $10 it's an easy pass when the money could be better spent on anything else that you can actually use or enjoy. Bad pages (if you want to call them that) even from artists I enjoy are still a pass at $40. It would have to be a combination of bad page and / or good issue, storyline, scarcity or some other form of nostalgia to make it interesting. The higher the cost the less of a gap between it and something good.

 

Just a general opinion as a collector.

[cmixer]

Thanks & i agree.

I guess an artist can still sell a 'bad' page for $5-10, because it's just nice to meet & support them. But i imagine collectors have a HARD time flipping or moving these pages second-hand.

[vodou]

We shouldn't forget there are interested parties at every price point for every published piece and most unpublished too. For those whose interest is casual or budget is strained past the $10 mark...do you think they won't take down a $5 or $10 published page? Sure they will. The only reason artists sit on stacks of this stuff at shows, and go home with most of it on Sunday is...because they bring too much and the audience is too small (being limited only to comic art fans that happened to go to that specific show and had money left over). To the first part, if you've got $10 to spend and are running through a 12" stack of $5 pages, at a busy show, getting elbowed and the artist giving you the 'buy or move along' look...you'll probably have a hard time making a decision and walk off thinking you may return when it's less busy or whatever. And spend the money elsewhere or forget. It happens. But that buyer was on the hook, just too much quantity, overload of art distraction!

 

Buying a huge stack at $5/per to flip is a real gamble though. $5 or $10 may be all these things ever garner, better to like them and live with them -in whatever quantity meets that- than speculate and 'pray' My personal experience is for certain artists and originals...only the artist can sell them, the experience of meeting the artist in person, their personality 'sells' the art. But otherwise anybody else trying, even a rep, the art is deadwood.

[Solar]

I think you'd be able to move Malibu 'talking heads' pages at $5 all day. I see some real crappy published pages bringing $15-20 shipped on eBay. List them in lots with reasonable BIN/Best Offer and they'll sell.

[AKA Rick]

Keep in mind "Bad" is subjective in many ways, so there might be a collector out there who loved Malibu publications clamoring at the opportunity to acquire "one man's trash is another man's treasure"

 

I know there's some collectors who only acquire Marvel and DC art, and look at things from Valiant, Zenescope, IDW, Dynamite, Boom, Image, etc. as sub-par (i.e. "bad")

 

I think having them reside for someone to discover is the best way to find them a happy home, so either having a website, putting them on C.A.F. or eBay might bring awareness and an audience to 'em.

 

Artistically, you might be able to pair the artwork with the original published comic page, mat and frame them and they'd have some non-comic hobby/collector appeal aesthetically, but that could just be adding expenses in a potentially fruitless effort of polishing up something too tarnished to have an appealing shine.

 

Also, look at the dialogue beyond the artwork (I'm not sure if Malibu was in the early 90's where it was included as opposed to the current digital era). There are collectors who focus on the artistry of writing and dialogue in addition to the rendering. If you have a page with fun or cheesy dialogue or powerful prophetic words, that can be appealing to some collectors.

 

When I was a kid, and I was able to buy comic art cheap, any art, I was amazed by anything I could afford, so there's also that audience too, sort of the the "quarter bins" for comics, having these pages for the entry level collectors. I bought a Mike Grell "Warlord" back up story page in the 80's which I have no idea where I put it and where it ended up that was dirt cheap that I wish I had now.

 

I'll say this 'tho... whether at a convention, store or online, if you show you have tonnage in quantity, sometimes it's overwhelming and sensory overload as well as diminishes the perceived scarcity and value. That's why when you see a huge stack of $5 or $20 pages, especially if it's presented as an unorganized stack, people walk by and feel it's junk because it's presented as junk.