Splitting up Books - Thoughts? 5 5

[BuraddoRun]

What are your opinions on collecting complete stories VS single pages? While it would be nice to own a complete book, I don't think it's a realistic goal for most of us. Heck, even the artists don't get all their pages back if they have a separate inker. Do you think it's a shame that works get split up, or not so much?

Personally, I think it's fine. I kind of feel like each page, each panel even, is its own piece of art. Of course, I'd never cut up a page into panels, but you could always tip the balance the other way and say a work isn't complete unless you own every issue. That's the point of buying the mass produced stuff, right? A comic book, or an entire run, is a complete work. The actual original art piece isn't intended to stay complete. It's taken and used, and suffers wear and tear. It even gets extra bits added to it to make it complete, like colors. Collecting pieces, bits, of these books is just a natural part of this hobby. It's the same with movie sets, right? No one owns every costume or prop from a movie. That stuff gets taken, sold, reused, or destroyed. But crazy fans like us appreciate the details that go into a finished work enough that we seek those individual bits. It lets us feel closer to the finished product. It lets us see behind the scenes. And in our specific case, it is still literal artwork. I think breaking up a book lets us appreciate the finer details that went into the very specific pieces of that book that we obtain. I don't know. What do you think?

[Terry E. Gibbs]

I think it may be different with comic art collectors and comic art collectors. I still own my slabs, still read the current issues (and every few years I am glad I do). I am a comic guy who buys art related to my favourite stories when made even better by the right artist being used on that work. I had an epiphany about 3 years ago when I landed the first 8 pages to Flash 140. At the time I thought it may be the only way to get one of five pages I really wanted.  I had thought about selling many of the others over the next few years. When I actually had it in my hands, that changed. Since then I have been very interested in chasing arcs with some success, and now have two modern complete books. Love the story and the art and getting a whole book with digital, and  artists and inkers in different locations is only going to get harder. One day these may be spit up, but I am guessing my sons will be the ones doing it. I think money is also a factor as a complete book means you are holding some low value pages, so it is the collector and comic fan in me driving it. On the two modern books I have bought I can't even kid myself I am making a good investment. Will I do it again, I doubt it, but doubt I will ever get the right offer again.

[grapeape]

It is very difficult to obtain an entire story(art) today. Back in the nineties I did see complete stories all the time. It's a noble goal to try and collect an entire book. It can be maddening though. There's a guy on the CGC Comic Marketplace trying to collect the entire Spectacular Spider-Man 21. Last year a page I really wanted came up on auction but I left it alone to not drive the price up on the poor soul. When some people learn you desire something the greed takes over. Makes it near impossible to get an entire book unless somehow you buy it complete. 

I loved the idea of owning a complete book. Over the years I've changed. Breaking up books is exciting and gives more then one collector a chance to get in on the act6ion. I think that's healthy for our hobby. Still I marvel at people like my buddy M owning the complete SSB 3 book of art. Freakin unbelievable. I'm going to contradict myself and say I hope he never breaks it up.

Great topic BuraddoRun. You're earning your stripes with thoughtful contributions to the CGC boards since joining!! You are GrapeApe approved + + + +

🍇 + 🦍

Edited September 5, 2020 by grapeape

[Rick2you2]

Well, no. There is a reason OA is called sequential art, not static art. The art is designed to compliment a story and that means following the flow and rhythm of the whole thing. By buying single pages, a practical choice, we lose the ability to see how the panels interact between pages— like the speech balloon of a character off page who shows up the next page, maybe in a half splash, or the ebb and flow of time between story arcs. The hobby has ignored the beauty of that aspect of their creation, which must be attributed to the writer’s decisions as well as the artist. We similarly value the full page splash, and rarely give much thought to sophisticated panel layouts in a page. Doing so between pages is even worse, in a sense, because it never even comes up as a subject. The reason is simply that buying the whole stories is expensive. I am no saint; I am equally impressed by a full splash; but I make the effort to see past the splashy effects.

I just bought my first story (actually, a half story continued in the next issue). I am looking forward to to absorbing the whole layout. So no, it won’t be broken up.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Rick2you2

[RBerman]

Sentimentally, I'd rather pages stayed together, just as I'd prefer pages not to get chopped into panels and sold separately. As Rick says, the pages were intended to form an organic whole. But that's not a realistic hope in a collector's market in which the value of individual pages from the same issue can have valuations 5-10x apart. And there's substantial opportunity cost (time, money, relational capital, and more) involved in trying to keep it all together. Do I want a complete issue more than I want excellent individual pages/covers? I'm a newbie in this hobby, but I can already tell that my answer is "I seek good individual pages more."

[ShallowDan]

In my heart I feel similar to what Rick says above: if there's an argument to be made that comics are art, then I would say that it's the complete story/issue that comes closest to meeting the standard.  Obviously it's an imperfect analogy, but a single page of a story is akin to a chapter of a book or scene of a film  This is why with more historically important works, I prefer to see stories stay together - the artwork from EC stories come to mind here.  I think Quietly still owns all of the art from We3, and if he ever did sell it, I'd love to see it stay together. 

Having said that, in my head I recognize that for the bulk of the stuff most collectors are interested in (big 2 superhero stories) this is rarely feasible and much less of a concern since stories are on-going/never-ending, big events are undone or retconned, etc.

You may find it interesting, BurradoRun, but a not-insignificant portion of the Prince Valiant art work that survives is in the form of single panels.  Hal Foster would cut up strips and gift individual panels to fans who wrote him.  I've wondered if anyone has ever tried to tackle reassembling a Valiant strip.

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by ShallowDan
correcting typo

[Taylor G]

Since you asked.

I consider visual sequential storytelling, in films and in comics, as the great art form of the twentieth century.  Motion pictures have got the artistic recognition they deserve, largely due to scholarship like Cahiers du Cinéma.  WIll Eisner in the 1940s understood that comics were another new art form, related to motion pictures.  He based his Spirit comics on the visual language of film noir.  It's a pity a lot of people, including many people in this hobby, still don't get what Eisner figured out eighty years ago.

I say this as prelude to saying, I personally think it is moronic that people collect individual panel pages, from a wide variety of artists.  Moronic.  That's just my opinion.

Why not be known in the hobby as the guy who has the complete pages for story X? 

By analogy, for those that don't know, it's estimated that three quarters of all silent films are lost completely.  Those that we still have are due to film collectors like Kevin Brownlow, who risked criminal prosecution to collect and save these films, sometimes from the original stars like Harold Lloyd who had been forgotten.  Here is Brownlow's famous speech accepting an award for his efforts, I recommend taking a look:

If you are the collector for a story, at least you are contributing something to the art form, maybe that story will still be available to art historians a hundred years from now because you helped to keep it together.  Wouldn't it be nice to be remembered for something in this hobby, instead of having a collection indistinguishable from thousands of other cookie cutter collections?  The recent Byrne and Cockrum artist editions contain no complete stories, because Dunbier, despite years of scanning and networking, was not able to find a single complete story by these artists.

I understand why sellers break up stories.  If you put an entire story up for sale, you're going to have relatively few takers, and more than likely the buyer is going to be some dealer that will turn around and break it up, I've seen that many times.  Easier to move it by selling the pages individually.  Probably the only thing that keeps whole stories together are private networks of serious collectors who appreciate the importance of keeping these things together, so most of these sales of complete stories are private.  Hence the importance of networking with like-minded collectors.  I have seen some artists who have not sold their art, and are only interested in selling entire stories, they get it, unlike John Byrne who broke up his stories for beer money.  It was gratifying to see the Murphy Anderson Hawkman stories sold whole, even while some here complained that they couldn't get individual pages for their cookie cutter collections.  The Anderson family gets it. 

I must admit, the claim that "breaking up a book is exciting" is a new one, I hadn't heard that one before. 

It's the buyers I have a problem with.  It's clear that for most collectors, original art collecting is just an extension of comic book collecting.  It's not about the art form, it's about the personal nostalgic thrill they get from owning a page from a story they read when they were young.  One better than having a 9.8 copy of the comic book because "there's only one copy", forgetting that if you miss this Sal Buscema page, hold on, there'll be lots more available next week.  So much for "there's only one."   

I understand that when you first get into the hobby, you can only afford single pages, and everybody wants some variety in their collections, you don't start just buying pages from a single story off the bat.  But at some point, I'd hope that people would "grow up" in the hobby and think more meaningfully about what they're trying to accomplish with their collecting.  What's the point?

Meanwhile I've heard of artists who've tried to get owners to sell their individual pages to people who are putting together stories, and the owners have refused.  Nothing trumps their thrill at having one of this artist's pages in their cookie cutter collections.

Apologies if I have offended anyone, but the OP asked.  I think this hobby has seriously screwed up priorities, and with people moving from comic book collecting into comic art collecting, from one form of atomistic consumerism into another, I expect it to only get worse.  How will this hobby be remembered in the future?

[ShallowDan]

6 minutes ago, Taylor G said:

Since you asked.

I consider visual sequential storytelling, in films and in comics, as the great art form of the twentieth century.  Motion pictures have got the artistic recognition they deserve, largely due to scholarship like Cahiers du Cinéma.  WIll Eisner in the 1940s understood that comics were another new art form, related to motion pictures.  He based his Spirit comics on the visual language of film noir.  It's a pity a lot of people, including many people in this hobby, still don't get what Eisner figured out eighty years ago.

I say this as prelude to saying, I personally think it is moronic that people collect individual panel pages, from a wide variety of artists.  Moronic.  That's just my opinion.

Why not be known in the hobby as the guy who has the complete pages for story X? 

By analogy, for those that don't know, it's estimated that three quarters of all silent films are lost completely.  Those that we still have are due to film collectors like Kevin Brownlow, who risked criminal prosecution to collect and save these films, sometimes from the original stars like Harold Lloyd who had been forgotten.  Here is Brownlow's famous speech accepting an award for his efforts, I recommend taking a look:

 

To the OP, Taylor G sums up what I was trying to say in the "in my heart" part of my post far, far better than I do.  It's a great post that nails the argument of why some stuff should be kept together.

[sfilosa]

Not going to make a long rant but first and foremost, "we are collectors". We are not buying to conserve the art form, I have no altruism to my collection (e.g. I want buy all this art to give to a museum one day). When I die, my collection will already be sold or my wife/kids will sell. My wife and I have that discussion every day a new piece of art arrives, as in "when I die, you can sell these and hopefully they will be worth more than I paid" and she responds, "and when will that be".

That said, I did buy my first whole story (7-page EC Jack Davis story) just a few months ago, and I don't think I would ever consider splitting it up. I am looking at buying another whole story in an Heritage Auction, and before I figure out how much to pay, I will need to figure out if I want to split it up or keep it whole. If I break it up and can sell most of it and keep a few pages for free, that would be great. But I know I will feel bad breaking it up.  I have a few days to figure this out!

[grapeape]

It’s rare to see a response as well written as Taylor G’s so it may seem like I’m not getting his points. I do but in everything there are nuances that must not be ignored.
 

I would like to think that if Dunbier came across the only surviving film reel of Casablanca, and it was burned save for a few clips of salvageable film he’d stop and pick them up.

OA collecting is much more then a herd of Knuckle draggers who don’t get it. It is full of realistic people with a passion for any representation of an art form they love. It’s simply not feasible to own an entire sequential creation in most cases.

Many of us try our best to cobble together as many pieces of one story as we can. The obstacles are many.

A single page most definitely can stand on its own merit. Art is more then just visual. It is emotional, spiritual and transformative. Even if I have only 1 page my mind can fill in the before and the after.

You know what’s neat? Searching CAF or other sites and finding the other pages. I’ve captured images of pages I don’t own and filed them in order for sequence enjoyment.

Since we know art was stolen, lost, destroyed etc. there is a duty to be a caretaker of art. I consider myself a caretaker. Not an owner. I will preserve, share and enjoy what I have saved from the wilderness.
 

When I look at one page of art, to me it’s the same as recalling a favorite scene from a film. If you own a complete story I think there is much to consider before breaking it up.

When I say exciting I’m thinking of for example when ASM 10 was broken up nearly twenty years ago. There were two competing thoughts from many of us.

1) Is he crazy? I would never break up a treasure like that.

2) Holy S it’s happening and somebody is going after those pages. This might be my chance to capture a memory.

I still hope to own a complete story.

Cheers

 

 

[vodou]

1 hour ago, Taylor G said:

I say this as prelude to saying, I personally think it is moronic that people collect individual panel pages, from a wide variety of artists.  Moronic.  That's just my opinion.

The good news is that a lot of comic art is not art, it's junk that was banged out by hacks that couldn't get a better job and screwed up by not taking shop class instead and learning a(nother) trade that was unionized. This "art" only has value because: nostalgia. Break 'em up baby!

There's no harm being done here, imo, what's lost is lost (in what perfect world does no one ever die but there's forever enough food, clothing, housing to keep everyone fat, happy and making even more babies into eternity?) and that "loss" is what will later drive the scholarly/curatorial appreciation actually, the very lack of commonality of complete stories and the heroic efforts to preserve what remains (not lost) and put back together the pieces to make wholes or get as close as possible with what remains. If all the stories were still complete...would anybody care that they were?

[vodou]

6 minutes ago, grapeape said:

It is full of realistic people with a passion for any representation of an art form they love.

That's an incredibly generous statement you make. Not for me. I'm with the "mostly knuckle-draggers" version. Comic art collectors here, there, everywhere. Not comic art collectors. Sturgeon's Law applies, of course, most of it isn't art to begin with, though "part of the artform" and really...I could just quote myself directly above here but I think ya'll can just use the scroll wheel instead

[vodou]

13 minutes ago, grapeape said:

I still hope to own a complete story.

I own a 50 page complete story. The "art" is junk. Nonetheless I'm keeping it together. For now, where "now" is already 20 years

[sfilosa]

21 minutes ago, vodou said:

That's an incredibly generous statement you make. Not for me. I'm with the "mostly knuckle-draggers" version. Comic art collectors here, there, everywhere. Not comic art collectors. Sturgeon's Law applies, of course, most of it isn't art to begin with, though "part of the artform" and really...I could just quote myself directly above here but I think ya'll can just use the scroll wheel instead

We had this discussion when I showed my SSOC #164 cover and you mentioned you didn't buy it and bought "more profitable" items.

For me, I'm mostly a Comic Art Collector. That is why my house is full of painting (colored art). I have plenty of B&W inked comic art, but in almost all cases, the piece has artistic value to me. Even though I want to collected SSOC covers, I have passed on a lot more than I have because they didn't strike me as "artistic" enough. Now in the case of B&W inked art, I try to buy pieces that I like visually and represent the artist's unique talent. One reason I don't own a lot of John or Sal Buscema art (very, very popular 60-70's artist, right in my target time frame), is simple, I just don't see enough "uniqueness" to their art. I can't really identify them like I can with Adams, Wrightson, Colan, Kirby, etc. 

Also, it is the REASON I don't own any COVERS that have stats on them (e.g. any cover I own is fairly modern). Simply put, I value the ART, whereas covers take up 1/3 of the page with Titles/Words (which are mostly stats anyway). To me, they distract from the art. I admit, as a Comic Book Collector first (no more), they have nostalgic appeal, but in general I would be paying grossly more than for an "artistic" panel page to own 2/3 art and 1/3 stats. Not worth it to me at this time. Plus, as someone who has visited many of the most famous museums in the world (Louvre, Vatican, Hermitage, etc.), I just don't remember any of the art with big writing on them.

But back to the topic of this thread, I don't have any opinion on someone who 1) wants to own a complete story or 2) wants to buy a complete story and break it up. As I said before, I'm interested in buying a complete story in the most recent Heritage Auction (which there are a lot this time). But assume I thought there were three incredibly "artistic" pages, and the other say 17 pages I would never want to purchase. Should I keep the whole book intact, to "preserve" history? It's not like I'm going to burn the 17 pages, and let's be real, in my life, I don't foresee this complete story being put in a museum. At best, it is sold to another collector and he keeps in his room for enjoy. And since Heritage already has high quality scans of all the pages, that's the best the rest of the world would get to enjoy if the story stays together or not.

 

[dichotomy]

Thanks to the OP and all subsequent posters for their nuanced and interesting replies. This is the content I’m here for. 

Great and valid points all around. This is a conversation of Venn diagrams. Comic ART collectors meeting COMIC art collectors. Great art meeting great stories creates nostalgia and art. And great writing elevates the art, both in the conception (see the notoriously detailed notes from Moore and Gaiman to their collaborators) - this is interesting to consider when thinking about the collaborative nature of the art we collect. It may be one person, or it may be 4 or more! 
 

(a page that resonates because it encapsulates itself nicely - plus you get the “moments” of Supes glory soaring plus the transformation into Clark)

Personally speaking, I noticed early on a particular affinity for story in the artwork I pursue. A cover tells a story, or at the very least asks a question. In my humble opinion, that’s the JOB of the cover. Art + Design. I do not think you will find many “hero pose” covers or commissions in my collection. Beyond a cover, is a sequence (or sequences - per Watchmen particularly) over one or more pages. Careful consideration and planning is key here and can often yield incredible results.

Ultimately, it is the entire story. 
 

The artist or collaboration that is firing on all cylinders, well, I think it’s possible to craft a story with NO undesirable/unwanted pages. But it’s hard. And for the other 95%, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a minimal page, but I would encourage the seller to consider trying to sell “quieter” pages as a part of the sequence they were always meant to support. 
 

Finally, I take my hat off to anyone trying to put together an issue/story, particularly for older material. It is time consuming and EXPENSIVE - particularly if the story and artist have truly produced something that straddles the nostalgia/craft threshold. 
 

I have 5 complete issues (4 purchased complete, 1 I put together), Several complete stories (8-10 pages), and a large sequence of another book that I’m putting together. But all of this is modern. I just don’t have the funds for anything older. I tried putting together some sequences from the Simonson/Mignola Jungle Adventure and basically self-worked myself by driving the market up. But that’s the price you have to pay to do it. 

Finally, a tip of the hat to strip art! They’re fun for a reason 

-M

PS while not my thing, I’ve noticed, akin to panel pages being cut up, pages from rare floppies being sold individually, and even by panel. 

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by dichotomy

[Rick2you2]

3 hours ago, Taylor G said:

 

I say this as prelude to saying, I personally think it is moronic that people collect individual panel pages, from a wide variety of artists.  Moronic. 
 

***

I understand that when you first get into the hobby, you can only afford single pages, and everybody wants some variety in their collections, you don't start just buying pages from a single story off the bat.  But at some point, I'd hope that people would "grow up" in the hobby and think more meaningfully about what they're trying to accomplish with their collecting.  What's the point?

Meanwhile I've heard of artists who've tried to get owners to sell their individual pages to people who are putting together stories, and the owners have refused.  Nothing trumps their thrill at having one of this artist's pages in their cookie cutter collections.

Apologies if I have offended anyone, but the OP asked.  I think this hobby has seriously screwed up priorities, and with people moving from comic book collecting into comic art collecting, from one form of atomistic consumerism into another, I expect it to only get worse.  How will this hobby be remembered in the future?

“Moronic”? That’s kind of harsh. Ideally, we would all buy complete stories, and enjoy the full aspects of the “sequential” in sequential art, but that would price a lot of people out of this hobby who can find other aspects to enjoy. What would a full issue of a Kirby FF cost, if it exists? Besides, there are other ways to enjoy specific pages. I get a kick out of comparing different styles by different artists for the same character. It would be better if I could also buy the whole books, and pick out pages for temporary comparison, while later returning them to where they belong, but that’s not in my budget. Some people buy commissions for the same reason. There has been a huge run on eBay by someone who is selling off his Batman on gargoyle commissions (I assume it is the same person). That is even more focused than I am, and they do look cool. Whoever it is, he/she also likes the static/comparative aspect of comic art.

There is no “point” to my hobby, other than a pleasurable break from work which is not consumed by other chores, responsibilities or sleep. So while I disagree with the OP, and his sense of “excitement” at the impending destruction of a complete piece of work, moronic is going too far a bridge for me to cross.

[grapeape]

5 hours ago, vodou said:

That's an incredibly generous statement you make. Not for me. I'm with the "mostly knuckle-draggers" version. Comic art collectors here, there, everywhere. Not comic art collectors. Sturgeon's Law applies, of course, most of it isn't art to begin with, though "part of the artform" and really...I could just quote myself directly above here but I think ya'll can just use the scroll wheel instead

Sigh.....Knuckle draggers? Not art?

[vodou]

36 minutes ago, grapeape said:

Sigh.....Knuckle draggers? Not art?

Yeah. Slaves to nostalgia; nostalgia-blinders, etc. Some graduate over time; most do not.

[grapeape]

4 minutes ago, vodou said:

Yeah. Slaves to nostalgia; nostalgia-blinders, etc. Some graduate over time; most do not.

There must be a 12 Step Program for us 😂

[RBerman]

1 minute ago, grapeape said:

There must be a 12 Step Program for us 😂

In most 12-step programs, you're going to have to go cold turkey from the substance that's causing the problem. I volunteer to take it off your hands, lest you be tempted to relapse.