anyone with old Marvel reprints want to solve a mystery?

[tolworthy]

Over on this blog (and elsewhere) they're discussing a page of original Marvel art that was on sale for $50,000, but looks like it may be a fake.

I'll track down the UK reprints, as they also used stats of the original art as supplied by Marvel at the time. If the job number doesn't appear on the stats, or in the reprints, then that casts a large shadow on the splash page being offered here

I never thought that the British reprints would be so important! OK, maybe not important in any absolute sense, but can anyone help him? Maybe he has his own sources, so read Danny's blog yourself if curious. He's looking for the first page of the first ever Avengers story. In particular, does the black and white reprint have numbers in the bottom left corner of the page?

I assume he means Mighty World of Marvel (didn't they reprint the first two issues of Avengers in MWOM right before the Avengers had their own magazine?). Or did it appear in the Power comics first? Or is he referring to even earlier 1960s reprints over here? Or maybe this is totally off topic for comicsUK, in which case my apologies.

[philcom55]

I've notified the blogger in question that the earliest UK reprint I've got is Mystic No.54 published by L. Miller & Co. in 1965 - thereby predating the first Power Comics version in Smash! There's certainly no job number shown on that! It all sounds very suspicious...

- Phil R.

[tolworthy]

Thanks! I knew one of the heroes on this board would come through!

I think the blogger is being generous saying he cannot be sure if the page is original or not. The evidence does seem to stack up very heavily in one direction. But I find it really interesting in its own right. It gives a good excuse to look very, very closely at original artwork, and that's what we all enjoy really

[Lew Stringer]

I've notified the blogger in question that the earliest UK reprint I've got is Mystic No.54 published by L. Miller & Co. in 1965 - thereby predating the first Power Comics version in Smash! There's certainly no job number shown on that! It all sounds very suspicious...

- Phil R.

All the comics/reprints would be shot from film/stats or something. Isn't it possible the job number was deleted on the copy, but not on the artwork?

Lew

[philcom55]

Oddly enough all the other stories in that issue (mostly Atlas reprints) still retain their code number on the splash page, though the page numbers have been altered. To be honest, even with a lightbox I don't think anyone could trace a page of artwork that accurately - down to the most insignificant bit of lettering. This leaves just two explanations: either it's genuine, or the eBay image is a hoax using some kind of doctored scan; personally I incline towards the latter. Very interesting nonetheless.

- Phil R.

[stevezodiac]

In my teens i spent a lot of time copying pages of artwork at double their size just for fun and practice. I gave a friend a page of dirty dick which he still has. We have often joked over the years that I could have copied strips and passed them off as original art but the fact i copied them freehand would make them slightly out of sync with the originals, also I am completely honest. Copying a Wally Wood cover from Weird Science was my greatest achievement. Quite often i'd copy one panel that stuck out usually from one of dc's mystery comics.