Original Comic Art collecting

[bakertoons]

Curious if anyone collects original art from cartoonists?

I like getting original art, and I've built a sizable collection over the years. I have scans of them on ComicArtFans here.

[grubcubman]

This is a stellar collection! Thanks for sharing.

I have a few pages, but I hadn't heard of this site -- maybe I'll get around to uploading them.

[bakertoons]

Dec 22, 2022 20:00:34 GMT grubcubman said:

This is a stellar collection! Thanks for sharing.

I have a few pages, but I hadn't heard of this site -- maybe I'll get around to uploading them.

It's a good site! I like looking through it.

This is my most recent addition, "Wright Angles" by Larry Wright from 1977. Art measures approx. 4x13".

[bakertoons]

Made one more purchase before the year ends.

Some of you might remember Pat Brady's long-running "Rose is Rose" comic strip. Well, he had another strip before that called "Graves Inc.", about a corporate executive. Lasted 3 years in syndication.

[bakertoons]

Bought a bunch more originals as a late Christmas gift to myself.

"Thatch" was originally a college strip, published in the Brown University's student-run newspaper from 1988-1991 (it also ran in 200 other student-run newspapers, courtesy of USA Today's college syndication service they had at the time). It was revived in 1994-1998 when Creators Syndicate distributed it to mainstream papers.

The strip had a heavy "Doonesbury" influence, possibly more so than "Bloom County". The strip ended when creator Jeff Shesol got hired to become Bill Clinton's speechwriter during his second term.

[teemcgee]

Interesting collecting niche there bakertoons !

I've picked up a few originals over the years - a Simon Hanslemann, Ron Rege, Josh Simmons, a few Dylan Horrocks - but I don't have any pictures (all tucked away in storage with most of my stuff), perhaps it's all a little redundant to tease names with nothing to show...

On this topic, let me share a (hastily translated) comment from L.L. de Mars for you consideration recently posted here (he's a French artist of experimental stripe, the discussion is concerning donating his originals to a comics museum). The invective made me laugh:

"Once printed and published, original comics pages, no matter whose they are, be it L.L. de Mars, or Herge, or John Doe, cease to have any value; utilised, fufilling their editorial destiny, they are destined to join the infinite series of artefacts and discardable objects, like pearl buttons, flowerpots, and stamps. At that level, they may have benefit for eventual researchers studying a particular moment in time.

On a personal level, getting rid of them has taken a psychological load off my shoulders.

And if ever the crazy idea was to have come, in a future which every day promises to be more absurd than the preceeding one, of giving some kind of financial value to this rubbish, well at least I will have managed not to participate in this pitiful fetishism concerning original comic art.

I will note to those who have pushed me on this for several years (the less my books sell, the more people want to buy my originals, work that one out...) that the answer has always been no, I will not sell my originals, any more than a sculpter sells their stones.

I make books, not posters to put on your walls, you perpetual adolescent (if you're stuck somewhere in your own past, you ought to stick paintings up on the walls, not comics pages)."

[bakertoons]

Heh! Yeah, comic is meant to be reproduced, so original art technically ceases function after it's printed, although sometimes having them around is useful when you decide to reprint the comic years later (especially useful since comic strips were often poorly printed in cheap newsprint, so getting the original art out is sometimes done to get the best possible reproduction).

This can be trouble if cheap ink is used. You may have noticed that some of the originals I shared here has ink starting to fade.

[awfulquiet]

I picked up this Gilchrist-era coffee-stained Nancy recently. Nice to have and one of my favorites from that era.




pic upload

[bakertoons]

Ooo, that's a very Bushmiller-esque gag, too! Neat.

Got a bunch of originals this week:







A set of originals by George Fett. The first four are from his daily strip "Little No-No and Sniffy" from 1971 and 1972, although I don't know what the last one is. I can't find any information on Fett's other cartooning work, and there are no dates or copyright sticker (which could have fallen out due to age, something that happened in some of my older originals). It may have been a test strip he tried to sell.


"Duffy" by Bruce Hammond. I love the brushwork in this. This is one of the smaller originals I own, about 3.75x11" big


I've been a "Stone Soup" fan for years, so I'm glad I got an original from it. What's interesting is that this is drawn on glossy paper. I almost thought it was a print, but I looked closely and sure enough she used glossy paper to draw her strip! I love the different kinds of papers cartoonists use.

[bakertoons]

I've been wanting to purchase a "Tumbleweeds" original for a while, and I finally found somebody selling them at a (semi) affordable price. Nabbed this one.

[GHO]

Jordan Crane is selling art for relatively cheap compared to similar cartoonists from his era and now. 200-350 isn't horrible lol.

[awfulquiet]

Jan 11, 2023 0:07:34 GMT GHO said:

Jordan Crane is selling art for relatively cheap compared to similar cartoonists from his era and now. 200-350 isn't horrible lol.

Oh wow, yeah, that's pretty cool. Taking a look now.

If anyone else is interested: shop.crane.ink/collections/original-pages

[bakertoons]

Got a couple in the mail today!

"Spot the Frog" by Mark Heath was a charming strip from the 2000s that deserved more love. Was happy to find an original for sale, so I snatched it up.

As it ran in papers:

"Winston" by Johnny Sajem and Jim Burnett was a short-lived strip from the 1980s about a dog who thought of himself as Winston Churchill. It had a strong "Garfield" influence, which was taking off during this time.

[awfulquiet]

My latest pieces.. From Bridget Trout, aka Ruffles McDoop on Instagram. She has an exclusive zine in the latest Desert Island mystery mail.

[BubblesZine]

Those are rad!