Further adventures in comic art
Part Two - the whys of it all
See here for Part One
Why should anybody collect anything? That question ran through my head more than once last month as I filled box after box with books before departing New York for the warmer, damper pastures of Washington, D.C. It was blessedly easier to move my small comic art collection: throw the Itoya into the car, and we’re off to the races (or at least off of the island of Manhattan).
Why am I doing this? I asked myself as I placed bids on pages on Heritage’s website. If I was going to buy art, I ought to figure out why one piece was worth having, and another wasn’t. The most common advice I’ve seen for new collectors is “buy what you like.” So what do I like? Just like Potter Stewart, best I can do is know it when I see it.
The first pages I bought were from a nineties issue of The Flash. Why The Flash? I enjoyed the character growing up, plus there’s the running thing - he likes to run, I like to run - a match made in heaven! I’m embarrassed to say that at that point of my art collecting career, I hadn’t yet started reading the book before I buy the art. It’s not a showstopper if the issue is a clunker (and this Flash issue is nigh unreadable), I just like to know, and give the published work a once-over to make sure that the art on offer is the real McCoy.1 Lousy writing and uninspired story aside, as far as I know, I own the only piece of original Flash art to feature not one, not two, but three panels of The Flash making a sandwich. I love it anyway, for the sandwich panels and the bottom right panel on page 14 of the Flash making tracks out of his house.
But what are other people looking for in a page? As I sniffed around original comic art world, I also paid attention to other collecting hobbies: fine art, movie posters, toys, movie props, sports cards. I started to think about why people collect, and how these mini-societies decide among themselves on the traits or items that have value.
The Nostalgia
A lot of collectors target the things they grew up watching, reading, etc. One of my favorite art-collecting experiences so far: David Petersen, creator of the comic series Mouse Guard, did a quick little sketch of a mouse for me in my sketchbook at a New York Comic Con. Mouse Guard is a lot like the Redwall books - talking animals armed with medieval weapons - and I read it growing up. Reading Mouse Guard today, and having a rendering of a Petersen mouse is awesome. Looking at it reminds me of sitting in the car on the drive home from the comic book store, thumbing through the latest Mouse Guard book fresh from the shelves, getting lost in the adventures of tiny mice wielding medieval weapons against the depredations of a sinister owl.
Other collectors think the same way; it’s just a difference in price levels. Comic art guys who pay through the nose for covers want to own the Dark Knight cover that compelled them to pick up the book thirty or forty years ago. Toy collectors want to buy the toys they had (or couldn’t afford) in childhood.
The History
Closely related to nostalgia is the historical significance of some of these pages. Not only can you own the page from your childhood, but if you spend enough, you can own a page with real historical significance for the medium! I recently spent several hours listening to comic art and movie prop collector David Mandel wax rhapsodic about the screen-used X-Wing model that he won at auction in fall 2023. For Mandel, it seems like it’s part nostalgia, and part historical significance of the model. He grew up watching the movies, and that matters, but to him, the X-Wing is also an artifact of the advances in filmmaking technique that the original Star Wars represents.
The Flex and the Competition
But let’s be honest: there’s something awesome about being able to tell people that you’ve got an original spaceship from the first Star Wars movie sitting in your office. Flexing is endemic in all of these hobbies, from the comic art guys who are buying full books’ worth of art to the hedge funders who are buying whatever Jeff Koons decides to have his assistants make. It’s a tale as old as time: somebody wants to have something that nobody else does.
I’m not saying that I’m immune to the competitive jolt that collecting offers. Anybody who’s ever taken it down to the wire on an eBay auction can appreciate that nothing and nobody summons bile and vitriol quite like the bastard who just outbid you. Trick is to remember that there’s always going to be more art. I try not to get caught up in the hype.
The Hype
Plenty of others do though! How does a collector decide what to collect? It’s easy to wonder why some artists’ work sells as high as it does, and whether it has more to do with flocking behavior than with actual quality. Of course, quality of comic book art is entirely subjective, so it can be very difficult for my untrained eye to recognize where an artist is doing something revolutionary. It’s like Andy Bernard-level art criticism: “this comic art is bad.” So I put my faith in my gut: I pay attention when work grabs me, and I admire the stuff that doesn’t from afar.
History is also related to hype. In many cases, the artists who attract flocks of bidders are the ones who changed the medium. Here my youth puts me at a disadvantage because I don’t know what comics were like before Jack Kirby hit the scene, or before Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns hit the newsstands.2 To some extent, it’s moot because I can’t afford Kirby or Miller pages anyway. But because this stuff is available on the market, I can still admire it, learn how other collectors think about which artists are important, and discover how these cats changed the medium.
The Thrill
Finally: the thrill of the chase. It’s fun! Tracking the auctions, stalking artists and their representatives, setting a timer for the big art drops; it’s a whole hobby, and the art markets reward those who invest the time to stay on top of the news. All these collecting hobbies attract obsessives but some love the chase a little too much. Dedicated comic book collectors will drive themselves insane submitting multiple copies of the same book to a grading service seeking a 9.8 grade, holding out hope for the ever-elusive 9.9 or even a 10. Icarus didn’t even have the nerve to hold out for a 10. I’ll have more to say about some of this pernicious stuff, from hucksters shilling fake Star Wars props to the Certified Collectibles Group’s scrambling to cram everything they can find into transparent plastic, in a subsequent missive.
So there you have it: all the great reasons why people collect. Love of the characters, to honor the stuff we loved as kids, excitement about the historical significance of a piece to the medium, to flex on randos, love of the game, or just because that’s what everybody else is buying, and they seem happy, so why not?
Bonus: a play in two acts
*click*
It would be tricky to forge published comic art, and, candidly, I doubt the payoff would be worth the effort at the level I’m playing at.
Kind of like how it’s tough to fully appreciate the Beatles or Elvis when you’ve grown up in a music world where their influence is so pervasive.