I recently sat down to talk with Scott Dunbier, founder of Act IV Publishing and creator of Artist’s Edition. For those who aren’t familiar with Artist Editions, Artist Editions are full-size color reproductions of original comic book art. Yes, most original comic book art is done in black and white, pen and ink, or pencil. But by recreating the art in full color, the viewer can see all the uses of whiteout, all the blue pencil lines left on the page, and other imperfections that make looking at the original art so much fun. I spoke with Scott primarily about the new Jim Aparo DC Classic Artist Edition. This edition recreates art from the legendary comic artist’s work in Detective Comics, The Brave and the Bold, and Adventure Comics.
Billy Heneghan: What artist edition is this?
Scott Dunbier: Closer to 100th place. This is kind of crazy.
Heneghan: Is that going to be Ditko’s?
Dunbia: No, actually, I realized that a few months ago. I have the list. You will have to research and find out what the anniversary will be.
Heneghan: That’s exciting. Oh, that’s amazing. Next time my wife complains about having too many, I’m going to use that number. I would say, look, I probably have a 10% or 12% top. Along with Jim Aparo, this guy has been working in DC for 30 years. How did you decide what to focus on in this piece?
Dunbia: Of course, because it’s an artist edition, there’s only so much original art that can actually be included in what you can find. I wanted to capture his best years, the 70s and 80s. Specifically, I’m a big fan of his work on Spectre, for example. This book contains five Specter stories. There are six Batman stories, five from The Brave and the Bold and one from Detective Comics. It’s just a matter of cutting it down. It’s almost an embarrassment of riches. There was so much material that if I wanted to make one book, I already had enough to make a second book. For example, I have some complete versions of Phantom Stranger that I didn’t include in the book. If I do it a second time, they’ll be on board with it.
Heneghan: It’s funny, when I told a friend that this interview was going to happen today, he asked, “Oh, is there a Spectre story in the book?” I said, “Yeah! That sounds like half a Spectre story!” Then he sent me an image of the cover of Adventure Comics #431 and said, “I had this book when I was a kid. I read it until it wore out.” “I’ll be really happy,” I said, “there it is.”
Dunbia: Those special stories, that’s Jim Aparo’s wheelhouse. That’s my favorite. The original version of Adventure Comics only had 10 episodes. But they were so creepy. Michael Fleischer did a great job with them. I remember reading it when I was about 12 years old and couldn’t believe this was in DC Comics.
Heneghan: Yeah, that’s wild. Regarding Jim’s Batman, what do you think makes him the definitive Batman artist?
Dunbia: He’s a very atmospheric player. The only artist I think would be a good fit for this, or even a little bit better, is Neal Adams, but that might be a bit of a hurdle. Personally, I can’t think of anyone from that time who comes close to Batman.
Heneghan: Did you ever cross paths with Jim when he was alive?
Dunbia: Unfortunately, I’ve never met him.
Heneghan: In terms of the business model for Artist Edition, this will be sold in stores and J. Scott Campbell will be sold on Kickstarter, do you have a preference?
Dunbia: Each book has its own path. Our partners at Skybound were very excited about Danger Girl. They brought up the possibility of doing a Kickstarter. They’ve put out some great Kickstarters with GI Joe and Transformers over the last few years. They understand it based on science. Their team was very supportive. The campaign was a great success. I hope we can do something more in the future. But for regular books, you’ll be going to comic book shops through Lunar and bookstores through Simon & Schuster.
Heneghan: Speaking of G..I Joe, is there any chance we’ll get a Marvel GI Joe Artist Edition?
Dunbia: I can’t comment on that at the moment.
Heneghan: Of course. Had to try it.
Dunbia: But anything is possible.
Heneghan: Good. That’s 100 times better than no. If this is successful, could we get a modern-day Jim Aparo sequel that includes works from the 80s and 90s?
Dunbia: That’s possible. It all depends on how well this is accepted. I have some exceptionally complete contemporary novels. There are several stories about Robin’s death.
Heneghan: Good. The whole problem?
Dunbia: Yeah.
Heneghan: Between that and Ten Nights of the Beast, there’s the Artist Edition.
Dunbia: Of course.
Heneghan: I’m just putting it out there to the world.
Dunbia: All suggestions are welcome.
Heneghan: Do you have a folder of art files that you say, “Maybe I’ll end up with this someday,” or is acquiring new art very project-based?
Dunbia: I have a hard drive full of files that could be an artist edition.
Heneghan: That’s amazing.
Dunbia: Every time I go to a show, people bring up my work and say, “Would you be interested in this?” And I say, “Sure, sure.” I have no plans to publish a book, but this is great art. I would love to scan it. That’s kind of my philosophy. I scanned a lot of stuff that would never make it into the artist edition. If that happens, that would be great.
Heneghan: That’s good. Can you walk us through the process of creating the Artist Edition?
Dunbia: The first thing to do is decide which artist and what kind of book you want to make. If it’s a creator-owned book, I approach the artist. For example, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy in Hell is coming out in a few months. I wrote the first half of Hellboy in Hell at IDW, but I wanted to write a follow-up book for the second half. So I called Mike and he said sure. Mike and Christine Mignola were doing all the scanning for Hellboy in Hell. That’s about half the book. The other half is what I had already accumulated or what I had tracked. Lots of covers too. There are many pages. For example, those that are not owned by the creators, such as Marvel or DC, must obtain a contract. Marvel and Skybound recently signed a deal for nine Artist Editions.
Heneghan: Wow!
Danbia: Once the paperwork is done, you are free to write your book. It’s not something I take lightly. Having a contract means I need to have the art or have access to the art. For example, we just announced Paul Smith’s Doctor Strange. As for that book, I still have quite a bit of it, so I’m working on putting it together. The same goes for George Perez’s Teen Titans books.
Heneghan: I’m very excited about both. The price of original art seems to be going up every year, but I feel like artist editions are really democratizing the hobby. They make available things I could never have.
Dunbia: Actually, my wife says that when people say these books are so expensive, she says buy the art.
Heneghan: Yes! Cost rate for any Marvel Covers book. Wow, that’s right.
Dunbia: Some books are worth tens of millions of dollars.
Heneghan: I completely believe that. It’s crazy.
Dunbier: The Ditko Spider-Man book, the amount of art in that book is 176 pages. It is a 192 page book. If you had this much art, I hesitate to even guess what it would be like.
Heneghan: That’s an interesting calculation. Going back to when you were selling original art, are there any pages you sold that you wish you still had?
Dunbia: There are a lot of pages that I sold that I wish were still there. I had the first Enemy Ace cover by Joe Kubert. That’s one of the things I regret giving away to someone else. I replaced it with something I thought I really liked, but in retrospect I should have kept the Kubert cover. Things like that happen all the time. What I don’t regret is the price I paid for the art. Some of the art I sold is now worth a ridiculous amount of money. I understand the market price at that time. So I can’t complain that it sold me at the time. One little funny thing is, someone posted an old ad of mine on Facebook in the early 90’s. Marvel Spotlight #32 featured the cover of Girl Kane, which was Spider-Woman’s first appearance. It was never something I wanted to keep. It wasn’t my favorite Gil Kane cover. However, it sold for between $700,000 and $800,000 at a Heritage auction.
Heneghan: Oh, that’s amazing.
Danbia: Because it’s Spider-Woman’s first appearance.
Heneghan: Of course. I remember seeing that ad recently on Facebook. I think that got a great reaction from me.
Dunbia: I was very shocked.
Heneghan: Yes. You’ll see old ads like Dark Phoenix Saga for $1. Apparently it was expensive in the early 80’s. I think our partnership with Skybound is going very well.
Dunbia: They were great. Everyone there is very supportive. I work closely with Nachie (Marsham). We communicate almost every day. Sean, Blake, Shannon, they’re all amazing.
Heneghan: Is there anything they’re proposing that IDW didn’t?
Dunbia: Not really, except in a different way. Now I am more practical in all aspects. At IDW, I focused on writing books. Here, it’s much more intense. Because it’s me.
Heneghan: Okay. Is that better?
Dunbia: I’ll let you know when the sales numbers come out.
Heneghan: Good.
Dunbia: You know, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. That’s probably something I should have done a little earlier in my career. But it’s very exciting. That’s new. It’s great to have a challenge.
Heneghan: When did you first come up with the idea for the Artist Edition?
Dunbia: There were two different moments. The first time was in 1995 and I was a member of CFA APA. APA is the ultimate geek publication. Amateur Press Association. It is literally a hand-bound book. Previously, donations were sent by mail. Currently, it is sent via email to the central matching staff. They put together this huge amount. I just received this in the mail. This is the latest issue of APA.
Heneghan: That’s amazing!
Dunbia: That’s crazy.
Heneghan: Is this still going on?
Dunbia: This is still a work in progress. This is #126. It was started in the early 80’s by a guy named Roger Hill. that’s great. There are people who love the same things as you, but in different ways. I have very specific likes. Other members also have things they like. I wrote an article about Neal Adams in 1995. Each book is dedicated to a specific topic. This is a tribute to Neal Adams, who was one of my favorite artists growing up. I gave him a 40 page interview. I sent a copy of the original art for inclusion in the article. But I had a problem. There were some pencil shards and they looked awful. Copying did not allow the work to reach its full potential. It was 1995 and I had to make 60 copies to send out. At least that’s what they did at the time. I decided to make 60 color copies of each image and sent them to them. It cost a lot of money at the time. Color copies are now much cheaper. It was more expensive back then. I spent $500 or $600 on these copies and they looked great. I remember seeing that and thinking, “Wow.” Copying in color and perhaps scanning in color will make it look better. That was the first part.
The second part was that Chip Kidd published a book about his Batman collection. It featured a professionally photographed page from Neal Adams’ Batman issue. Batman 251 Joker’s 5-Way Revenge. If my wife were here, she would laugh at me for memorizing numbers. But when I saw it in the book, I saw the entire page turned white. I could see the awful blue marker they used for editorial corrections back then. And I could see it very clearly. That was the second part. And during his stay, he pitched an idea to Wildstorm. Producing an artist edition was rejected on the grounds that it would be too expensive. When I got to IDW, I pitched it to Ted Adams. When Ted hired me as IDW’s special projects editor, there was an agreement that I could do anything he didn’t want to do myself. I was able to do it regardless. I fully expected him to reject the artist’s version idea. Because artist editions are large, bulky, and very expensive to print. It’s expensive to sell. But Ted, God bless him, approved of it, and he believed it. The first book was Dave Stevens Rocketeer and off we went.
Heneghan: Oh, that was a really great run!
Jim Aparo’s DC Classics Artist’s Edition is now in stores.
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