Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Jaime Hernandez — Love & Other Strange Tales Of Summer

Original Art and The Artists

“Love and the Space Phantom,” Strange Tales II #2, January 2011

Jaime Hernandez writing and drawing a light-hearted story with the women of Marvel? In their beach best? How did I miss this one?

Scott Eder broke up the originals to the complete short story back in this past Spring and I happened to see it just as it became available.

All the pages are fun, and the cover (with the goofy supervillains lurking in the background) is naturally terrific —and priced accordingly — but I think I did pretty well with this great one-of-a-kind splash.

Extra dividend: The published story features spot-on coloring by the uber-talented Laura Allred.

Paul Lee — Spider-Man, Extra Amazing In XL

Original Art and The Artists

Amazing Fantasy #16, December 1995

This is the largest printed panel page of Spider-Man art I will likely ever own, and one of the most stylish:

Spidey’s front and center in this big, bold, painted story page, straight from the issue that picked up right where August 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15 left off — the issue that first introduced us to our favorite wall-crawler.  Even though AF #16 didn’t hit shelves until over 30 years after #15, it reflected the spirit of Peter’s early, chaotic days as a new hero, prior to the events of Amazing Spider-Man #1. 

Artist Paul Lee brought writer Kurt Busiek’s mini-series to life with gorgeous, fully painted artwork like this page, where Spidey’s flipping and fighting his way through every panel, including (and especially) the amazing — pun intended — mid-page money shot. The page is created in mixed media with a whopping 17″ x 23″ image area on textured Bristol board, measuring 20″ x 29.”

Amazing Fantasy #15 first appeared 63 years ago with an August cover date; This belated sequel is itself now 30 years old. 

Excuse me while I find something strong to drink.

SDCC 2025 — A Convention Within A Convention

Original Art and The Artists

San Diego Comic-Con, July 23-27, 2025

It was a comic-con of bricks.

Lego bricks to be precise: Lego recreated a detailed version of the convention at its massive booth.

200,000 pieces. 1500 hours to build.

Stunning, and an accurate miniature portrayal of the annual sensory overload that is SDCC. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Hey Lego — if you do this next year, I’m the one in a black t-shirt, holding an oversized bag, and wandering in a somewhat dazed and confused manner.

Of course, since that describes a chunk of the attendees, who’s to say I’m not already actually in the “San Diego Lego-Con?”

I’ll bring a magnifying glass next time.

Superman & The Fantastic Four — Double Feature

Original Art and The Artists

Superman & Fantastic Four Art Pages, Various

Who would’ve thought that Superman — the true beginning of the DC Universe, and the ignition for the fire that became the world of modern superheroes— AND The Fantastic Four — the first superheroes in the modern Marvel Universe — would hit the silver screen with major reboots at the same time? Definitely an unlikely coincidence.

So…

Here are all the Superman posts on the blog the last five years…

https://greggoldsteincomicartgallery.com/?s=superman

…and here are all the Fantastic Four posts from the same period.

https://greggoldsteincomicartgallery.com/?s=%22fantastic+four%22

Enjoy! I’m off to SDCC; let the madness begin!

Arthur Adams — Superman Redux

Original Art and The Artists

Action Comics Annual #1, 1987

Let’s say you have a terrific Superman original art page from the equally terrific Arthur Adams…

And let’s say someone else also thinks it’s a terrific page — and makes you a fair offer for it…

So, you say to yourself: “Well, I’ll sell it, and get another terrific Adams Superman page down the line…”

But somehow, you actually don’t.

And then, one fine day (actually, a rainy one — but I digress), years later, you’re flipping through another collector’s portfolio, and you stumble on… the same page you had owned. 

Offered at a much higher price than you received for it, naturally. Enough time has elapsed.

And you stare at it, and mutter to yourself: “Why did I sell this?”

So… you swallow your pride, and after some minor haggling, you purchase the page.

Congratulations! You’ve just discovered yet another inventive way to shred money — to get right back to where you started.

Sigh.

Great page, though.

Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster — Superman & The Bandit Robots

Original Art and The Artists

Superman Sunday Strip, (Syndicate Proof Sheet), December 15, 1940

Jerry Siegel personal proof of Superman Sunday strip, 12/15/1940 from the collection of Greg Goldstein

Not quite original art, this is a syndicate proof sheet for the Superman Sunday comic strip, from December 15, 1940. The proof sheets are printed on higher quality paper, and the colors are extremely vivid — which you can see even though I photographed this example under glass.

(For an amplification of how this proofing process worked, see the new edition of Jack Kirby’s Sky Masters Sunday strips, which explains the process in some detail.)

I enjoy these early strips — Shuster’s art here often seems more polished than the comic books, where some of the art suffers from inconsistency. That’s of course not shocking: Superman’s explosive —and nearly instantaneous —popularity meant that Shuster, with the help of assistants and other artists, had to keep up with a prodigious amount of publishing.

This proof came from co-creator Jerry Siegel’s personal collection , and I was fortunate enough to snag one with a giant robot. (Plus, it is signed!)

Superman, Lois AND a giant robot. Seems like a hat trick to me.

A tear sheet from the Houston Chronicle features the strip in a classic half page format.
The original classic Superman strips (first reprinted by Kitchen Sink) are available in at least four different book formats; although they are all technically out of print, most are readily (and inexpensively) available from secondary booksellers. Because they are so easy to obtain, when we launched the Superman reprint program at IDW Publishing in 2013, we started with the next group of strips.
Superman fought the “Bandit Robots” a few months later on the cover of Action #36 (great art by Fred Ray.) But… there’s no matching story on the inside!
The Man of Steel fights similar (albeit not quite identical) robots in 1941’s “Superman and the Mechanical Monsters,” the classic episode of the wonderful Fleischer animated series of cartoon shorts.

Steve Epting — Red, White & Blue – in Black & White

Original Art and The Artists

Captain America #2, February 2005

Once again, celebrating The 4th of July with a cool Captain America page seems like a an appropriate — albeit obvious — idea.

This year, Steve Epting helps us out, with a great Cap (and Sharon Carter) page from the Ed Brubaker story arc that introduced readers to the Winter Soldier. (AKA Bucky Barnes, if you’ve been copying Rip Van Winkle the last 20 or so years.)

Chances are Bucky, as a Russian agent, wasn’t celebrating in those days. But I’m guessing he’s made up for it more recently.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.