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How much original art is lost in the houses of artists
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12 posts in this topic

With the recent article about McFarlane finding original art from Spider-Man #2. I wonder how much original comic art still resides with the artists and many don't even know. 

Not talking about Walt Simonson and artists like him who do not sell their artwork. More the ones who have sold their artwork over the years but still could still have art hidden away in desk drawers.

I remember years ago they story of Alan Davis having a stack of original art in his closet. Also a personal experience where I bought all the original art from X-Men #30 from Andy Kubert and Matt Ryan. But some 6 years later being contacted and told a story. They were cleaning out the basement of the Kubert School and found a rusted out desk which belonged to Andy Kubert when he worked there. Inside was 50 original covers plus an envelope with 3 pages that I was missing from X-Men #30.

Wonder what other desks, cabinets or closets in the houses of artists which still hold original comic art?

 

https://www.cbr.com/mcfarlane-cleaning-more-vintage-spider-man-art/

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A lot. I spoke to Pablo Marcos and his daughter at last year’s HeroesCon and they said they had stacks and stacks of art just lying around at home. It was clear from his binders how random the selection was as well; as if it was pulled from a stack. My dad bought a couple King Conan pages with an unidentifiable penciler. Turned out to be early Silvestri and Judith Marcos inks. I can only imagine how many artists have stockpiles they’ve never gotten around to selling. 

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I'm sure everyone knows about the house fire at Len Wein's house that destroyed some original art...many people thought that included the cover to Giant Size X-Men #1 but luckily that was not the case. Erik Larsen had a similar fire that burned up a lot of his art, I think. And for D&D art collectors, Erol Otus lost a ton of TSR art to a flood.

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On 5/29/2020 at 6:02 PM, christosgage said:

I'm sure everyone knows about the house fire at Len Wein's house that destroyed some original art...many people thought that included the cover to Giant Size X-Men #1 but luckily that was not the case. Erik Larsen had a similar fire that burned up a lot of his art, I think. And for D&D art collectors, Erol Otus lost a ton of TSR art to a flood.

Rumor was it also contained complete interiors to Hulk 181 or was that later dispelled?

Edited by MAR1979
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On 5/31/2020 at 12:45 AM, Hockeyflow33 said:

If cons ever come back you can talk to Al Milgrom about all the fantastic stuff he has.

I have been talking with him over the years about the art he has.

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20 hours ago, Brian Peck said:

I have been talking with him over the years about the art he has.

Many many people have...it has to be quite a nice feeling to know you have all that still as the prices keep trending upwards. Like a retirement pension.

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On 6/2/2020 at 11:32 AM, Taylor G said:

 

For some reason, this reminds me of the recent anecdote someone shared, of watching widows set up at comic cons to sell off the comics their spouse no doubt left them thinking they would be their meal ticket, and the comics going for pennies.

I'm not seeing that. One set of people, with no actual understanding or expertise, bought common hyped garbage cause someone told them "its fire baby" and then did nothing with that shoddy poorly thought out investment in terms of capitalizing on it properly. Of course that's gonna fail 99% of the time because its lazy based on bad planning.

The other set of people are art industry folks who worked in the industry and didn't have anything spent on this rare valuable material, it was never planned to be "my round the world" fund. When they go to sell off 100% of the time they are getting paid huge amounts of funds.

Group A is common and aggressively chased a market they knew nothing about. Group B is rare and had no money sunk into these pieces that no question are massively desirable. I don't see connection in this one.

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