It's nice to see that you ended up with this great Swan page. I actually won it in 1979 in a contest D.C. held in connection with the release of the first Superman movie.  The contest required you to answer about 20 trivia questions about Superman. Those entries which correctly answered all the questions were put in a drawing for a cape worn in the movie, and those who lost in that drawing were sent a page of original art.  I was glad to be one of the losers!

Sorry, but it's impossible to get a good photo with it hanging framed on the wall in a small room.  There is a good, full page image in a Cochran catalog.  I'll scan it and post it.

Wow, that was fast!  Aren't manias great?  This painting is first-rate too, but I like the Muppets just a littte more, due to the brighter colors.  But they are both wonderful.

This is just fabulous Monty.  I have loved Struzan's work since I saw an exhibition of his originals in Brea, California in 1985.  I really wanted the Road to Oz poster original, but he was asking $35,000 for it, which I just couldn't afford at the time.  But your muppet original is just as good!

No, actually,  I no longer have it listed on CAF at all.  I bought the page in early 1970 for $10 at the Dineyland Con from a dealer from Nebraska.  I sold it in the 1990s, and I have not identified it as mine since that time. This is not a part of my CAF gallery but that of COMICART B, the present owner of the page.  Even if I hadn'i known for decades that Wood penciled and inked Captain Action No. 1, which I personally bought new off the rack at the Thrifty Drug Store on Magnolia in Buena Park, CA on the evening that Nixon beat Humphrey in Nov. 1968 (I heard the results on the car radio after I had finished buying comics at the store), I have certainly been able to distinguish between Kane's pencils inked by Wood from Wood inked by Wood for more than 50 years.  But I don't object to your calling me "friend," even though I've never even heard of you before today.

I know what you mean.  I used to own this very page, and I regret that I sold it due to Starlin's use of a marker instead of ink.  It doesn't look as though it has faded any more since I had it.

You are correct.  I owned this page for many years, and I always listed it on CAF as being 100% Wood's work.

That's sad. I've never even seen one in person.  But for second hand toys, there probably is no better home.

That would be nice, but since I have never been able to match any of my Gasoline Alley Sunday proofs with an original Sunday page, I'm not going to hold my breath.  But at least I came close with the 25 Dec 1921 GA Sunday original, but for some reason the proof I have for that page is in black and white -- it's the only proof I have for a page that appeared in the papers in color for which Russ Cochran only had a B&W proof.  Go figure!

I know exactly what you mean.  When some money that I was expecting didn't come through in time and it was the last day to pay taxes, I went over to the same dealer who bid me up on the background to sell a few pieces of animation art to him, including some pieces he had originally sold to me.  He offered me a fraction of what I had paid him.  Live and learn.  As I recall, that was the last day I had anything to do with that "friend," and that was almost 30 years ago.  Thanks for your kind words; I'm glad that at least some people on CAF look at and appreciate animation art.

What you say is generally true, but when you are dealing with someone with whom you have spoken almost daily for a decade and with whom you have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, you really wouldn't expect to betray your trust.  I have a few other friends who are dealers who I would trust with my life, but the dealer who bid me up on this piece is obviously no longer among that small group.

I don't understand why it isn't working for you.  When I click on it, I get a very large image which almost fills my computer screen. I'm sorry, I just don't know enough about computers to offer any answers as to what you might be able to do to make the larger image work .

No.

Try clicking on the additional image that is labeled "Larger Image."

Hi Ruben,

Thanks for the comment.  Fortunately, the watercolor market largely collapsed several years ago -- I have been able to buy everything I've wanted at auction, without the need to raise large sums of money by selling other art.  I did, in fact, remove the Superboy cover from my Grummett gallery when I sold it many years ago.  Note that it is now shown in the gallery "sold art."

Hi Glen,

I suspect that you saw Burt Blum, who had been in charge of the comic book section of Cherokee, not Leonard Brown.  Burt worked at or (most likely) owned Santa Monica Trading Company on Main Street in Santa Monica, near Venice.  Leonard retired in the early 2000s, and he wasn't the type who could work for someone else.  I would have heard from Howard Lowery if Leonard was working somewhere after he retired.  I also ran into Leonard twice after he retired, once in the parking lot of the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Torrance and another time in a parking lot in south Orange County -- neither location is very near to Venice. I did see Burt at the Santa Monica store at about the time you mention.

This has always been one of my favorites of the many Horvath drawings that were turned up by Bruce Hamilton in the 1970s.  It's a shame that more people haven't commented on the great works by this artist in your collection.

It is unbelievable that there has been only one comment on this fabulous piece.  It is clearly one of the best, if not the very best, works by Nielsen, and Nielsen was one of the best story/inspirational artists who ever worked at Disney's studio.  Well, I think that this is clearly one of the finest pieces of ALL art on CAF.

I hope I got more than the $70 I paid for it!  I don't know what I was after at the time which motivated me to part with it, but I still think it's a really nice page.  I'm glad it went to someone who also appreciates it.

Hi Johnny,

You probably know this by now, but the strip is for the Gasoline Alley of Novemer 18th, 1919.  It is one of only two Gasoline Alley originals that I know of from 1919.

This is one of the best works by Sterrett I've ever seen.  I love the spontaneity of the lines, which so effectively define the figures.

Yes, Feininger was born in America and created two early comic strip series before he went to Germany and gained great fame as a German Expressionist.

Yes, and King's technique with scratchboard was very similar to what 19th century British watercolor painters did through scrapping away painted areas of their paintings to reveal the underlying white or tan paper.  A great example from 1832 can be seen in my watercolor entitled Too Hot! by William Henry Hunt, which is posted in my file of Hunt's work. The dog in that painting was largely created through scrapping, and this radical use of the technique was fairly renowned nearly 200 years ago. Thanks for  your nice comment.

Hi Monty,

I sold it at least a decade ago to the Disney Studio archves.  The paper was pretty badly discolored and it wasn't as well drawn as the publicity art from 1934 to 1941 or so..  This is in my sold art folder, just to record that I once owned it.

This drawing, like almost all Disney publicity drawings, is on small field animation paper, which measures 12.5 X 9 inches.

Simple question...but no simple answer.  Collectors Book Store in Hollywood, CA commissioned Fred Ray to recreate his covers as paintings to be sold in their monthly auctions.  The paintings were created from 1977 to 1984.  Mine is undated, and it is the only one for which the date of creation was not identified in the auction catalog through which it was sold.  All the paintings which were sold in the earlier, regular auctions [beginning Nov. 1978, after three preliminary, small auctions had been successful in 1977], were created in 1978, as was the one sold in August 1979, immediately after the auction in July 1979 from which I bought the Superman No, 17.  Therefore, I think that it is safe to assume that this recreation was one of Ray's paintings done in 1978, even though I actually bought it when it came around to be offered for sale in 1979.  I'm sure this is TMI for most people -- but that's my best shot since my best friend of 50 years, who wrote the one catalog entry I've needed to consult over the past 40 years, forgot, just once, to include the one bit of information which I needed to simply and confidently answer: 1978.