What is the difference between Original Cover Art (OCA) and CoverProduction Art(CPA)? 1 1

[drdonaldblake1]

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/herb-trimpe-the-incredible-hulk-121-cover-production-art-marvel-1969-/a/7039-92383.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/herb-trimpe-the-incredible-hulk-129-the-glob-cover-original-art-marvel-1970-/a/7066-93433.s?ic4=ListView-Thumbnail-071515

 

so the Hulk 129 is OCA and the hulk 1221 is CPA, obviously a huge price difference there

 

so what actually is CPA and how does one differentiate between OCA and CPA?

[PhilipB2k17]

One is mostly a stat, I.e a photo stat that was pasted up to use as the cover. The other is original hand drawn. If look at and enlarge the hi res version of the stat cover you can see the lines of the paste up. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by PhilipB2k17

[Madman1138]

You may also come across the term "mechanical cover" at some point and it is essentially the same thing. Whether calling it Production Art or a Mechanical cover, it basically just means that it is assembled with copies/stats of the original art, but it is not actually original art as it is not hand drawn. So either is just a large copy of the original art with additional elements added, such as titles, logos, etc.

[drdonaldblake1]

ok thanks guys

 

so look for glued on photostats which would suggest its more likely to be a CPA

 

[PhilipB2k17]

5 hours ago, drdonaldblake1 said:

ok thanks guys

 

so look for glued on photostats which would suggest its more likely to be a CPA

 

Photo stats of the main cover image. It’s quite common to see a photo stat of the trade dress (Book title, Marvel or DC logo, etc).  What you care about is whether the art itself is hand drawn. And even that might have some stats to correct or change things. The point is, you want to see that the art image is entirely, or very substantially, hand drawn vs a pasted on photo copy. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by PhilipB2k17

[aokartman]

6 hours ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

Photo stats of the main cover image. It’s quite common to see a photo stat of the trade dress (Book title, Marvel or DC logo, etc).  What you care about is whether the art itself is hand drawn. And even that might have some stats to correct or change things. The point is, you want to see that the art image is entirely, or very substantially, hand drawn vs a pasted on photo copy. 

That is well stated.  It seems that most trade dress, when that was a physical thing, is a photostat attached to the art board during the production process, and this is common from the Golden Age into the modern era.  It is best to look for hand-drawn art directly on the heavy bristol paper.  Sometimes, you get actual art or text corrections attached to the page on a separate piece of art paper.  Interior pages, same thing.  Some collectors prefer pages where everything is on the one page without attachments.  David

 

 

[Sharkey]

Production covers were very common in many of the Marvel reprint books of the 1970s (Marvel Tales, Marvel's Greatest Comics, Marvel Triple Action, Marvel Adventures, etc) which often reproduced the Silver Age cover (many times with edits and enhancements to the art). What they did was created a photostat of the original art cover and affixed it to a new cover which may or may not have had changes or edits made to it. 

I own a couple of these - Marvel's Greatest Comics 42 and 47, which are the reprints of Fantastic Four 55 and 64. Both MGC covers are 99% stat (some house artist extended some of the image in about 1/8 inch of the border I guess to fill the cover out because they had to reduce the stat to Bronze Age smaller art stock vs the twice up of the 1960s).

The MGC42/FF55 cover is pretty much the same image, whereas you can see in the MGC 47/FF 64 cover that they made a lot of art changes to the Sentry Sinister's back and torch is now shooting a fire blast instead of a fireball in MGC 47.

I do not know the story as to why a stat was used for the Hulk 121 cover, though. Maybe they liked an interior image better than the original cover Trimpe provided and decided to go with that? 

Steve