Value of early bronze-age comics personalized by Mike Kaluta?
TheMarvelMan
Posts: 159
Greetings Forumites! A colleague of mine, who is a professor of Studio Art at a small college in central Virginia, recently asked me if I'd like to see/appraise her small collection of comics. Of course, I jumped at the chance! Her modest collection (~50 issues?) is all from the late '60s and early '70s, and it's mostly underground stuff (such as Zap Comix). Sadly, none of her underground stuff is a first printing, so they aren't as valuable as she hoped!
An unusual set of books in her collection are a number of comics that artist Mike Kaluta helped create (as cover artist, or interior artist, or even simply as the artist of the splash page only). He went to art school with my colleague, and these issues were personal gifts to her from him. What makes them a bit unusual is that each comes with a hand-written note to her from Mike wherein he comments on the issue itself, and usually his thoughts about his work therein. Each note is a single sheet of paper tucked inside the front cover, and the messages range from 2-3 lines to half a page of prose. Some of his comments are pretty interesting! I suspect that Mike has no idea that these comics and his notes still exist!
These are VG to FINE comics (in my amateurish assessment), but I wonder if the notes from Mike might increase their value in some way. Any thoughts on this sort of thing?
In case you're interested, here are the issues that include personalized notes from Mike:
The Phantom Stranger #23
Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #7 and 10
Weird Mystery #1
Korak, Son of Tarzan #49
Batman #242
Adventure Comics #425
Secrets of Sinister House #7
House of Mystery #200, 202 and 212
Detective Comics #424, 427 and 431
She's just curious, and I'll be pleased to pass along any thoughts that you may have. Thanks for reading!
An unusual set of books in her collection are a number of comics that artist Mike Kaluta helped create (as cover artist, or interior artist, or even simply as the artist of the splash page only). He went to art school with my colleague, and these issues were personal gifts to her from him. What makes them a bit unusual is that each comes with a hand-written note to her from Mike wherein he comments on the issue itself, and usually his thoughts about his work therein. Each note is a single sheet of paper tucked inside the front cover, and the messages range from 2-3 lines to half a page of prose. Some of his comments are pretty interesting! I suspect that Mike has no idea that these comics and his notes still exist!
These are VG to FINE comics (in my amateurish assessment), but I wonder if the notes from Mike might increase their value in some way. Any thoughts on this sort of thing?
In case you're interested, here are the issues that include personalized notes from Mike:
The Phantom Stranger #23
Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #7 and 10
Weird Mystery #1
Korak, Son of Tarzan #49
Batman #242
Adventure Comics #425
Secrets of Sinister House #7
House of Mystery #200, 202 and 212
Detective Comics #424, 427 and 431
She's just curious, and I'll be pleased to pass along any thoughts that you may have. Thanks for reading!