Last night we closed out our icecollectibles semi-annual Canadiana eBay auction, 237 lots sold, some did poorly, some did as expected and some did fantastic. Thiought there was a good amount of strong finishes, please see the bottom of post for a few reviews.
We’re right back into the swing of our normal 10 day eBay auction, as I was drumming up some new lots for a soon to come auction I spotted this Comic Album #3, from Dell, from 1958. Am I the only guy that can’t tell a Carl Barks just by looking at it? I thought this was a Barks issue and set it aside to talk about its beauty and simplicity, then I went to comics.org and saw it was drawn by Tony Strobl. No offence to Tony but his name does not sell newspapers nor does it lend well to me espousing over nice artwork. I thought of abandoning the issue because I had lost my angle but then thought that way too elitist, I like this cover, Tony drew it, good on Mr. Strobl.
Speaking of classic artists with immense talent, check out this splash page from Star Wars #42 by the great Al Williamson. I wonder if Mr. Williamson had those same thoughts as Sir Alec Guinness? Was it Bug Bunny or Yosemite Sam that said “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. That is some fine artwork.
I spotted this LEGO ad on the back cover to Star Wars #42 and it reminded me of the guy I talked to a few weeks ago about LEGO. He wanted me to find him old sealed Batman LEGOs and I had no clue as to where to start looking other than online. When i saw this ad I realized this was a generic LEGO set, the company did not have to pay any royalties to Marvel or Disney or DC to sell these old sets. I looked up and found out LEGO only started using other intellectual property for their sets in the very late 1990s, 1999 I believe. I guess what we don’t realize it that LEGO had it going on for decades before adding other properties to its line. I wonder how the old sets compare to the early Marvel and DC adaptations in the collecting community?
As I mentioned above, our semi-annual icecollectibles Canadiana eBay auction ended last night with lots of interesting results. Of the 237 lots we did not get the $9.99 opening bid on 2 items, some Hamilton Spectator Weekend mags from 1957 and a lot of 4 Chapterhouse Sketch cover Summer Specials. The big book of the night was the very tough Manhunt #12, our CGC 6.0 is the single highest graded copy and it earned $11,155, I couldn’t tell you where that book should have ended at, I thought it did well. I thought our Canadian Price Variants (CPVs) performed well as a sub genre, even the raw CPVs did well I think. We’re already squirreling away items for the next one, thanks to all for your bids.
No Thanks!
CPVs!
More Please!
Hi Walt. I love the Carl Barks story telling. But I found his covers weak, and less amusing then almost all other artists. Methinks that Dell comics editors agreed, and used other, better gag artists, for that reason. Many people agree. Many don’t. It’s strange, Carl Barks legend has faded in the last two decades. What do you think?
Adult Fans Of Lego (AFOL, pronounce awful) will pay a pretty penny for original era kits – especially boxed and with instructions. The older the rarer too. Grey was a colour that got changed at a certain point, and so did the actual brick construction too – so the pieces are not interchangeable and able to be determined to be ‘era correct’. Like any hobby that involves middle aged males there is a lot of research, information and detail to the hobby!
For Bat Man late-era stuff, eBay would be his friend, but BrickLink would be a great resource to give him Walt. Honestly, it’s not something you want to spend too long on, it’s a very deep hole to jump into!
Dave, that’s sacrilege to say such things! You are right about Barks loosing a bit of its luster but I think that is more due to the whole Disney stock of characters waning in pop culture.
Spider, that does sound like a rabbit hole, too big for me to jump into. I just told him to do research especially regarding what it will cost him but its hard when sales data isn’t prevalent. I always end it with “remember, you want this stuff, you don’t need it”.
Our good friend Robin tried to post but said he had problems logging in, I blame Scott. Here are Robin’s thoughts:
Hi Walt: I guess I must be one of those firmly in the Barks camp because I could have recognized that as a non-Barks cover from across the room or possibly across a football field. Most prominent is the flat arrangement of the cover and poor balance to it. But more telling is the lack of any type of expression or emotion or relating to each other on that cover. Actually I have a lot of respect for Tony Strabl as a competent duck artist that filled a need, but to confuse him with Barks makes me shiver. Actually the more I look at that cover the more it makes me ill (excuse the hyperbole) when compared to Barks. I think the current lull in Barks fandom is the result of the younger fans having had no exposure to Barks (and an awful lot of other good non-superhero comics; the universe doesn’t have to be on the verge of blowing up again for there to be a good story) and being reluctant to even try that whole funny animal/alternative comics universe.
Regarding Lego – and these are just my memories and have not been researched so don’t take any of this as gospel. I bet the reality is on the internet somewhere. I believe it was the very late 1950s when Samsonite (out of Seattle???) began acting as the Lego importer to North America. At that time you would buy a set of however many blocks – different sizes yes but still just the basic block. Probably red and white blocks but if you were in the USA there might have been other colours available. No kits or special items……….just a bunch of different sized blocks and your imagination as to what you could do with them. Probably around the mid-60s we started to get little boxes of specialty items…….maybe a box of small bricks……maybe a box of three windows or a door. Still very limited…..at least it was if you couldn’t afford a whole bunch of these extra block boxes. I think that in the early 70s these extra block kits became larger and more widespread and probably more affordable (even some specialty stores???). I have to admit that between the ages of 15 and 35 I paid little attention to the Lego universe. The whole concept of girls seemed to hold my interest more. But in the 90s my son (the ultimate outcome of that girl thing) became very interested in building Lego kits. But it was different. Everything seemed to be a kit. It wasn’t imaginative Lego, it was more like a puzzle. Put the kit together and then its done. Little incentive to use the bricks to build a house or a car or the Eiffel Tower (unless that was the kit you had). So much of the creativity and imagination was sucked out of the product in difference to convergent thinking. At least that’s the way I think of it and I look forward to other opinions. But I’ve rambled on far too long about a non-comic topic – but you started it – more or less.
I could instantly tell it wasn’t Carl Barks because the pupils of the eyes are all black. Barks always put in a small white slit to indicate which direction they were looking. It’s a shame Barks is rarely recognized anymore, despite the fact that Scrooge an the Woodchucks remained popular with Duck Tales
thanks for the insight davidpop11, I will look for this on Barks covers.