Thursday 27 June 2013

The one and only truly original...



...so went part of the theme song to The Pink Panther, and it seemed appropriate for this post. As you know, I've been selling off some of my old original artwork on eBay recently. Oddly (or so I thought) a couple of people have asked me if the pages were prints or copied from the comics!?! 

Naturally, I informed them that the pages I'm selling are the actual original pen and ink drawings I did that the comics were printed from. Not prints. Not copies. Not pages cut out of the comics. The actual artwork. 

However, perhaps their questions are understandable because, having looked at the eBay listings for original comic art I see there are numerous prints for sale, and even lots of comics, listed in the section alongside real original art. It appears that many sellers either don't understand the category they're selling in, or can't be bothered to use the correct categories for their wares. Perhaps they think 'original' means first printing? Or that it means original characters they've created? Either way they're mistaken.

Anyway, if you can sift through all the wrong items in the category you will find genuine original pen and ink comic pages. My latest offerings are here. All bids welcome! 

12 comments:

Gary G said...

Wait, I'm even more confused now. So your selling pen and ink recreations of the comic pages? Not the original pages, they get destroyed in the printing process right?

Lew Stringer said...

Eh? What gave you that idea? These are the original pages I drew back then, which the editor used to print the comic, and the originals were then returned to me. It really is very straightforward. No, originals are not destroyed in the printing process!

Gary G said...

Oh? I heard that IPC never returned artwork to the artists and that it was all destroyed after the first printing.

Lew Stringer said...

Not so. They stored the artwork for decades in their archives. Yes, some were destroyed several years ago when they had a clear out, but they also sold off the surviving pages a while back too.

Anyway, art was returned to the artists IF they asked for it. Many didn't want it back. I have most of my IPC/Fleetway pages because I asked for them to be returned after use.

Gary G said...

o.k.

Manic Man said...

okay, reprints aren't that amazingly common in UK comics (unless the comic is dying) but.. I can't believe IPC would pay so little as to make it worth there while NOT to have the option of reprints etc.. Even STC reprinted to death if you include all the foreign prints (come to think of it.. I can't remember if I ever asked you about if you knew about them? or even, how much would a writer get for work that was being 'rewritten' into another language?.. I know at lest one artist on STC didn't know about all the overseas prints until he saw one in a shop.)

Lew Stringer said...

Sorry Manic, but how did we get onto reprints and payments?

As for STC, we were not paid for foreign, or even UK reprints.

Manic Man said...

ah, sorry, Got onto it via original art.. though thinking about it.. not quite sure how much they would use original art on file for reprints and how much would be stats (or whatever they are called).

Sorry I was kinda wandering a bit ^_^

Lew Stringer said...

I know you're a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, Manic, but slow down a bit. :)

AP/Fleetway/IPC reprinted stuff all the time from the thirties to the seventies, regardless of whether a comic had falling sales or not. They sometimes shot from film made of the artwork so they didn't need the originals. However if they changed the art (to edit it or rename it) they'd mercilessly butcher the original pages.

mike said...

For one thing, the IPC-Era Eagle had "shrunken" Dan Dare reprints, which were made by physically cutting up the original boards(!)

Manic Man said...

^_^ sorry.

makes sense that. I sometimes let.. interest get the better of me without full facts at times.. or just misinformation.. there is so much of that stuff around

Lew Stringer said...

Yes, if it's misinformation you want the Internet's ideal. ;-)