Customer Reviews

The Comic Art Price Guide

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The Author has taken a vast and nearly impenatrable subject, Comic and related Original Art and subjected his audience to a Narrow Workingmans view of a more complex and multitextured subject; Despite a life long consultancy within the economics of the Comics Field, the Author has narrow focused his opinion into an end-all-of-knowledge that disservices broader subject; it becomes obvious that the Updated and Expanded format of this PRICE GUIDE attempts to fill and redefine further areas with the same limits of success as the 1992 Price Guide. The prior 1992 Guide failed only in its limits of information: Without providing data base of cataloging Auctions and Private sales lists, these guides are only Organizational Catalogs for experienced, and Gee Whiz Look At All This Neat stuff to Newbie (Wanna be?) Collectors. The collecting community has already emailed itself insensible with observations of 'I'd pay $1000 a page OVER the guide listed prices on **** Silver Age Pages by ---- (artist);etc. Maybe the Third Guide will Be the Charm; This one needed another dozen or two of Consultants; and a MUCH MUCH expanded level of expertise and Overview.The greyed and unfocused reuse of images and data from the First guide also cheapened the whole look of this; and makes the whole production look unprofessional.

My experience and knowledge is limited to the original comic art and underground comics sections, though I wouldn't bill myself as a great authority on either. However, even I can spot dozens of factual errors in both sections, as well as many surprises found among the values given for comix. The well-known first underground comic, "Adventures of Jesus" is not even listed! Granted, Underground Comix are a very complex area of comic book history and collecting, having a variety of printers and publishers with the various editions. His guide should at least list all printings (in the interest of documentation, even if their value is minimal), and add more historical info on significant titles, including creators. I won't even go into his lack of intelligable writing ability. Surprisingly poor effort from an accomplished expert. All in all, a frustratingly incomplete and ameteurish "Waist!." Get the out-of-print Jay Kennedy guide instead.

Nestled within this August 2000 guide to original comic art is a small section on underground comix, approximately less than 1/6th of the book, which was intended be a 'market check' and supplement to Kennedy (1982) for a subset of popular underground titles (e.g. Freak Brothers, Zap Comix, Air Pirates, Gothic Blimp Works, etc.). Strengths: first attempt by anyone to capture increase in values for high grade and scarce underground comix, good essay on UGs and importance of Zap Comix #1. Weaknesses: no information on printing determination; only small subset of UGs, errors/omissions.