58 Results ( 1 through 50 shown)
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 .
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.
...opposite results. And it seems that when black ink is laid over the surface of scratchboard it causes the board to warp slightly as the ink dries, as well as leaving all remaining black areas rather shiny. So what you have described is not damage at all, just the different appearance resulting from King's use of a different support than what you are used to from your other Gasoline Alley strips.
Hi Richard, I was thinking that you had commented about something in connection with my Gasoline Alley strip from the day before this one of your own, but since that wasn't correct, I might as well comment myself and hopefully help you with your second condition concern. Of course, you may very well know this, but I guess it doesn't hurt even if you do. The strips from much of 1939 are on scratchboard, which is heavier than the illustration paper used by King in earlier and later years. King would cover most of the surface with heavy black ink, leaving only those large areas which he wished to remain white uninked, and then would scratch away details of white in the blackened areas, working in reverse from black to white highlights or even fairly large ares of white -- a technique similar to that used by engravers in creating prints but with Cont.
Hi Timothy, And a large part of the appeal this page held for me was the resemblance of those head shots to the ones shown on the cover of Action Comics No. 317 (the story of "Superman's Rainbow Face!", October 1964), which was another one of the earliest comics I bought after I actually began to collect, as opposed to accumulate comics now and then -- the third issue of Action Comics I ever collected, to be precise. BTW, thank you for all the nice comments over the years. I've been meaning to say that for ages, or at least way too many years.
Lovely, and I was just sure that even half hadn't gone through. Whatever... drawings out of scenes and sell them. But Disney put together a panel to decide which could be sold, and they limited sales to only in-betweens, with not a single one of the usually more finished extreme drawings ever being released, officially. That's why you could chose from a lot of nice in-betweens in San Diego on the one occasion (probably the summer of 1984) when Russ and Bruce bothered dealing with Disney over the drawings. Little did anyone at Disney know that other licensees were taking out great extremes, probably many from the very scenes Russ and Bruce had pulled out, only to be denied permission to sell.
Hi Richard, If you haven't already found an answer to your question, it's not a rough but an in-between animation drawing, and the cel would have been traced directly from the drawing. Cochran and Hamilton, who had connections with Disney by virtue of their license for making prints after Carl Barks' paintings, approached Disney about selling some of the many, many animation drawings which the studio had always retained -Disney didn't care about cels, which were largely tossed out, since they figured they could make new cels whenever they wanted if they kept the drawings. Russ and Bruce thought that they could just pull great Good Grief, to be continued.
Hi Richard, If you haven't already found an answer to your question, it's not a rough but an in-between animation drawing, and the cel would have been traced directly from the drawing. Cochran and Hamilton, who had connections with Disney by virtue of their license for making prints after Carl Barks' paintings, approached Disney about selling some of the many, many animation drawings which the studio had always retained -Disney didn't care about cels, which were largely tossed out, since they figured they could make new cels whenever they wanted if they kept the Good Grief, to be continued
I'll join in the chorus. This is my favorite type of page of all comic book art -- I'm as envious as Scott Dunbier and it brings out the same sort of memories and very deep feelings in me as it does in you and Richard Martines. As Scott might recall, I told him on the very day we met that I would pay ANYTHING for a Legion page from the first run in Adventure Comics, to which he responded in a quiet voice, as he moved closer so that I could hear: "Don't tell any other dealer that; they'll take advantage of you." Not that I wasn't already aware of what Scott was kindly telling me, but I really didn't care, especially if being gouged would have allowed a page such as this one to come home with me. I still don't have a page from that first Adventure run, so, hint, hint, if you for some reason ever want to part with it, try gouging me first! Thanks for sharing and for showing that such pages actually do exist, even after I had pretty much concluded that all were destroyed long ago.
I can remember as if it were yesterday every detail surrounding my buying this comic book -- where I found it, how happy I was walking to the car afterwards, and reading it in the back seat of my parents' car during the hour long trip my family made immediately after the purchase. And even though I was only 9 years old and had only begun to collect comics a few months earlier, I doubt that I will ever forget the very panels of this story which appealed to me the most back then, including the fourth one on this great page, with Jor-El, Lara, and baby Kal-El. Thank you for bringing my memories back to life, even if you posted this some time ago. CAF pieces have legs, I guess, at least some do when I finally come across them.
Not only is it historic, but the action is much greater than that seen in most other Krazy Kats and the final few panels have the most touching sentiments, gentlest interactions, and sweetest images I have ever seen of Ignatz and Krazy. It would have been nice if Herriman had slowed down the pace and toned down the violence at least once in a while after he revealed what he was capable of doing so early on in the history of the Sunday pages. It truly is great in many ways. And I am truly remiss in not commenting earlier.
The scene appears in the cartoon as well, but this particular art was only used for the book based on the cartoon. The actual images seen on film were made from animaton drawings, which were usually less detailed, were always the work of a different group of artists, and were often actually drawn after the publicity and book art had already been completed.
I've always thought that this was one of the very finest illustrations by my favorite comic artist -- can't believe that no one else has commented on this before.
Really wonderful use of patterns. Certainly one of the best images of Triton I've ever seen.
How do you think I feel about my trading this cover to you, Albert? But at least I still think I got the better of that trade, since I received only 5 or 6 comments on this same piece during the 3 or 4 years I had it posted on CAF -- go figure!
What a great piece! I remember this image so well from the insides of the front covers of those comics I bought so long ago. Thanks for reviving such memories for those of us who were alive back then and for letting those who were born later know just what they missed in the way of great D.C. art.
Thanks for the interesting observations, Jeff. King seems to have given yet another clue which would indicate that Skeezix had moved farther along and was outside yet another room by the third panel -- there is a picture hanging on the wall to the left of the door in the second panel yet none is in that position in the third panel, where the rug appears. I'm sure King would be gratified that viewers still appreciate his attention to little details such as these 90 years after he bothered to include them in works intended to be seen on a single day.
One of the very best of the earliest Skeezix strips. Congratulations, all of your 1921 Gasoline Alleys are first rate.
VERY nice; truly exceptional and rare. Congratulations on owning such a treasure.
Disney art doesn't get much rarer or better than this. Tom Wood is still one of the most under appreciated of the early artists working for Disney despite his being one of the very best draftsmen to ever work at the studio. He may not have been an animator, but there were good reasons why Walt choose him to be the artist to introduce/publicize the studio's creations to the entire world, usually in advance of the release of related Disney short cartoons to theaters. Whoever began the notion that Disney publicity art is somehow inferior to Disney production/animation art simply had no clue what they were talking about, and it's a shame that that attitude has persisted to this day. If more people could see incredible examples of publicity art such as this, a much-overdue reappraisal might, and should, actually occur. Thanks for posting this fabulous piece.
An amazing display of talent and skill in using perspective - sort of a modern equivalent of Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi, but with a lot more figures. VERY impressive in every way.
cont. the two Top Cat set ups, and I bought both from him. The day that Harry got the first, big group of the cels and backgrounds (a very hot day in about 1983), I was at his place into the wee hours of the morning sorting and dividing the set ups between he two of us. At least initially, Harry and I had them all, although I have no doubt that Russ Wolkoff soon got some of the cels. I later bought the Jetsons set up kept by the animator and all of the very close to still intact sets of drawings for all the series' openings. Harry did not get any of the drawings until many years later. To the best of my knowledge, only two people ever saw all the art before it was dispersed, myself and the animator.
Thank you, but the history of this particular piece is a little different than what you state. A Hannah Barbera animator was the first person to have all of the cels, backgrounds, and drawings for the title sequences of The Jetsons, Top Cat, Lippy the Lion, Wally Gator, and Touche Turtle. He sold Harry Kleiman all the cels and backgrounds as a group except for a handful which the animator had already framed, including this one, another Top Cat with the Limo, and the final set up from the opening sequence of the Jetsons. Harry eventually got the
One of the nicest Gasoline Alley dailies of the period. All of your King strips are first rate. You bought quietly and well. I'm very impressed. Congratulations.
