Q&A with Ted Latner

Which piece in your gallery is your favorite and why?

My favorite artists are Dave Cockrum, Steve Ditko and Gil Kane. My favorite piece on comicartfans is the cover to Inhumans #8 by Gil Kane. It's an iconic image that made a huge impression on me as a kid. I was really fortunate to be able to buy it in the early 2000's before prices skyrocketed.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a Technology Project Manager from Queens, New York, living on Long Island with my wife and two kids. I started collecting comic books at a young age, but didn't discover original art until I was in my mid 20's.

How long have you been collecting comic art and what prompted you to start?

I bought my first piece of comic art in 1995 from an ad in the back of Comics Buyers' Guide. I had been looking at those ads for a few years and thinking about it, but $200 seemed like a ton of money at the time. Little did I realize how much I would be spending just a few years later. My collecting really took off when the original art market hit the Internet in 1997 and 1998.

How do you display/store your collection at home?

Mainly in portfolios, but I do have a few framed pieces.

What are your top five most wanted original pages or commissions?

I've been fortunate to have met a lot of my collecting goals, but I'm always interested in the following: Dave Cockrum art from the 70's and 80's particularly: - Detailed 70's Marvel cover prelims (some of these almost look good enough to publish as is). - Dave Cockrum covers/splashes/pinups featuring the Sh'iar Imperial Guard or Starjammers. - Dave Cockrum Gulliver Jones pages from Monsters Unleashed #4. Hulk art especially: - Nice pages from the Peter David era particularly by Gary Frank (ideally inked by Mark Farmer or Cam Smith), Jeff Purves, and others - Nice Hulk pages featuring Hulk vs. Doc Samson - Incredible Hulk Covers under 10K (not a ton of those out there) Steve Lightle covers/splashes/pinups/nice pages from the 80's to 90's -- particularly anything from Marvel. Bill Everett 1970's Sub-Mariner page (pencils and inks) Gulliver Jones - nice pages by Gray Morrow, Gil Kane and other artists