| the first talk about doing a frank
miller's sin city figurine happened in early 1995 between comic book legal defense fund's
then-executive director susan alston and me. after the success of ultimate art's cerebus figurine, i started toying around with the idea of
reproducing a more widely known character, and marv fit the bill perfectly. a few faxes
went from milano (italy) to northampton (ma) and from there to virginia and, after a few
weeks, frank miller (definitely one of the busiest folks in comic-dom) gave his approval.
looked like another cbldf-buster was on the way... by july of the same year, a cold-cast porcelain prototype was ready and a
bunch of pictures flew with me to the san diego comic con for approval by frank himself.
frank green-lighted the project and breezed --with a silver marker-- through 100
certificates of authenticity to seal the deal. other than being one of the busiest, he's
also one of the coolest.
it all sounds like fun and games, right? but that's when
things started to go sour.
the first people we got in touch with for the figurine
reproduction assured us that a great job could be done of it, and in a reasonable time,
too. they were quite enthusiastic but, after about a month, they started asking for
several small changes on the original piece because of "technical problems with the
molds." the "small changes" evolved into a major reworking of the figurine
but, this notwithstanding, after 10 months all we had were 20 not-so-perfect cold-cast
figurines which needed quite a few touch-ups by the gifted hands of bruno aprea,
then-resident ultimate art sculptor.
to add insult to injury, both the specimens for frank and the
one-of-a-kind figurine we made for the cbldf to auction, suffered the
"kick'em-as-hard-as-we-can" treatment courtesy of a certain dutch airline, and
arrived in san diego in quite a bad shape. i guess "a shambles" is a more
correct word for it...
with great shame all over my face, i offered my apologies to
frank and wished i could just run away.
back in italy, we got our original back from the manufacturer
and handed it off to a guy who had a reputation for doing a pretty good work, with the
added plus of not requiring a three hour trip (each way) every time a problem arose.
little did we know then that --in a matter of weeks-- the guy
in question would mess up big-time with quite a lot of retailers and distributors and just
disappear into thin air "to avoid trouble."
the nyc 1996 dynamic forces con saw yours truly face frank
once again: this time my face had a big "i wanna die right now" day-glo sign
splashed all over it. frank was nice once again, although he sure had less and less
reasons to.
back in italy we ran into --by sheer chance-- the missing
guy, who showered us with all kind of excuses and agreed to give the original back so that
we could cast the figurines ourselves. he never showed up at the appointment, disappeared
again, and the original has been missing since.
less than a dozen "marv with coat" figurines
actually hit the market at $200 each in a period in which ebay was just a bit more than an
idea: just imagine how much they would net now... i've recently received an offer for
$1,000 for one of those, but i don't even have one myself.
those money didn't even get closer to start making back the
investment made on the sculpting, molds, raw material and stuff, but the downslide didn't
stop there... more... |
