This was absolutely fascinating! I didn't have the at-home connectivity back then that I have now, so this was new to me. I knew some of those tell-tale signs, but not all of them. Now I think I know what to look for once I find that needle in the haystack, before I shell out thousands for it.
Thanks, Dave. I especially liked the wave of the right hand firmly ensconced in its wrist brace, at the end of the video.
Examining the two editions in person, it's even easier to tell the real one apart from the counterfeit. At least for me, the blacks are the real give-away. They definitely spiked the exposure when they shot these, to try to avoid dot gain, but all they succeeded in doing is blowing out the blacks/bringing out newsprint schmutz.
It'd be interesting to see if something like this would be possible now. On one hand, it's a lot easier to duplicate work and have it pass a casual examination, so the actual printing would be much easier, assuming you could lay your hands on some "old new stock" in terms of the paper. On the other hand, I don't think selling them/offloading them by hand to local retail chains would really fly anymore. Someone would look it up on the internet or call another store and the jig would be up immediately.
As far as I know, this and Fugitoid (the early Eastman/Laird comic) are the only real well-known bootlegged comics. Is that correct?
5 comments:
This was absolutely fascinating! I didn't have the at-home connectivity back then that I have now, so this was new to me. I knew some of those tell-tale signs, but not all of them. Now I think I know what to look for once I find that needle in the haystack, before I shell out thousands for it.
Thanks, Dave. I especially liked the wave of the right hand firmly ensconced in its wrist brace, at the end of the video.
Waiting to see what Sean and Dr. Mara have to say!
Hey Max,
Great to see this. Nice work!
Examining the two editions in person, it's even easier to tell the real one apart from the counterfeit. At least for me, the blacks are the real give-away. They definitely spiked the exposure when they shot these, to try to avoid dot gain, but all they succeeded in doing is blowing out the blacks/bringing out newsprint schmutz.
It'd be interesting to see if something like this would be possible now. On one hand, it's a lot easier to duplicate work and have it pass a casual examination, so the actual printing would be much easier, assuming you could lay your hands on some "old new stock" in terms of the paper. On the other hand, I don't think selling them/offloading them by hand to local retail chains would really fly anymore. Someone would look it up on the internet or call another store and the jig would be up immediately.
As far as I know, this and Fugitoid (the early Eastman/Laird comic) are the only real well-known bootlegged comics. Is that correct?
If anyone wants to see some pictures of real and counterfeit side by side, just check out this page here.
Fortunately, Dave verified my copy of #1 a long time ago. He had better have, considering I bought it from him at an early TorontoCon
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