January 31 2008

January 27 2008
eBay item no. 200194532797
Seller: junkjunkie!
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $36

January 30 2008

January 27 2008
eBay item no. 190193030412
Seller:junkjunkie!
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: 160.26

Cool moon.

January 29 2008

OK, this wraps up the Heritage Auction flashbacks - posting a bunch of pages and prices that I dug out from the HA site from before I started this blog. This last one is a rilly-nice sketch that I do not recall seeing previously.

April 1, 2004
Selling Price: $184

January 28 2008

Heritage Auction flashback
Cerebus #153 p 13
October 1, 2004
Selling Price: $920

January 27 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #53 p 20
April 1, 2004
Selling Price: $805
Buyer: alchemist57

Only a few more of the old Heritage Auctions remain.

January 26 2008

January 23 2008
eBay item no. 160199887449
Cerebus #6 Inside Back Cover
Seller: tomjk
Buyer: none
Starting Bid: $$2,899.99

This one is going to sell one day. It's a great image with a cool inscription.

Hell, I might even buy it.

But when it sells, it will be for a little less than half of this price (whomever get it).

January 25 2008

Thanks to the eagle-eyed S.R., an early alert about the great M.E. sell-off, coming soon to a Heritage Auction near you.

http://quickurl.co.uk/?r=153

January 24 2008 Two Pages and a Cover

It was pretty clear from the get-go that these two "Buy It Now" auctions were going nowhere fast.

Two people contacted me to ask about my opinion of the values, and in my favorite Greenspanian voice, I said I thought that $2500 was a great price for this set of 3, and $3000 was a reasonable price ($750 each for the pages, $1500 for the cover). I would probably go up a little in a bidding fever, and if they had any personal significance to me I would go to $4000, but they would have to be really special to me because the content was not intrinsically compelling.



eBay item no. 300191346826
Cerebus #68 Cover
Seller: grbottleguy
Buyer: none
Buy It Now Price: $3200




















eBay item no. 300191349118
Cerebus #71 pp 16-17
Seller: grbottleguy
Buyer: none
Buy It Now Price: $2100

January 23 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #35 Cover
February 9, 2005
Selling Price: $3220

A small bit of news: Jeff contacted me yesterday - Dave would like to post Ger's "The World Without Cerebus" commissions at the www.cerebusart.com site. I tend to believe the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" maxim, so I said it was OK by me... however, I think Ger has a say, too, so he needed to weigh in, also.

January 22 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #29 p 20
February 9, 2005
Selling Price: $1035
Buyer: alchemist57

I was quite motivated to see this page become available because it paired up with my favorite page of all time... the first one I ever bought... page 19 from this issue. As as regular readers and hangers-on know, this is one of the two pages that I asked Dave and Ger to re-create. And the fact that Dave re-thought the whole thing was an unexpectedly great bonus.

What fun to see it nestled in the Heritage Auction site.

January 21 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #28 p 19
August 12, 2005
Selling Price: $299

January 20 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #28 p 14
May 1, 2005
Selling Price: $517

January 19 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #23 p 18
February 6, 2004
Selling Price: $690

January 18 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #16 p 6
October 1, 2004
Selling Price: $747

January 17 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #16 p 2
October 1, 2004
Selling Price: $1610

Definitely worth the price, I think.

January 12 2008

Mine... all mine...

Food One; mixed media on board, 17x21 inches - all Spidey stuff: split-Ditko face, camera, webs, and swiggles on the matte

______________________________________

Jesse Reklaw; mixed media on panel, 9x13 inches - I could deconstruct this one for an hour, I think - a ton of great choices, icon and iconic

_____________________________________________

Johnny Yanok; acrylic on wood, 18x14 - too delightfully funny and well-composed to pass up

________________________________

Patrick Gannon; paper on wood - 6x8 inches - I liked the power

____________________________

KMNDZ; acrylic on wood, 20x50 inches, gallery designated "best of show"

_____________________________________________

And the one that got away:

Max Grundy; acrylic on aluminum, 31x42.5 inches 

If you have to lose out on a piece of art, it's great to lose out to someone where you go "awww... that's cool."  The person who bought this was the writer of "Cloverfield."

Awww... that's cool.

But I am expecting to commission something from him (and the person who did that X-Men poster).  And except for the (extremely awesome) "Iron Man" one, which is 50 inches tall, these were all priced at less (to significantly less) than the "World Without Cerebus" commissions, so it was hard to resist the ones I liked. 

__________________________________________

There were a couple of "Honorable Mentions" that were too expense for my taste.

Yoskay Yamamoto; ink and paint on board, 30x23 inches; I loved the sneer, and the stylized Thor imagery

_______________________________________________________

Aaron McKinney; acrylic and ink on board, 12.5x16.12 inches - this one was not too expensive; in the end, I just didn't like it as much as I thought I did

_____________________________________________________

Chris Reccardi; acrylic and glitter on wood, 18x14 inches; appealing and styling... perhaps if it was Dark Phoenix instead

_______________________________________________

January 11 2008

Gallery 1988 (in LA) is featuring a tribute to Stan Lee.

Gallery 1988

Best of all, the art can be viewed from there, and there is some cool stuff.

OK, even better... it is a gallery, and some of my favorite words were there: "Please inquire about availability and price."

There are now fewer pieces available than there were yesterday. Heh.

And here is the (kick-ass) poster being used to advertise the event. Ummm... wow.

January 10 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #15 p 13
May 17, 2005
Selling Price: $517

You might be wondering how many of these I found at the Heritage site? I have 10 more to go; hope you are not minding the daily reporting of what amounts to old news. I was rather surprised to see how many of these I had either missed or ignored or whatever.

This is a pretty awesome page and suggested another-but-different underground area that I would like to see Gerhard tackle.

January 9 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #7 p 16
May 17, 2005
Selling Price: $920

January 8 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #2 p 14
May 17, 2005
Selling Price: $747

I have to admit, this is a terrific page from issue #2.

January 7 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #2 p 9
May 17, 2005
Selling Price: $517

January 6 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #1 p 20
March 7, 2003
Selling Price: $1500

This is it for the pages from issue #1. Certainly, the record (and I do not expect it to be broken) is the $11.5K paid for page 1 of issue 1, about 4-5 years ago.

January 6 2008

January 6 2008
eBay item number 260198471665
Seller: angelina-steven
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $317

This prelim cover is just too cool for school.

January 5 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #1 p 15
November 20, 2003
Selling Price: $2357

In case you want this page (really badly) and have $7499.99 burning a hole in your pocket, you can cruise on over to eBay 270138965933 and satisfy that desire.

January 4 2008

You know I love eBay and everything it stands for, but about once a year I have to rant about setting up the drop-dead system of ending auctions and the unintended consequence of sniping. I won't reiterate why the typical sniper can take advantage of the law-abiding, good-will bidding behavior of others, but I will repeat the obvious solution that would, in my ever so humble opinion, actually improve eBay, and could be implemented (cuz it is just programming).

If a bid is made within the last 120 seconds (or 60 seconds, take your pick) of an auction, the auction is automatically extended by 5 minutes. And if a bid is made in the last 120 (or 60 seconds, take your pick) of that extension, the auction is automatically extended by 5 minutes. And so on.

Let that roll around in your noggin for a few moments and you'll see the insanely simple genius of it.

Two things happen:

(1) sniping ends, almost overnight

(2) the average price for a high demand item goes up because an actual auction bidding war takes place; and for all other auctions, there is no change

If anyone out there can show just cause why this should not be done, or where I am missing something, please speak up.

In fact... it could be added as a discretionary feature for the person to decide when they set up the auction, which pretty much takes care of the debate by letting the People decide.

And if you are a graphic artist... why not think about what a nifty logo might be for a "no snipers" or "add 5" campaign with which we can virally infect the internet.

January 3 2008 Cerebus #166 Cover

Thanks to my friend in Montreal for flagging this one for me:

January 1 2008
eBay item number 320202650420
Seller: kingthebiz
Buyer: apple2012
Price: $5000 (best offer)

Previously - purchased directly from Ger for $6000

January 2 2008

Let me interrupt these old auctions for a little (nearly relevant) commentary.

Many have said, and I agree, that viewing a continuing television series in its collected DVD set is just like reading a Cerebus “phone book” that collects the individual stories into one package.

I watch DVDs this way when I exercise at home, and I just now finished up The Sopranos.















I’ll have my say about the ending of that series in a moment, but first, I want to say why I liked the end of “Cerebus.” First, we knew it was coming, and it had been broadcast long ago. That was okay. What I really liked, though, was how “Cerebus” the character and “Cerebus” the series, the Dave Sim creations, both somehow converged in this ending. In both of my last statements, was I talking about the character… or the series? The answer is a simple “yes.”

I think we know that Cerebus (the character AND the series) was 300 (or is that “were 300”) at the end, and that the phrase “the end of Cerebus” carried simultaneous readings. Focus on one, you lose the other, like particles and waves… foreground and background… it’s hard to see both at the same time, yet when you look for them individually, they are there.

During those times when Dave forced us to be self-aware as readers of the work as a simple work, created by him, controlled by him, these are the times when it was (perhaps) most discomforting to be a reader, when we had to face our role as participants in the play. It’s that old tree-falls-in-the-woods scenario. If a creator creates, and no one is reading or looking, has the creative act been completed? Are we interacting with the Estarcion in our minds, or the Dave in our world. As audience, we revel in the suspension of disbelief as we live for a little while in the world we imagine, individually and collectively, between the pages… on the screen, and so on, based on what the creator serves up. For the most part, we do not want the creator interrupting us.

Cerebus 300, page 20… the biggest player on the stage is us, because for us, and only for us, at that moment, the series ends. And, as Dave would remind us (ad naseum): it is, in fact, the only important ending, because it is the only one that is real.

And that is my take on The Sopranos finale. Artistically, there are all sorts of wonderful homage and allusion moments throughout the final show, and I think it is intentional. And I also believe David Chase when he says that everything that you need is there, and that the words spoken and repeated (“you don't hear it coming and when you die I suppose it just goes black”) have some meaning. It’s just that these are the words of a writer in the mouths of his characters, and what is really ending is “The Sopranos” the series, not “The Sopranos” the characters.

So by the end of the finale, we are fully members of the narrative. We are at least as nervous and suspicious of the world as the character Tony Soprano is, and, in the end, while we’re all concerned about that life that is absorbing us at that moment (disbelief fully suspended), the end (of the series) comes. You do not hear it coming; it all goes back. No pictures; no sound track; no dialog… because there is no “Tony Soprano” or dialog or sound track unless the writer decides to give it to us. The black and silent ending, to me, is that reminder of our own (whaddyacall) mortality as audience. Time is up. The series ends, because there is nothing more written. And the credits roll.

I mean, it was not THAT simple, because they also had the story of their characters to contend with (which, I take, as everything goes on… and on…). So the writers also wrote it up to exactly the moment that would maximize the ambiguity and lead to the resulting discussion. Nicely done. But in that discussion, which I have spent a few hours looking over, so much is made of interpreting the cut to black silence as part of the story of the characters (Tony dies, Tony doesn’t die, the family this, the family that…) or, even somehow, “killing” the audience.

Instead, I think it was exactly the same commentary that Dave tried to make endlessly with Cerebus about the relationship between the writer/creator and the audience.

The lesson (told by writers through the story of the Sopranos, the TV series) is about how things do and do not change, and how people learn and do not, and so on (and on and on and on...).

The series “The Sopranos,” however, simply, ends. And because the writing was so damned clever, at that moment, we (the viewers) forgot where we were (who we were) and we didn’t hear it coming.

January 1 2008

Heritage Auction
Cerebus #1 p 14
March 7, 2003
Selling Price: $1955

Happy New Year to the afficienados of the Gregorian calendar!