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Original Comic Book Art: Chopped, Stolen, Reclaimed, and More
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35 posts in this topic

2 hours ago, Will_K said:

Funny how the bottom tier is at the top of your collection. 

Bottom tier of the last page no less. :)
If you click the image now, you'll learn more including that my last panel echos the splash page.

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“Sol said, ‘If you kids want anything, take it. This is all going to the incinerator anyway,” Wolfman remembers today. “Well, we dove in there! We had a sense of the value of the art, even if DC didn’t at the time. I must have walked out of there with 100, 200 pieces.”

This reminds me of the destruction of the early Doctor Who episodes, because the BBC in its monumental stupidity reused the master tapes and recorded over them.

Same thing happened with early Monty Python episodes, despite Cleese trying to buy the master tapes off the BBC.

I'm not sure which is worse, this kind of rank stupidity, or the greed of people in our community who carve up pages and sell the original panels e.g. Clarice, the story that many consider one of Wrightson's best, now lost because someone wanted to make a quick buck.

Then there's the breaking up of the pages of a story, which no-one bats an eye at today.

This attitude, voiced recently on this board, seems fairly prevalent still and no doubt this is what Sol Harrison was thinking back in the day:

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It served its purpose decades ago.

 

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4 hours ago, Taylor G said:

This reminds me of the destruction of the early Doctor Who episodes, because the BBC in its monumental stupidity reused the master tapes and recorded over them.

Same thing happened with early Monty Python episodes, despite Cleese trying to buy the master tapes off the BBC.

I'm not sure which is worse, this kind of rank stupidity, or the greed of people in our community who carve up pages and sell the original panels e.g. Clarice, the story that many consider one of Wrightson's best, now lost because someone wanted to make a quick buck.

Then there's the breaking up of the pages of a story, which no-one bats an eye at today.

This attitude, voiced recently on this board, seems fairly prevalent still and no doubt this is what Sol Harrison was thinking back in the day:

 

I understand the sentiment, but I believe DC's reasons for destroying all original art was seen as a form of "copyright protection." Whether the decision was rooted in a legal argument that if an artist claimed ownership of the art, they stood a chance at owning the character - or if the story found a way to get reprinted in another country that it might have caused them issues - the one thing we know for certain is that if the incinerator was larger, we might not have had any art salvaged from those days. Defending intellectual property, particularly copyright, was something DC might have been more risk adverse about in those days as well, and whether keeping it lying around was seen as a liability or not, I'm sure (sadly) that they just didn't have the presence of mind to consider it would become as valuable as it has.

The butchers carving up art for a quick buck are vandals, plain and simple.

Looking at it a different way, and as much as Sol Harrison comes away looking like the rube in the retelling of these early days of salvaging comic art, I'm thankful he gave Marv Wolfman, a writer and someone who would appreciate the visual storytelling being told in the art, the job as 'cutter.' If it had been someone far removed from the process of making comics books, or worse, that saw it as a corrupting influence, none of it would have survived. 

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22 hours ago, Taylor G said:

Then there's the breaking up of the pages of a story, which no-one bats an eye at today.

Very unfortunate.  But it takes more effort to buy/sell a story intact.  Also, the theoretical discount of buying an intact story has been discussed but it's still an expensive proposition. 

A few personally significant stories were sold as separate lots (I assume at the consignor's direction):

* In 2018, ComicLink started auctioning Nick Cardy's 22 pages to Brave & Bold 96 (Batman/Sgt Rock) as separate lots.

* In 2018, HA started auctioning Mike Nasser's 8 page story ("12 Parts") as 8 separate lots in their weekly auctions. 

* In 2017, ComicConnect auctioned Mike Nasser's 30 page story (Hang the Batman ) and Marshall Rogers' related cover as separate lots during a single auction.

 

Re: cutting up art

Many of Stan Drake's later Heart of Juliet Jones strips were comprised of headshots he cut out of OA from earlier strips.  And Steve Ditko's apparent harsh treatment of his own art has been previously discussed.

Edited by Will_K
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1 hour ago, wurstisart said:

We have a thread about flipping art and calling out names, but the topic of prominent dealers and names about this are kept a secret.

Somehow all the best threads end up being quietly *poofed* by mods; so what's the point anyway. Just buy, Buy, BUY!!!!

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On 2/1/2020 at 2:03 PM, Taylor G said:

Then there's the breaking up of the pages of a story, which no-one bats an eye at today.

I personally have always felt the market should have disincentivized this practice. I see it as the total being greater, not the parts. Any complete story that's been curated and kept intact should always be worth more than a single page some dealer or auction house decided to break up for the sake of making more money.

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13 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

should

That word usually precedes somebody losing a lot of money.

The market is the market, and more than anything else demand is greater for any single page out of 22 than 22 as a whole. Why? Because money doesn't grow on trees and fewer can afford big $ than smaller $. That right there guarantees break value almost always exceeds sum total. Keeping books and stories complete in spite of all this is strictly for the I light my cigars with benjamins instead of matches oligarchs ;)

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Right, especially a full 22 page story with a mix of splash pages, characters in costume pages, ancillary characters talking pages, etc. The collectibility of the various pages varies wildly, and 22 pages out of a single book is out of the means of 99% of collectors.

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