Robserecaps Twenty Six – episode 59 The Art of Comic Books
by Joe
An episode about original art and such! Not my wheel house, but I’m sure the Rob will give up tons of cool details. As always, check out the episode for yourself.
- “when writers give us endless jabberfests, know that our art is what makes your work a comic and not a novel”
- The Rob sees Jack Kirby art as the inspiration for what we see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- The last two years, original art, especially stuff from the 90’s has increased in interest and value
- Art collectors will bring their collections to cons, but stuff has been stolen, several covers of Savage Dragon original art was stolen from New York Comic Con a few years back
- Last week, the cover the Todd McFarlane’s first Amazing Spider-Man cover (issue #298) sold for a quarter of a million dollars, talks about another Todd cover for Spider-Man #1 sold for over $600,000 (the Rob flips between saying $657,000 and $675,000 through the episode) with interior pages topping out at $125,000 a page
- In original art forums the Rob frequents, people were criticizing the quality of the art in these two covers, which the Rob feels is unfair
- The Rob is waiting for one of his covers to hit these auction sites to track it, but the Rob knows where many of his covers are known they will not be sold
- the Rob learned from Walt Simonson to sit on your original art to let it accrue value
- I always forget that the deal with original pages, one third goes to the inker and every third cover
- In today’s market, John Byrne interior pages, especially from X-Men, go for $25,000 each. Back in the day, Byrne was selling them for $35 a page after his fee of $45 a page from Marvel
- Jim Lee’s Uncanny X-Men #268 cover sold for $600 in 1990, then sold by Wonder World Comics in Washington for $1000, now goes for well over $300,000
- Michael Golden left DC for Marvel to work on Micronauts at $10 extra a page
- The Rob reads a bunch of people’s negative comments about Todd’s art, likening it to haters of his own work
- Back in 1991, the Rob’s cover of X-Force #1 sold for $50,000, today interior pages sell for $50,000 and up
- a splash page from Barry Windsor Smith’s Weapon X recently sold for $170,000
- The cover to Dark Knight Returns #2 sold for $478,000, the Rob knows the guy who has the cover to issue one
- the Rob used to give double page splashes from Youngblood as Christmas gifts to agents, etc.
- Terry Austin is, in the Rob’s opinion, the best inker out there, his inks alone would add 10,000 sales to a book
- Terry currently owns the cover to Uncanny X-Men #141, the Days of Future Past cover, which the Rob calls the million dollar cover
- in a chance meeting with Terry Austin, the Rob joked that he and his friends were planning an Oceans 11’s style heist for Terry’s original art, which Terry did not think was funny AT ALL
- Many years ago, the Rob sold the cover of New Mutants #87 (first appearance of Cable) for $12,000. The Rob knows it could and will sell for more, but it’s no longer his page or his money
- The Rob recently purchased a George Perez inked Wonder Woman page for $150 and the Rob loves that as much as any five or six figure page he owns
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