HA February Auction 6 6

[Bronty]

1 hour ago, BCarter27 said:

 

and Kaja Foglio! (Kidding as that was just a one-piece example, right? But any other MTG artists regularly pulling in heavy numbers?)

Anything Terese Nielsen does tends to get pretty good numbers - with 'good' cards straight off her easel getting 20-30k now.  

To me that 25k mark (or even 10k perhaps) is kind of the dividing line... name can get you to that mark, but content has to get you past it.

(I might pay a couple grand for a Carl Barks nature scene, but it better have anthropomorphic ducks with no pants to get more). 

Which just drives home the point again - content.    Let's see the movie poster OA for star wars sell, and then refresh this discussion?     Or the OA for Black Lotus, or the front cover of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, or any number of cultural touchstones.    I love the work of and respect many illustrators but when it comes to value, frankly it doesn't much matter who the illustrator is.

Exhibit A:   Herb Trimpe.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Bronty

[vodou]

12 minutes ago, Bronty said:

I love the work of and respect many illustrators but when it comes to value, frankly it doesn't much matter who the illustrator is.

Yes, it's a matter of branding. In fine art the artist is branded; in illustration the product is the brand (redundant).

[Bronty]

That's a pretty good analogy.

At the end of the day for your name to matter, people have to know it and love it.   Most illustrators do not have the luxury of having any level of awareness associated with their name outside of the circles of fans that are into whatever product they illustrated.

Which brings me back to the best thing that ever happened to the entire industry of comic book artists was the public accreditation from marvel (and EC before them as was rightly pointed out in an earlier discussion).    Simple accreditation is something the large majority of illustrators never got until fairly recent times.

 

Edited December 9, 2018 by Bronty

[vodou]

17 minutes ago, Bronty said:

Simple accreditation is something the large majority of illustrators never got until fairly recent times.

Richard Amsel was signing his name to his posters fairly early, any other poster artists? I'm thinking about other genres, some pb cover guys were able to also, probably the same with pulps and sf pbs. Enoch Bolles was really early to sign, whatshisname Cardwell on sexy detective pulps, the pin-up buys were branded for sure (Elvgren but also all the Playboy artists signed and Hugh helped brand a number of them too). Just thinking aloud here...

[vodou]

Still thinking aloud...Joe Maneely and Russ Heath signed their work on 50s Atlas covers. I think part of the problem with comics is that a lot of the art was studio handled, meaning the publisher contrated with a studio owner for jobs but (intentionally) was never told who in the studio was doing what, that was the business of and proprietary information for the studio owner. Those were the original 'many hands' operations too where it wasn't just one or two guys doing a job, same with the strips where the name creator farmed out everything but faces (or whatever) to lesser hands that weren't branded. I think 'branding' is an interesting thread to pull on further...but right now I'm watching the Patriots beat everyone. Again

[Bronty]

4 minutes ago, vodou said:

Richard Amsel was signing his name to his posters fairly early, any other poster artists? I'm thinking about other genres, some pb cover guys were able to also, probably the same with pulps and sf pbs. Enoch Bolles was really early to sign, whatshisname Cardwell on sexy detective pulps, the pin-up buys were branded for sure (Elvgren but also all the Playboy artists signed and Hugh helped brand a number of them too). Just thinking aloud here...

I certainly haven't done any indepth research on that, but my take is that early on (say pre 1930?)  illustrators signed lots of stuff and nobody minded.   At some point things got to be big business and signing anything went out the window.   

You could say its around the time Disney happened that things changed is my guess?    I blame it on the mouse

Thinking of all of 'ghost artist' relationships that began around that time, all that work signed 'walt disney' that was by many different hands, etc.

[Bronty]

9 minutes ago, vodou said:

Still thinking aloud...Joe Maneely and Russ Heath signed their work on 50s Atlas covers. I think part of the problem with comics is that a lot of the art was studio handled, meaning the publisher contrated with a studio owner for jobs but (intentionally) was never told who in the studio was doing what, that was the business of and proprietary information for the studio owner. Those were the original 'many hands' operations too where it wasn't just one or two guys doing a job, same with the strips where the name creator farmed out everything but faces (or whatever) to lesser hands that weren't branded. I think 'branding' is an interesting thread to pull on further...but right now I'm watching the Patriots beat everyone. Again

Well yes, with the rise of subcontracting - which I didn't think was very prevalent in comics at all, but okay, you now have the owner of the subcontract business wanting to keep his talent's names private for fear of poaching.   

All those album covers, movie posters, game covers, vhs covers, fill in the blank.    The company putting out the product calls ABC Ad agency or has an existing relationship with them for all their work.    Joe Blow Executive doesn't even know who the illustrator was or have any direct contact with them at all.    In fact, no one at XYZ Records AT ALL has any clue whatsoever who was hired to paint that album cover.

Only if the artist makes it very big can he work credit into the contract, otherwise there's 20 guys waiting to take his assignment.

Great point.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Bronty

[vodou]

I agree: let's blame it on the mouse.

Were there ghost writers in the 19th century? Probably, anybody want to chime in?

[vodou]

1 minute ago, Bronty said:

Well yes, with the rise of subcontracting - which I didn't think was very prevalent in comics at all, but okay, you now have the owner of the subcontract business wanting to keep his talent's names private for fear of poaching.  

The studio system of comic production was mostly Golden Age and a bit into the 50s...Simon & Kirby famously running their own for a while!

[Bronty]

Just now, vodou said:

The studio system of comic production was mostly Golden Age and a bit into the 50s...Simon & Kirby famously running their own for a while!

Right, S/K and Iger etc.   Those are the only ones I've heard of so I thought not so prevalent, but that's probably lack of education on my part.

[vodou]

1 minute ago, Bronty said:

Right, S/K and Iger etc.   Those are the only ones I've heard of so I thought not so prevalent, but that's probably lack of education on my part.

There are a lot more but those two are the most well-known. Later you have Neal's Continuity (70s onward) and Dezuniga's Filipinos. That's two that were much later, post-SA. Surely there are more. But in contrast to other media packaging operations, there wasn't an ad agency angle.

[vodou]

To this day only only Joe Rubinstein knows how many people did his work for him!

[aokartman]

7 minutes ago, vodou said:

There are a lot more but those two are the most well-known. Later you have Neal's Continuity (70s onward) and Dezuniga's Filipinos. That's two that were much later, post-SA. Surely there are more. But in contrast to other media packaging operations, there wasn't an ad agency angle.

Jaime Diaz studio (Brazil) shameful plug.  David

Edited December 9, 2018 by aokartman

[vodou]

3 minutes ago, aokartman said:

Jaime Diaz studio (Brazil) shameful plug.  David

Mike Deodate too, right?

[glendgold]

This is obscure 1930s illustration art and will mean almost nothing to almost everyone.  But for a few people, it rewrites the rules of what survived. 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/miscellaneous//p/7204-76009.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Preview-SearchResults-120115&lotPosition=98|0

There seem to be 8 of these up so far, and a cover.  As far as I can tell, none of them belonged to Edward Gorey, who thought he had all the surviving artwork. 

G

 

 

[jimbo_7071]

I don't think anyone has mentioned Richard M. Powers (not to be confused with the novelist Richard Powers). Few would recognize his name, but many have admired his sci-fi dust jacket illustrations over the years. One of his illustrations was used as the cover to Starstream no. 1 back in the 70s; that might be his only connection to comic books.

[Bronty]

He just doesn’t get the prices to really belong in the discussion IMO.   Jane Frank always seemed to have stuff by him in her inventory at non descript prices.

interesting style although not really my cup of tea

Edited December 15, 2018 by Bronty

[vodou]

1 hour ago, Bronty said:

He just doesn’t get the prices to really belong in the discussion IMO.   Jane Frank always seemed to have stuff by him in her inventory at non descript prices.

interesting style although not really my cup of tea

I love his work, the more abstract the better, but as noted he tops out around $10k or so.

[zhamlau]

10 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

I don't think anyone has mentioned Richard M. Powers (not to be confused with the novelist Richard Powers). Few would recognize his name, but many have admired his sci-fi dust jacket illustrations over the years. One of his illustrations was used as the cover to Starstream no. 1 back in the 70s; that might be his only connection to comic books.

I’ve sold some of his book covers before, just amazing surreal work. 

[Bird]

@stinkininkin Any chance that you could please give some insight into who done did what on this page? (HA Sunday auction coming up.) It says that Art Adams, Whilce Portacio & you  did the art.