Ragged Claws Network

It’s no contest: the pencil drawing is superior to the published pin-up in every way that matters.

Yes, I know the given name of everybody’s favourite Art Nouveau image maker is usually spelled “Alphonse.” But in the out-of-print book I scanned these images from, his name is spelled “Alfons,” so that’s what I’ve used here.

BONUS LINKS:

Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Alphonse Mucha, 1860 ~ 1939 — this selection of images includes Mucha’s beautiful Moonlight image.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Alphonse Mucha, 1871 ~ 1938, posted by Mr. Door Tree — another large selection of images.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Alphonse Mucha 1860 ~ 1939: THE SLAV EPIC, posted by Mr. Door Tree — suffering undone by design.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Alphonse Mucha, 1860 ~ 1939: Ilsee, Princesse de Tripoli by Robert de Flers, posted by Mr. Door Tree — a large gallery of page decorations.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Alphonse Mucha, 1860 ~ 1939, posted by Mr. Door Tree — even more images by you-know-who.

Here’s another piece of original comic art from our collection: a single pencilled-and-inked panel (image size: 11.4 cm wide x 12.5 cm high) from an out-of-print mini-comic, The Hand of Gold, by Jordan Crane. (You can read the comic online right here.) I bought the artwork back in September 2005, via Jordan Crane’s Comic Art Collective page, for US$20.00 plus $6.00 shipping. The artwork arrived with a short thank-you note handwritten by Jordan on the back of a card (13.9 x 18.4 cm) with an original design silkscreened on the front. I’ve included both the black-and-white artwork and the notecard image here for you, dear reader, to examine in detail, along with the first three covers of Jordan’s terrific one-man anthology comic, Uptight, published by Fantagraphics.

You can buy screen prints by Jordan Crane from the Reddingk.com site. Click here to see what’s currently available.

Finally, I just have to say: Jordan’s elaborately layered, wrap-around, die-cut dustjacket design for the hardcover edition of Michael Chabon’s essay collection, Maps and Legends (McSweeney’s, 2008), is gorgeous! Watch for it, currently remaindered at a Chapters near you!

Yesterday evening, I won an ebay auction for a lovely original life drawing of a female model, Jessica, by an award-winning American editorial cartoonist named Ed Hall. The drawing, which is 14 inches wide and 11 inches high, is in graphite and ink on a medium weight paper and is signed and dated by the artist in the bottom right. Here is the scan from the drawing’s ebay auction page:

Now, truth be told, before I decided to bid on the above drawing, I not only had never, to the best of my recollection, seen any editorial cartoons by Ed Hall, I had never even heard of Ed Hall. This has happened to me before. Many times over the years, I have bid on or purchased outright a drawing or a small painting not because I was already a fan of the artist and wanted a representative sample of his or her work but because I am an admirer of fine draftsmanship (with a special emphasis on figure drawing) wherever I find it and a collector of the same on those infrequent days when the opportunity to buy a work that has caught my attention arises at the same time as my extremely modest budget for original art allows for a purchase.

And yesterday, well… yesterday was just one of those days…

I might post a few specific observations about the drawing itself after it arrives and I have had a chance to peruse it in person, but I am happy to report here and now that my winning bid for Jessica Resting on Couch was US$21.97 (approximately CDN$23.05) and I paid US$10.00 for the drawing to be shipped from Florida, U.S.A., to Saskatchewan, Canada, via USPS First Class Mail International, for a grand total of US$31.97.

Who says one has to be wealthy to have nice things!

Fact is, most of the works in our collection of original art were purchased for less than CDN$100 a piece, and we have some terrific pieces — spot illustrations, comics pages, sketches, etc. — by artists such as John Buscema, Dave Cooper, Jordan Crane, DeWitt Hardy, Rudy Nebres (the all-Nebres “Rook” page I bought from a dealer for a very reasonable US$125.00 plus shipping is the exception that gently mocks the rule), Dave Sim (I bought an all-Sim Cerebus “High Society” page for CDN$50.00 directly from the artist in my first or second year of university), George Woodbridge, Chinese watercolourist Youqiang Zhang, and others.

So, if you would like to own a drawing of similar quality to the one I just bought, and you have a few bucks to spend on original art, you might want to bookmark the ebay auction page of seller halltoons2qr3 or keep an eye on the Halltoons Weblog, where the artist promotes his work and gives advance warning of upcoming ebay auctions. See, for instance, Ed’s blog post about his drawing of Jessica, My Sunday Best, or browse through today’s Sunday sketch results, at least one of which, I am told, will be up for auction this coming weekend.

But should you decide to bid, please be forewarned: if the drawing is first rate, and the price is right, you might have a little competition from me!

BONUS LINK:

Editorial Cartoon by Ed Hall, Artizans Syndicate

Yesterday evening, I succumbed to temptation and bought another piece of Mad Magazine art by George Woodbridge (1930-2004). So now here, for your delectation, is a scan of the artwork, along with a scan of the feature of which it was originally a part:

What I especially like about this piece, other than the fact that it is expertly drawn, is that the bracingly cynical satirical message shines through even though it doesn’t include any of the typeset text written by Tom Koch to accompany the illustration.

Miscellaneous info: The “Ain’t It Great!!” feature appeared in Mad #251 (Dec 1984). The image area of our piece of the main, as it were, is 7.5 x 6 inches. And the cost, shipping included, was US$45.95.

So now we have a grand total of three pieces of original art by the talented Mr Woodbridge in our collection.

Click here to see the last piece we purchased (which is still my favourite).

My wife and I purchased the following magnificent page by Filipino artist Rudy Nebres earlier this year:

From the early 1970s to the present day, Rudy Nebres has worked, sometimes as a penciller, sometimes as an inker, and sometimes as both (see above), on comics of all kinds, including “adult”-themed comics, for a wide variety of publishers. He’s a skilled artist who has had a long and productive career, and that’s great for him! Not so great for the average, non-art-obsessed reader, however, is the fact that only a handful of the comics Nebres worked on are worth reading for any reason other than to marvel at the man’s amazing craftsmanship. It’s a pity Nebres never found the perfect project to harness his prodigious talent — if only he could have drawn nothing but Western comics! — but the same can be said for most comics artists of his generation and before who scrambled to make a living doing nothing but “work for hire.”

I don’t know which Warren comics magazine the page we now own is from; the dealer didn’t have the information. The only information he had on his site was “Rook Story p.8 Warren Art,” so it is possible this is a page from a Rook story that appeared in Eerie or one that appeared in the Rook’s solo magazine, entitled, what else, The Rook. From Wikipedia:

He [Restin Dane, the time-traveller known as "The Rook"] appeared in Eerie #82-85, 87-95, 98-105. He got his own Rook Magazine which ran 14 issues from 1979 to 1982 (after which he returned to Eerie and concluded the storyline in #132 and continued in 134 and 136). Warren Presents #2 reprints the stories from Eerie #82-85. Eerie isues #116 and 120 had stories staring his great-grandfather.

After perusing Richard Arndt’s index of Warren Magazines, I would venture to guess that the page appeared in The Rook #11 (or possibly #12). But that’s only a guess, so if you by chance recognize the page, and remember which Warren magazine and which issue the story was in, please post a comment, or send me a private message using the link at the top of the page, and let me know. I’d really appreciate the information.

p.s. If you’re wondering why there are no captions or word balloons on the page, it’s because all that is on a separate clear overlay, which thankfully came with the artwork.

UPDATE 03 OCTOBER 2008:

Acting on the basic research outlined above, I mosied on over to ebay and purchased the two issues of The Rook most likely to contain the story with our page in it. Well, the books arrived today, and I was right. Our Rudy Nebres page was printed in The Rook #11 (October 1981), page 12. The story, written by Will Richardson, is titled, simply, “The Rook.” Mystery solved!

Bonus Links:

The Comic Book Database: Rudy Nebres

Komiklopedia: Rudy Nebres

The Philippine Comics Art Museum: Rudy Nebres

As of 12 July 2008, my wife and I are the proud owners of the following artwork by cartoonist George Woodbridge:

George Woodbridge (1930-2004) joined Mad Magazine’s “usual gang of idiots” in 1957 and had work in nearly every issue thereafter. He also worked at Marvel during the 1950s on titles such as Astonishing, Battle Action, and Kid Colt.

Click the image to view a larger, more detailed scan of the artwork; the image area of the physical artwork is 9″ x 6″. Click here to view a scan of the image in its original context as part of a piece entitled “Appeals from Charities through History.”

The total price for the artwork, shipping included, was US$55.95. So now we have two–count ‘em, TWO–pieces by George Woodbridge in our modest but growing collection of original comic-book (and other) art.

Related links:

• “43-Man Squamish” by George Woodbridge and Tom Koch.

• “George Woodbridge, R.I.P.” by Mark Evanier