Grailpages: Original Comic Book Art and the Collectors

By Steven Alan Payne

TwoMorrows Publishing (2009)

Comic book fans and researchers could therefore really make use of an entire book from a renowned publisher such as TwoMorrows devoted to original comic book art. Unfortunately, Grailpages: Original Comic Book Art and the Collectors - by first time author Steven Alan Payne - is a somewhat paradoxical oddity. It features a misleading title and will thus be a disappointment for most readers who pick up this 128 page paperback with the intention or hope of finding substantial insight into the field of original comic book art.

The reason for this is the simple fact that Grailpages really is all about the collectors of original comic book art, and not the artwork itself.

"Grailpages brings to light the burgeoning hobby of collecting the original, hand-drawn art that was used to create comic books (...) Author Steven Alan Payne allows you to meet collectors from around the globe and hear their passion in their own words." (publisher's solicitation)

Perhaps a title such as Grailpages: Collecting Original Comic Book Art would have been a better choice, avoiding expectations which the book does not even intend to fulfill. However, even readers who have clearly understood the book's specialist niche focus before picking up Grailpages are bound to do so with an expectation that it will need to feature a substantial amount of information on original comic book art with a view to explaining what exactly the collectors are collecting.

"For those outside the hobby, put simply and in block letters, original comic art is the original art crafted by a confluence of writing and artistic talents, which is then reproduced in a reduced format for the production of comic books. It is a series of sequential images, much like the frames of a movie, that tells a tale through snapshot images of a story. They are the bastard child of the pulp magazines and comic strips, outcasts of literary and artistic circles alike." (p.9)

It is clear that Payne is not driven by a desire to explain, but by an ambition to defend and justify the cultural value and thus legitimacy of comic books and the artwork they feature. Instead of further elaborating on the question of what original comic book art is, i.e. represents and stands for, Payne therefore almost immediately chooses to provide answers to an entirely different question, namely what kind of people collect original comic book artwork. This perspective subsequently reveals itself to be the author's manifest main focus for the entire book.

However, readers discover fairly quickly that the niche focus of the book is even narrower than what it seems to begin with. In reality, Grailpages is not concerned with collectors of original comic book art per se, but with a rather small handful of specific individual collectors. This could actually have been a strong conceptual point, enabling Payne to illustrate the diversity of the hobby by having $25,000+ a piece collectors side by side with the smaller budget collectors whose most expensive pieces cost them in the range of $300. Unfortunately, this opportunity is missed outright as the "small fish" of the hobby are overlooked completely.

Payne explicitly points out at the outset of Grailpages that his approach in writing this book is to strike up a deliberately personal tone and distance himself somewhat from an overly academic approach. This being fair enough, the resulting "1 on 1" style of writing is handled quite well by Payne, even though he does have a tendancy to become chatty at times, making his writing style seem more appropriate for a podcast episode than a publication in print. The real problem with this approach, however, is that Payne soon loses almost all control over the inherent vanity to be found in all collectors, including himself - apart from its 11 chapters Grailpages also features a foreword, an introduction and an afterword written by Payne in which he reveals himself to be, amongst other things, an owner of an original Picasso sketch and a traveller to Rome and thus a person with first hand impressions of Italian Renaissance art. As with many other bits and pieces of text throughout Grailpages, it is often difficult if not impossible to grasp the possible relevance or importance some snippets of information could possibly have for the topic of the book itself (although it does make Grailpages an excellent case study textbook for any student of social psychology doing research in the field of impression management theory).

Whether this was Payne's intention or not, at the end of the day Grailpages is quintessentially an extended - albeit enthusiastic - rallying call in defense of the cultural value of original comic book art and therefore the social legitimacy of collecting it. This, however, is done regardless of the fact that the relevance of comics to 20th century popular culture has now long been established. The content value which Payne has put into 128 pages of text is therefore disappointingly low for anyone looking beyond the "meet the collectors" formula. Even the interspersed short interviews with noted pencillers and inkers end up being shallow. Gene Colan, for example (whose artwork features prominently as he is one of Payne's favourite artists), has proven in many interviews and podcast episodes over the past years that he always has a lot of interesting insights to offer regarding the industry and his personal work - if asked the right questions. Unfortunately for the book, Payne is off target most of the time. This is also true with regard to a few interesting quotes from industry professionals which can be found here and there throughout the book but which are not followed up and discussed further in the text.

The core of the problem with Grailpages lies in Payne's highly selective take on his topic. Even though he does briefly acknowledge the fact that the artwork was not always held in high esteem, his almost constant praise and defense provides a completely wrong perspective on original comic book artwork as the focus is on "art" - once scorned, now finally appreciated. In actual fact, however, pages of original comic book artwork were never intended to be framed and hung on walls. They may be appreciated today by many as pieces of art, but well into the early 1970s these pages were largely viewed as disposable by-products in the process of producing a cheap mass production entertainment commodity - explaining why even the artists themselves originally didn't have second thoughts about their work being disposed or not returned to them. Only for the past thirty years or so has original comic book art gone "from trash to auction" (to quote the catchy title of an article published on 30 June 2008 by the New York Times). Grailpages thus misses out on the actual essence of original comic book artwork, namely its original function, and Payne accordingly remains virtually silent on the fact that most pages of original comic book artwork carry indications as to the process of their genesis, making them source documents for researchers and aficionados alike.

Payne also gives no clear overview of how a page of original comic book art came to be produced in the classic periods and what changes have taken place in this respect with the advent of computer-based publishing tools - such as, for example, the fact that pencilled pages for the vast majority of 1960s/70s material are gone for ever because they were inked over directly while today's pencil artwork is usually preserved because the inks are done by lightboxing the original. The almost complete lack of systematically arranged background information effectively deprives Grailpages of a sound base for understanding original comic book artwork. As it stands, the book is almost demoted by the author himself to a picture album, albeit one featuring a marvelous (pun intended) collection of original artwork. Readers will therefore find next no nothing on the varying degree of influence of the inkers on the finished pages, nor will they learn that many classic pieces of original artwork were originally stolen from Marvel and DC offices and later on even from the warehouses of the publishers before turning up for sale at conventions. At this point, it almost seems logical for Grailpages to also remain silent on the lengthy and complex struggle of the artists for the return of their pages, culminating in the war of roses between Kirby and Marvel, and the subsequent reshaping of the industry.

Payne does go into some detail on how the internet changed accessibility and turned a convention-based market into a virtually global one - not surprisingly, as he is both a collector and a dealer - but although pointing to (and also, to a certain degree, lamenting) the generally high prices asked for certain pages today, he fails to really analyse the market for original comic book artwork, which is of course as just as artificially constructed as the comic book collector's market [1], and that there are several examples showing how prices have in some cases been pushed by e.g. dealers buying from other dealers.

February 2010
Adrian Wymann