This Sunday Night! Force 10 from Navarone takes Heritage Auctions Weekly Internet COmics sale

Jan. 27, 2010

Written by Barry Sandoval

When I saw the striking image you see here in this week’s Sunday Internet Comics Auction, I didn’t need to read the description to tell me it shows a scene from a real masterpiece of a thriller, Force 10 From Navarone!

If you have never read this Alistair MacLean classic from 1968, you are missing out on an incredibly tense adventure story. Personally I would rank it behind only Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal on my list of all-time favorite thrillers.

The book was a major bestseller when it came out, but it gets respect from the pros, too. In Dean Koontz’s book How To Write Bestselling Fiction, Koontz advises aspiring writers to read the last part of Force 10 From Navarone as the perfect example of a suspenseful situation and a climactic scene. The scene shown in the painting comes near the end of the story and features Mallory (an unforgettable character!) and Miller… and when that part gets resolved there’s still more excitement after that!

The book is the rare sequel that’s better than the original, though the original is darn good. I speak of The Guns of Navarone, published in 1957 and made into a movie in 1961.

That brings up an odd thing about Force 10, which begins on the same day the previous story ends. One early scene has Andrea Stavros (that’s a guy not a girl, and he’s another very memorable character) getting married, despite having no mention of any fiancée in the previous book! It turns out MacLean just wrote the sequel as if it were a sequel to the movie rather than to his own previous novel – the first time I had ever heard of that happening.

Force 10 was itself made into a movie in 1978 with Robert Shaw as Mallory, and with Miller being played by Edward Fox (best known as the Jackal in… now I’m back to mentioning the The Day of the Jackal again!).

Here’s the poster art for that movie, illustrated by Brian Bysouth.

Heritage has offered the poster now and then and it’s been quite affordable at $15-$20.

Anyway, the original illustration being auctioned this week is by Gil Cohen, one of the top illustrators for the now defunct genre of men’s adventure magazines. One such publication was the testosterone-laden Male Annual where this was published.

The art is being auctioned without reserve, so give it your best “shot”… as it were.

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Barry Sandoval

R. Crumb grouping readies for May 21 Comics Auction: Only the adventurous need apply

May 12, 2009
Posted by Noah

There are few American illustrators as iconoclastic as R. Crumb. His characters are alternately loathsome and endearing, and Crumb himself never met a boundary he didn’t want to cross. If you know his work, then you know what I mean. If you’ve never seen any of his comics, or had the guilty pleasure of reading them, then I suggest you do a gut check before picking up an issue or compilation. If you are easily offended, then don’t even start.

The Comics auction at Heritage on May 21 is already filled with truly spectacular stuff – see The Chicorel Collection, Showcase #4 from the Motor City Run, or a Gem 10.0 Mint Wolverine #1 – but, as with so many of the cool auctions here, there are jewels sprinkled throughout the auction, not the least of which is a small grouping of lots from the pen, pencil, markers and crayons of dear Mr. Crumb, always a popular subject when he turns up in Heritage Auctions. They are all great examples of his inimitable style, though only one – a complete eight-page story from Hup!, which depicts Crumb as a full grown man, slobbering and shaking, dressed as a baby, being pushed around in an oversize pram by a buxom nursemaid, who is of course the object of his obsession – is truly salacious in the disturbing manner that only Crumb could embody.

Two of the lots feature, separately, the master’s two most famous characters: An early transitional period cover drawing for a never-realized comic called Inkling, featuring none other than Mr. Natural, and a very rare latter period drawing of Fritz The Cat for a 1993 for a collection of Fritz stories.

The Fritz drawing is one of the last times that Crumb drew Fritz, minus another notable 1996 drawing, and is a pretty classic representation of the haggard feline hounding one of his lady friends for a little “attention.” If you know anything about 1970s illustration and – in particular – animation, then Fritz The Cat is immediately recognizable as much for the comic books as for the Ralph Bakshi cartoon movie of the character, and for the massive firestorm of controversy that surrounded it. FYI, Bakshi was and is one of the greatest animators of the 20th century for a variety of reasons too numerous to mention here. Just watch the cartoon and you’ll see what I mean. There was so much attention paid to the movie and the comics, and Crumb was so pursued by the press that he actually killed the character in the pages of The People’s Comics in 1972.

You can check out the grouping here. In the realm of high-priced material, these are pretty affordable, ranging between about $1,000 to more than $5,000. Who knows what they will really bring, as the collectors dedicated to crumb – and in particular to Mr. Natural and Fritz The Cat – are indeed very serious in their pursuit.

When I was a boy in the mid-1970s, Bakshi’s Fritz The Cat was still quite a controversial cartoon. I remember it playing late one night on Dallas’s first pay-per-view station, Vue – a precursor to cable and DTV and all of that, you know you remember it – and my brother Matt told me he was going to watch it, as he somehow knew something about it already.

It turns out that he chickened out, or fell asleep, and I was left to my own devices. Sometime around midnight I crept into the TV room, closed the door, flipped that sucker on and turned down the sound. Needless to say it was quite and eye-opener, and an eyeful, for an eight-year-old, but I could still see the inherent humor in the story and the quality in the characters and animation. It led me to a full-blown Bakshi obsession in later years, where I watched movies like Wizards, Hey Good Lookin’!, American Pop, Heavy Traffic, Street Fight and – many times again – Fritz The Cat. If you are a discriminating fan of truly cool underground animation, then I heartily recommend Bakshi’s movies.

Here’s another look at the Crumb grouping if you’re curious.

Click on the title of this post to leave a comment.

-Noah Fleisher

"If Colossus Should Fall – Who Shall Stop The Juggernaut?"

Feb. 25, 2009
Posted by Noah

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that very same question…

The fact is that Dave Cockrum’s original cover artwork for X-Men #102 – a seminal 1976 issue smack dab in the middle of the awesome 1970s Chris Claremont-written run of the X-Men that culminated in the single most popular X-Men storyline ever, The Phoenix Saga – is among several examples of classic original X-Men artwork featured in this weekend’s – Yes, this weekend! – Signature Comics & Original Comic Art Auction.

It’s a classic tableau of Bronze Age comics: Juggernaut and Colossus slug it out, toe to toe. Storm shields herself against a wall, paralyzed by claustrophobia, while Nightcrawler springs from a chandelier into action. The issue featured Storm’s origin story, as well as a side battle with Banshee and Black Tom, as well as some classic X-Mansion soap opera with Jean Grey, Cyclops and Professor X. But it’s the fight between Juggy and Colossus, in the very close confines of an Irish castle – Nightcrawler does cheesily end up in the clutches of some leprechauns at the end, if I recollect correctly – that steals this show. As a kid, I always loved when Juggy showed up, though I wished somebody would have just made a massive bottle opener and popped that creepy helmet off his noggin. Just knowing that the original art for this famous cover is in house as we speak is enough to make me want to go on a secret mission to bask in its glory.

In his run of X-Men #101-107, Cockrum established himself as the king of the Space Opera. In this septuplet of issues, Cockrum introduced probably the biggest, most ambitious scope for the X-Men universe yet with the creation of the Shi’Ar Empire, the JLA-parody Imperial Guard, the Starjammers and the M’Krann Crystal. And that’s just the start of the cast of thousands that populated this exciting slice of X-Men pie. It should be noted that Cockrum left X-Men after #107. John Byrne came on board for #108 and quickly brought the focus of X-Men universe back to earth.

I asked our Director of Comics, Barry Sandoval, about this art work a few weeks ago and he was equally animated – as animated as Barry will get, consummate professional that he is – about its presence.

“This is one of the great X-Men covers of all time,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of great X-Men art and comics in past auctions, but this auction is particularly heavy on great X-Men stuff. You have to count this chief among the grouping.”

I was a little more like: “What?!... Did you see-…. No way! I want it! I want it!”

I’ve looked through this auction catalog a few times now, and am quite impressed by the offerings overall, but for fans of X-men comics this one is special. There’s a ton of great Jack Kirby Art, some original Peanuts artwork, a ton of great pulps and original mint Disney comics, but give me this cover any day! This thing has already met its estimate at $20,000, so I’m probably priced out of the running. It will however, be exciting to see how this lot ultimately comes out. It comes up in the Friday, 5 p.m. session.