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Article How Amazing Fantasy # 15 OA ended in the library of congress
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101 posts in this topic

 

3 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

When did Heritage have the SS #4 story?  I don't see any record of it in their archives.  Do you mean the SS #1 cover that was auctioned in November 2001?  That was the very first Heritage Comics & Comic Art Auction and the only one that took place before John Buscema passed away in January 2002. 

I stand corrected...the surfer 4 story was sold i believe in a SOTHEBYS in the 90s

Edited by romitaman
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1 hour ago, romitaman said:

i strongly believe this statement above is false...Marie sold "EVERY" DITKO ASM piece she ever had to make ends meet financially.....she would have sold this story in a heart beat had she owned it...she never had it.

i have VERY reliable..... MULTIPLE sources who say Stan Donated the AF 15 story to the LOC after he got verbally lambasted by John Buscema for putting his Silver Surfer 4 story in heritage without giving it back to John...Stan gave the proceeds of the sale to john and felt terrible about what happeend, so he decided to give the AF 15 to the LOC because he didnt want the same thing to happen if he sold it privately or through auction.

You sure about this Mike? Those sales were like 15 years before the art was donated , right? Long time in between and im sure Ditko has made it clear he didnt care about what happened to his art and that it was the publishers to do with as they pleased.

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13 minutes ago, zhamlau said:

You sure about this Mike? Those sales were like 15 years before the art was donated , right? Long time in between and im sure Ditko has made it clear he didnt care about what happened to his art and that it was the publishers to do with as they pleased.

Well, whether it was Marie or Stan (if it was indeed one of them), then Sara Duke is pulling a fast one on us!! :ohnoez: 

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1 hour ago, romitaman said:

i strongly believe this statement above is false...Marie sold "EVERY" DITKO ASM piece she ever had to make ends meet financially.....she would have sold this story in a heart beat had she owned it...she never had it.

i have VERY reliable..... MULTIPLE sources who say Stan Donated the AF 15 story to the LOC after he got verbally lambasted by John Buscema for putting his Silver Surfer 4 story in heritage without giving it back to John...Stan gave the proceeds of the sale to john and felt terrible about what happeend, so he decided to give the AF 15 to the LOC because he didnt want the same thing to happen if he sold it privately or through auction.

Wow. Makes you wonder what else Stan had. 

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4 hours ago, romitaman said:

i strongly believe this statement above is false...Marie sold "EVERY" DITKO ASM piece she ever had to make ends meet financially.....she would have sold this story in a heart beat had she owned it...she never had it.

i have VERY reliable..... MULTIPLE sources who say Stan Donated the AF 15 story to the LOC after he got verbally lambasted by John Buscema for putting his Silver Surfer 4 story in heritage without giving it back to John...Stan gave the proceeds of the sale to john and felt terrible about what happeend, so he decided to give the AF 15 to the LOC because he didnt want the same thing to happen if he sold it privately or through auction.

That doesn't make any sense since the SS #4 was put up for auction a decade before AF #15 was donated to the Library of Congress. Plus Stan was always the showman I can't see him not wanting to promote AF #15 going to the Library.

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I've always wonder about the "why" about the anonymity.  Is it just to avoid having collectors come out of the woodwork asking for "more" ?

It seems like the donation was made while the benefactor was still living.  Was there a danger of being sued ?  The LoC seems to be OK with the art having been stolen.  They just accept the benefactor's word that it wasn't.  It seems like making the donation was an easy way of getting rid of a stolen property.

There was also the option of making the LoC donation upon death, just put it in your Last Will  Unless you didn't trust your Executor. 

The benefactor supposedly got the "OK" from Ditko.  So was Ditko told who had the art?  What if Ditko said he wanted his art returned to him?  What if Ditko did give his blessing but then changed his mind?  Did Ditko sign something where he gave up any rights to the art ? 
 

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15 minutes ago, Bird said:
32 minutes ago, Will_K said:

The LoC seems to be OK with the art having been stolen.

It has never been reported stolen. A technicality perhaps but an important one.

No.  But the LoC does have that base covered.  Quoting the article :

 

For Amazing Fantasy #15, the Library of Congress has any of a number of valuable pieces in its archives. For its part, it makes sure it has its legalities covered.

“We have what’s called an Instrument of Gift,” Duke says. “We ask that the donor sign that they own legal right to the art, manuscript, books, or whatever they’re donating, that they possess the legal property.”

And Duke says that’s the best they can do. Many of the Library’s pieces are hundreds of years old.

“We’re not going to go chasing through the halls of time trying to figure out how did it get from point A to point B,” she says.

 

 

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So the LoC is not okay with it being stolen as they require a statement of ownership. And no one has stepped forward contesting ownership either.

Edited by Bird
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A bigger clue would be what collections do they hold from Marvel or indeed an individual artist. If they hold any of the Severins work then I could understand them or John himself donating it for the treasure it is to the comic World and to printed history. They have my respect.:golfclap:

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On ‎2‎/‎9‎/‎2019 at 12:25 AM, delekkerste said:

Remember, donating the AF #15 - worth 7-figures even in 2008 - was a selfless act.  Somebody thought it was worth more to make it available to the public in the Library of Congress than it was to either keep it or sell it for mega-$$$ to a collector.  I don't see that being the person who has the complete ASM #1 story - why would he just give away the AF #15 and keep the ASM #1?  Doesn't sound right to me.  Not to mention, I think someone would have heard about the existence, if not the whereabouts, of the AF #15 art if it ended up in a collection or was otherwise linked to the early sales of pilfered Marvel art. 

Nah...I think this had to have come from someone affiliated with Marvel (creator, staffer or family thereof).  Also, if it was Marie and she had wanted to remain anonymous, isn't it very plausible that she told Sarah Duke to flat-out deny that it was her if asked (since a "no comment" or just omitting her name from a shortlist of denied possible donors would make it really easy to finger her as the donor)?  Plus, there's always playing the semantics card if it was a relative or representative and not her directly that handed off the art. 2c 

What if it was...George Lucas? 

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On ‎2‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 12:09 PM, romitaman said:

i strongly believe this statement above is false...Marie sold "EVERY" DITKO ASM piece she ever had to make ends meet financially.....she would have sold this story in a heart beat had she owned it...she never had it.

i have VERY reliable..... MULTIPLE sources who say Stan Donated the AF 15 story to the LOC after he got verbally lambasted by John Buscema for putting his Silver Surfer 4 story in heritage without giving it back to John...Stan gave the proceeds of the sale to john and felt terrible about what happeend, so he decided to give the AF 15 to the LOC because he didnt want the same thing to happen if he sold it privately or through auction.

When I said I had a source who said it wasn't Marie Severin, I was talking about Mike. LOL! He told me this story (minus the John Buscema, and guilt trip part) at a con several months ago. I figured he would have some degree of info on it. So, there it is.

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8 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

Except the Cover is Kirby, not Ditko. 

Gee, thanks so much for the shocking revelation. :gossip:  Its obvious :whistle: and it doesn't change what I said.   Its a stellar cover.

Edited by Bronty
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14 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

When I said I had a source who said it wasn't Marie Severin, I was talking about Mike. LOL! He told me this story (minus the John Buscema, and guilt trip part) at a con several months ago. I figured he would have some degree of info on it. So, there it is.

So your "source" was just another party (top dealer as he may be, with notably questionable ethics on at least one matter) quoting his third-party source.

Was anybody actually in the room, does anybody actually know? Ha ha. So much hot air.

Sheesh.

Quoting anonymously a quoter of another anonymous source: that's perma-LOL right there.

Good job. Polish off that investigative journalism award. You earned it.

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On 2/11/2019 at 12:09 PM, romitaman said:

i have VERY reliable..... MULTIPLE sources who say Stan Donated the AF 15 story to the LOC after he got verbally lambasted by John Buscema for putting his Silver Surfer 4 story in heritage without giving it back to John...Stan gave the proceeds of the sale to john and felt terrible about what happeend, so he decided to give the AF 15 to the LOC because he didnt want the same thing to happen if he sold it privately or through auction.

Just have such a hard time with this story, and not just because it seems very opposite of the publicity-minded face of Marvel.

If Stan felt so bad about having and selling others' art, why didn't he return the AF15 art to Ditko after the SS4 sale? We know that on at least one other occasion Ditko accepted back art that he believed should have been returned to him. And while I have no problem believing that Ditko told a possible owner who was "gifted" the art from the company he made it for as a work for hire, that it wasn't his and he didn't care what happened to it - I think it would have been a different reaction if it had been Lee himself who had taken the art and then claimed ownership.

Was Stan unaware of the initiative of Marvel returning art to the artists in the 80s? Or did he just feel that if he had taken art before it was inventoried that the returning to artists part doesn't apply to him?

 

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