Counter-Revolutionaries

In the old days I used to collect original comic art. After a while I got out of that hobby and sold off all of my artwork. It was a weird business. So much artwork was basically stolen from the artists, mainly by the publishers. A few people--notably Neal Adams--tried to do something about all of that stolen art, but eventually even he had to surrender and call it a day.

Sometimes even other comic book artists would steal from their fellows.

I used to know of a certain inker (who will here remain nameless) who would lightbox pencilled pages that he liked and ink them and turn them in as the originals to the publisher (one of the big two). The pencil artists he'd been hired to ink--as far as I heard--never suspected a thing (the inker was pretty good at supplanting the originals without anyone noticing). The upshot? Said inker had original un-inked pencil pages by some of the best in the business that he would use to trade and sell without the initial artists ever knowing what was going on.

I discovered this when I bought some pages from this inker, thinking I was getting artwork done by a certain well-known pencil artist. The pencil art was, of course, still in the possession of said inker, who later sold the raw, un-inked pencils for a considerable sum.

Just one of the reasons I got out of comic art collecting.

Since I sold this piece a couple of weeks ago, I have only a few pages of art remaining. I bought this one from an agent dealing directly with the artist (Willam Van Horn--to my way of thinking the best Disney comics artist around these days).