A project: sell cartoon originals

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A friend of mine has given me a project, and I am open to advice. Let’s call him Jim; his dad, now deceased, was a professional cartoonist in the 1930-1970 era, creating original daily cartoon strips for the Chicago Tribune syndicate and other newspapers. Sometimes he would ghost for other established cartoonists.

These were comedy cartoons, not political ones.

Jim inherited a stack of original drawings. The originals were made oversize, using black India ink, then optically reduced for publication. All are black and white, no color (sometimes color was added later for Sunday editions).

Jim’s Dad, let’s call him A.H., was popular with Tribune readers, but never reached the top cartoon tier like Mary Worth, Walt Kelly’s Pogo, or Al Capp’s Lil Abner. His signature is on each one of his originals, but not on the ghosted ones, so it would be difficult to prove that he actually drew those.

Jim would like to dispose of his collection, either for a few dollars, or to a collector or museum.

Both of us are not experts on this market, and while eBay is always a venue for collectors, there might be a better way to market this material. Should each drawing be sold individually or all together? Is there a cartoon eBay? An honest cartoon broker?

The sizes vary, but most are too big for the largest flatbed scanner I have (11x17"), so making good digital copies of many of them could be quite expensive and/or time-consuming. Shipping individuals would also be problematic. I don’t think they will roll up without damage, so they might have to be shipped flat.

Your thoughts?

2

Yes, there are specialty cartoon art auction sites.
Very real. Google em.
Better Idea--comics & science fiction conventions often have auctions.
Take a copy there, & find out what people will pay. Use that as a guideline.

3

No reason you can’t make a good digital copy with a camera (even phone) and careful lighting, positioning, and focus.

4

I sometimes have bought original cartoons at this auction site: catawiki. The link goes to the comic section.
I`ll look later for other sites, there are numerous, I am not at home.

5

There are digital archival services, but they do require shipping.

Can I ask - what is the best-case scenario for Jim? To make money, to get them into the hands of people who would appreciate them, to get them safely in a collection somewhere, or just to get them off his hands so long as they’re not shredded?

Another question: are these cartoons collected somewhere already, or are the originals literally the only copies other than archived or stored copies of the newspaper? The Chicago Tribune may be interested in preserving some of their history.

6

Traveling to a convention isn’t in the cards for either of us. No convention is likely to be close by and unless we have a reasonable expectation of millions, not cost effective.

I’m not sure Jim wants to auction the entire collection unless we have some idea of the return range.

7

I have cameras and lighting, but nothing I have seen compares to a flatbed scanner for accuracy. However, I picked up a special-purpose scanner – more of a scanner head, really, that is not constrained by size (you could mount the art work on a wall) and I plan to try it out.

8

I haven’t found anything like this online (yet) in a museum or elsewhere. AFAIK, since I have from the artist’s son’s mouth that these are pen & ink originals, there can’t be another original of these drawings.

I don’t know if the newspaper syndicate stored any copies. Saving copies 50 years ago or earlier was expensive and daily cartoons were considered ephemeral. It was typical to store some printed items on microfilm, so it’s likely that the daily Tribune newspapers are archived that way (in publication format & size). Microfilm is notoriously of poor quality and only a last resort for archivists.

I agree that contacting the Chicago Tribune would be a good idea – to find out if they want these drawings for any price. However, I know that libraries and newspapers have sold off their archives to dealers who rip them apart and sell pages singly, such as thru “buy the actual front page from the day you were born!” ads. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it breaks an archivist’s heart to see collections split up.

Jim doesn’t need the money, but wouldn’t turn up his nose at something substantial. Preserving this as a collection is an admirable goal, but not absolutely necessary. If all else fails, or the potential return not great enough, he doesn’t mind donating everything to a single collector.

9

I suppose if you want press-ready reproductions that an ordinary camera wouldn’t cut it, but if what you want is just something to advertize what you have with, IMHO it would be fine. (My first “scanner” was a CCD security camera with a 3-color filter mounted over a board along with ring lights. It was hooked to an Amiga.)

10

There are a couple of museums in the US. I visited the one in Columbus. The stuff you have is the sort of stuff that was on display when I visited (and of course they have a large archive).

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (Columbus)
Cartoon Art Museum (San Francisco)

11

When I had some animation cells to sell a while ago I sold them through Heritage Auctions. They were very good. Did a lot for me, including arranging the shipping from England.

They deal in rare comics, comic original art and animation art. I’m not sure if they do newspaper cartoons, but it might be worth checking them out.

12

How many documents altogether? I wonder if they’d be willing to pay (or help pay) to have them digitally archived. It could be a nice feel-good publicity story for them.

13

No-no-no.
Start with ONE.
And if you Google, there will be one or more small conventions near you, if you are in the US.

14

Thanks, Peter_Morris. I have signed up with Heritage Auctions, just to see what is being offered in the market.

15

Ooh, keep us posted!

A friend of mine loves Heritage Auctions*, and I just perused their “Comic Art” section (quite a wide range of bids, so who knows?).

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*My friend, as a kid, had been given a jersey by a sports pro (“After tomorrow, I won’t need this anymore.”) He cherished it… until decades later, he had to pay for a wedding. So he contacted Heritage. They flew his family out to NYC and they all got to watch it go for way more than they’d ever dreamed of.

(But in that case, The Sports Pro had gone on to quite the career.)