Lynn Varley and Frank Miller at UKCAC ’86

Great throwback photo, but sorry to hear you were cheated at the auction.  You're not the only one on CAF to miss out on Miller/Varley OA back when it was affordable (sigh...), but this is the most galling story I've read.  Most stories sting more, though, since they involve poor choices on the collector's part, but here you had your head on straight and it was the auctioneer who goofed, or had it in for you.

Thank you for your kind comment and sympathetic response. I cannot deny that it would have been nice to have owned that Lynn Varley page but as Bill [Cox] said – you cannot get everything. At least it was a learning experience and I was better prepared for the subsequent years’ charity auctions; even though I was never going to challenge the big boys for the top-of-the-range pages, when 2k pages would probably be the equivalent of five-figure sums today, I was in with a better chance of a shout in the low to mid-range pieces. I don’t think the auctioneer really had it in for me as I had not crossed paths with him that one day I attended the con that year. I think he might have thought what he considered as just a “colour guide” – it is not, but a piece of original colour art in its own right – had hit its ceiling and he was only halfway through the auction and did not want to spend too much time on a lower-value piece. It’s hard to wallow in self pity when I can say that at the first comic convention I went to I got to not only see and hear but also meet Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Barry Windsor-Smith as well as with a small group of other fans get to have a long chat with David Lloyd about V for Vendetta. Anything on top of that would have been just a bonus.

These pictures are great!  It's like catching a rock star in their most candid moments at their peak!  Stupid auctioneer. If you only pointed the camera at their direction too.   

Thank you for your kind words on my guerrilla-style photos. It was definitely Frank and Lynn’s summer that year – they were the Timothée and Kylie of their time. I do not seem to have needed to photo the auctioneer as he still has a comics-related online presence although I have not visited his website out of principle (I don’t think he is losing any sleep over that), not even if he was giving away free OA. That is the way the Ma family roll.

Wish I could remember is this was one of the several UKCACs I managed to attend, Simon - possibly one of the occasions you and I passed like ships in the night. I look at guest lists to help, but each time some of the official guests didn't show and others turned up unannounced. Horrific auction story. Had bidding gone on for so long that the auctionneer wanted to move on and get back to the bar? Was the bidding becoming so red hot that it was becoming another fire risk? Whatever the reason, I feel your sense of injustice. (It reminds me that I must put up a page by Garry Leach that I did win at auction, at another convention, and where Dez Skinn was the auctionneer.)

Put up the Leach page, you tease.

I recall that judging by the descriptions for some of your uploads you were already a seasoned con-goer by 1986 but that year is memorable for being the year that The King was supposed to attend and his contribution to the con catalogue – The Demon (viewable in the CAF gallery of * From the Land Beyond)– was still auctioned in spite of his non-appearance owing to the dangers of air travel following international unrest. The Varley page was as far as I remember half way through the auction, which was quite sparsely attended being the last event of the con when most people had already left, which is probably why they shifted the charity auction to the last event of Saturday a few or a couple of years after. I guess I will never know for sure the reason for the auctioneer cutting short the bidding so abruptly. I could get in touch with him via his website but after almost 40 years it is unlikely he will remember – “the person who throws the stone forgets, but the person whom it hits remembers”. It’s all water over the dam now, anyway. Thank you for your commiserations.

I don’t always agree with you – I am more of a dog person, for one thing – but you might be right this time. On the other hand, don’t you remember what Warhol said?  “The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.”

Cool pics and interesting story.  Really odd that an auctioneer would just say "next bid wins".  And I agree - you should have shouted one bid slightly above yours.  Do you have a ballpark idea of what it sold for?  I'm guessing a few hundred.

Well I don’t recall how much the Miller or the Kirby or the Windsor-Smith went for as they would have been so out of my league they would not have registered, but as far as the Lynn Varley page: I realise that unspoken CAF protocol means you shouldn’t really talk prices – too much and it sounds like boasting and too little and it appears as if you are gloating – but as I do not even own the page so I am not sure why I was being so coy. I bid the item up to the princely sum of £100 and the bidder after me took it by another increment so it ended up as £110. The best £110 they ever spent if they held onto it. Your Lynn Varley colour page is considerably better.

I've never heard of this "no gloat" policy! lol. But yes, that sounds about right for the time.  Thanks for the kind words. ;)

I never knew what Lynn Varley looked like and yet this is still my favourite comic book of all time. I should have done some research. 

It is generally held that Lynn Varley and a Jaime Hernandez drawing of Robin as a girl that appeared as a spot illustration in The Comics Journal in the early 1980s were the template for Carrie Kelly; Lynn Varley for the youth-oriented argot. If you did not know what Lynn Varley looked like and my upload has been useful then your one comment has made my posting worthwhile. I wanted to just spotlight her invaluable contribution to what is arguably the most influential comic of the last 40 years and also remind people of her generous contribution to the charity auction – she didn’t need to and not all creator attendees did – and the event of her birthday and the 40th anniversary of DKR seemed like the appropriate time to do this. Thank you for your comment.

The one that got away

Ain’t that the truth?

Ah, UKCAC!! That was such a great show. The '85 version was my first ever Comic Con and I was certainly there in '86 as well and the auctions, although I was on a student income then so hardly ever bought anything. In those days though, free con sketches were still a thing....
However my gradual descent into the lunacy and addictive world of comic art began in those halcyon days. 

If only I had known about the ’85 UKCAC – it sounded like a good one. The fan press was not so well-developed in those days. Amazing to see your trajectory during the course of UKCAC’s lifespan – from attending fan to volunteer steward to fully-fledged creator. Well done!

Thanks for writing all this down and sharing the pics for posterity!

No DKR-related posting would be complete without words from OA’s biggest Dark Knight Returns fan. Thank you for the comment, and thank you for all you have done and continue to do for the practice of original comic art collecting.

I loved the UKCAC shows, my first was 87. Sorry to hear about the auction shenanigans, not good at all. I attended every one of the auctions in subsequent years. But yeah, average price for a Dark Knight Lynn Varley seems to be around 8k dollars these days. 

Good times. Ahh, you can never miss what you never had, and I have a strong feeling that if I had won that page I would have had my head turned by someone offering me five times what I paid for it and I would feel even worse about it having sold it then – “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from”. Thank you for your comment.