What if... : Occultis
This time it is Occultis' turn to answer the "What if..." !
1. If i could add to my collection any artwork currently displayed in 2DGalleries ?
This is a difficult one. Lots of tempting artwork to choose from there. If I have to pick just one, I think I would go for a Pratt Corto Maltese page. Probably this one:
This strip belongs to Carbonnieux's collection
2. If i could keep only one piece of art from my collection ?
This one is also difficult to answer. I have 8-900 original pages, and I have only sold or traded away three pages in my whole collecting career, so my best guess is that I will be stuck with most of them until the end. But still - let us suppose that I would be able to, or would have to, get rid of everything except one single page. The very last page to go then could of course be my favorite page. The problem here is that if I have to name just one favorite, it might change from day to day. Perhaps this Tardi Nestor Burma page:
Jacques Tardi - Nestor Burma - "120, Rue de la Gare", page 115
Or another possibility - the last page may not necessarily be my absolute favorite. It could be a page that I appreciate very much, but one that others are not that much interested in - one that has a relatively low market value, so it wouldn´t be worth the bother to sell it. Like this Stan Drake Kelly Green page:
3. If i could get another chance to purchase an artwork that i let slip in the past ?
That would depend on the price. I could (and should) have bought a fantastic Tintin in Tibet page around 15 years ago. If someone would sell it to me now for what it cost then, that would be my No. 1 choice. But to buy it for what the market price would be today - no thanks. Another one I should have bought when I had the chance: One of Will Eisner´s best Spirit stories complete with a fabulous splash page. I have lots of other regrets too, but I suppose that is part of being a collector.
4. If i had 5000€ to buy one of the artworks listed for sale on 2DG ?
I would pick that one :
And that one :
Dracurella and Elektra - seems to me a potent combo!
5. If you were a comic book character ?
Uncle Scrooge might be interesting: Extreme wealth, having fun with daily money baths in the money bin, exciting struggles against villains like the Beagle Boys and Magica de Spell, travelling on treasure hunts to all sorts of exotic places.
6. If you could get the chance to spend a day with a comic book artist from the past ?
In and around his studio in Westport, Connecticut he had close working relations with several other great comic artists, both his contemporaries like Leonard Starr and (for a while) Alex Raymond, and a younger generation with artists like Neal Adams and Bill Sienkiewicz. A day in that creative community in Westport would have been interesting.
7. And if you could ask him only one question ?
One very serious question: On that fateful day when Alex Raymond borrowed your new car and got himself killed in a crash, while you as the passenger barely survived - was it an accident or was it suicide?
8. If you had to keep (or own) only one sketched comic book ?
I have a copy of Pratt´s La ballade de la mer salée album with a nice Cranio sketch. That one, perhaps? Usually sketches in that album - both the genuine ones and the fakes - are Cortos, so Cranio makes a nice change.
9. if you had the opportunity to read the sequel of a comic book ?
I would love to read the sequel to Savard´s last Dick Herrison album, L´araignée pourpre. Too bad the series should end unfinished.
10. If you could choose the subject of the next article from 2DG’s notebook ?
A piece on Vittorio Giardino would be nice.
And finally a question provided by another 2DG collector, Tzynn :
Would you be able to stop collecting and why ?
I have definitely scaled down on my buying the last years. I still have some wants, but they tend to be very specific, and for some parts difficult to find or difficult to obtain. On the whole I suspect I am getting closer to a state of mind/a situation in life where I am more content with the collection I have than I am hungry for more. The rising prices are also a factor, of course. I have more or less stopped collecting certain favorite artists because of the high prices nowadays. For those artists, I am content with what I have. Adding one more piece simply won´t give me enough pleasure - when I take into account today´s prices.
But on the other hand it is difficult to imagine myself completely stop collecting. There are things one can collect which are finite per se - a complete run of a comic book series, for instance. There is a big mental shift here: When one has collected everything one set out to collect, one goes from being a collector to being just an owner. Luckily for the collecting mentality in me, original comic art is not finite. There are always more to find and collect.
So - to sum up and answer more directly: I may be slowing down a bit, but so far I can´t see myself stopping completely.
We want to thank Occultis again for his time and answers!
