Grailpages: Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors [Paperback]

Steven Payne (Author), Gene Colan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2009

Grailpages brings to light the burgeoning hobby of collecting the original, hand-drawn art that was used to create comic books! Beginning more as a novelty, the hobby of collecting original comic art has expanded to a point where some of the seminal pages commonly run more than $10,000 each! Author Steven Alan Payne allows you to meet collectors from around the globe and hear their passion in their own words, as they detail collections ranging from a few key pages, to broad, encompassing collections of literally hundreds of pages of original comic art by such artists as Jack Kirby, John Romita Sr., and others! Balancing out the narratives are incisive interviews with industry pros, including writers Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart, and Roy Thomas, and exclusive perspectives from Silver Age artists Dick Giordano, Bob McLeod, Ernie Chan, Tony DeZuniga, and the unparalleled great, Gene Colan! Completing the book is a diverse sampling of breathtakingly beautiful original comic art, some lavishly presented in full-page spreads, including pages not seen publicly for decades!

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: TwoMorrows Publishing (March 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605490156
• ISBN-13: 978-1605490151
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #964,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars But where's the DC art?, January 7, 2010

By 

Mark (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Grailpages: Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors (Paperback)

Before I talk about this book here, I'd like to get an observation about Amazon's packaging off my chest. In a word, it's inadequate. My copy was merely inserted with another item in a box too large, without buffering materials to thwart sliding on the sides or additional cardboard, resulting in cover scratching and bumped corners. This experience has caused me to reconsider whether I want to buy books from Amazon in the future, even at discount.

"Grailpages" itself is something I've waited a long time to see, a work devoted to a hobby and pastime that's near and dear to my heart, and apparently to those of lots of other people. I found myself reluctant to put this book down and much of it engrossing, in spite of a couple of problems. For one thing, author Payne has an annoying habit of referring to examples of comic book pages in the copy that aren't available for convenient viewing relative to the descriptions. This happens quite a bit, and becomes frustrating.

The writer, himself a collector of original comic book art and a dealer, has interviewed many of the names and personalities I've seen displayed for years on sites like Comicart-L, The Lowry Gallery, and Comicartfans, and shares brief biographies and insights into their collections and thoughts on the hobby. These are the best parts of the text, entertaining and richly threaded with personal anecdotes that shed light on how so many collectors can afford the astronomical costs of these pursuits (and often can't). These are interspersed with the author's observations about collectors and the merits of a couple of the artists whose work is sought avidly and hoarded, sometimes for amounts as high as 5 figures or more. Unfortunately, some of the wording gets a little stuffy for the subject matter (we ARE, for pity's sake, talking about comic art), with some of the prose so dense and overwritten as to be almost impenetrable.

Curiously, emphasis runs high and hot and heavy on Marvel art, but DC's is reduced to a virtual footnote, which makes no sense at all and is more than a little strange in historical context. Could Payne find NO DC collectors to interview? The lapse is compounded when a chapter waxes eloquently and gushes over a couple of independent creators and their creations (Los Bros. Hernandez and Dave Sim, basically), but nobody else. Maybe DC collectors and those of other artists are being saved for a sequel? One hopes so.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like Silver Polish for Antiques, September 16, 2009

By 

E. Watson (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grailpages: Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors (Paperback)

My two Uncles collected comic books in the 60's when they were kids. I inherited this vast collection, which, including my own collection, spans at least thirty years. Grail Pages is a great addition to that collection. I appreciate the history behind comic book creation and I learned how to truly gauge the financial (as well as personal) value of my collection. This book got me back into reading new comics, which I haven't done in years-- and even pick up a few should-be classics for my nephews. Thanks, Steven!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A survey of the hobby of comic art collecting overall, February 21, 2010

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grailpages: Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors (Paperback)

GRAILPAGES: ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK ART AND THE COLLECTORS covers comic art from the 60s and 70s and offers a survey of the hobby of comic art collecting overall. While this could've been featured in our 'collectors shelf' section, it's reviewed here for its wealth of stories and personal memoirs from collectors around the world, offering covers and panel pages by a range of comic artists.