As a collector of original art, I find myself constantly looking at the field of artwork that gets assembled in San Diego (and I'm sure at Wizard Con even though i've not been there in a few years) and wanting to track it like the stock market. But even the stock has a more predictable nature. Artwork can show up out of the blue to tantalize you and shock you by its very appearance!
Case in point: It has been years since I've seen essentiall any Byrne/Austin X-men from the classic years, and this year yielded the cover to X-men 113 as well as two page spread from a later issue with the new Brotherhood of Evil mutants. Amazing, even Uncanny, to coin a terrible joke. I found it hard to believe that this stuff just showed up out of nowhere.
Then I realized that I've had some key Starlin Captain Marvel pieces off of the market for years, well over a decade, and that the day i decide to let them go, it'll be magic to someone who hasn't seen that piece since the early 90's, fifteen years since I had picked up most of my Starlin pages. By 1993, i couldn't afford a single one that was still on the market.
The scarcity of Kirby pages from the FF was pretty staggering, but doing the math on the number of twice up pages that were produced, and then figuring in a degree of loss over the years yields a staggeringly low number available to collectors. No wonder the prices have continued their steady rise.
What didn't I see? I didn't happen to see a single Perez Avengers piece from the '70's, nor even a single Perez FF piece. Any Bissette/Totleben pages from back in the day on Saga of Swamp Thing? Not a one. Surprisingly, a great Nova splash from the '70's surfaced and made its way into the hands of my buddy Todd. I think that I saw a single Gil Kane page from the '70's. Considering Kane's output, that in its self is remarkable.
More thoughts later.
No comments:
Post a Comment