Tuesday, July 31, 2007
An update to the Michael Golden Doctor Strange “virtue” sketch
There is an update to a story I blogged about the other day concerning the Doctor Strange fan that commissioned Michael Golden to do a Doctor Strange sketch. Michael Golden responded to criticism he has been receiving in a fairly snarky fashion over at The Comics Journal forum.
My favorite part is where he admits to forging his art agent’s signature on the United States Postal Customs form. My second favorite part is where he says that Doctor Strange is not blowing Gerry Turnbull a raspberry.
In my opinion, Golden is only making a bad thing worse. He screwed up. He accepted $500 in payment for a commissioned piece of artwork and then took ten months to actually do the artwork.
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He couldn’t even respond to the issue himself, he had a representative post something. That’s pretty shitty. Unless this guy is one of those dudes who has to write with his mouth ’cause he has no hands, ergo, he can’t type a response on the internet.
In that case, you go dude! Try to make my next commissioned work spittle-free.
By the way, from what I’ve read, I think the guy that bought the work is being unreasonable. He has a right to be upset by the mis-spelling, but other than that, I side with the artist in this.
To avoid all this “touchy comic book artist” bullshit, I went here to commission a gift for Sloofus’s b-day:
http://www.monsterbymail.com/
The guy that does it- I think his name is Len- is pretty cool. He does themes by month or season. This summer is the summer of zombies, so he’ll draw you a zombie picture based on the title you give him. It’s totally worth the 20 bucks he charges.
Schooly, I have to disagree with you. The guy that commissioned the drawing paid $500 up front and was told it would take about six weeks. Ten months and many emails later, he finally got the sketch. The sketch isn’t even close to the quality that Michael Golden is known for. Doctor Strange is shown from behind with his face in total blackness playing his hand like a trumpet. Coming out of the hand-trumpet is a dig directed at the guy that paid for it. Worse, it’s even spelled wrong.
Michael Golden acted very unprofessional.
When Michael Golden was supposed to be doing this guy’s commission, he was traveling around to cons doing commissions for other people.
As the months passed by, the guy repeatedly asked for a refund and Michael Golden refused. He should have refunded the guy his money and apologized. Instead he acts like a dick.
I agree with you in principle. But I have to think that anyone who pays that much money for a piece of comic book “art,” well, I guess it just proves that P.T. Barnum was right.
This might be colored by my view of comics as being less than art.
The guy could have spent 500 bucks at a local gallery and found a piece he liked and supported a local artist at the same time. Also, when he has guests over, they wouldn’t snicker as hard at the actual art as the Doctor Strange he has hanging on his wall.
I also think that this might be another case of how comic book “artists” aren’t true artists at all. Maybe. But that would be a whole other post entirely.
Just because you personally don’t care for comics or comic art doesn’t lesson the impact the fan experienced in his dealings with Golden. What happened to him sucks no matter if you personally like comics or not.
For example, you like beer. You like it a lot. Imagine that you wanted to treat yourself to something nice and decided to purchase a case of a very expensive beer imported all the way from Europe. You order your fancy case of beer online and pre-pay $500 for it. You are told when you place your order that it should take 6 weeks for you to get your fancy European beer. You are willing to wait.
The months go by and you don’t get your beer. You email the distributor several times asking when you will get your beer. You are told a different answer each and every time. You grow tired of this. You inform the distributor that if they cannot send you the beer you paid for months ago to just refund your money. They refuse.
Nine months after ordering your beer, you finally receive it. You were originally told it would take around 6 weeks and in reality it took 9 months, but at least you finally have your beer. After putting the beer in a special refrigerator you had set aside just for this special beer, you open your first bottle and take a sip. To your horror, you discover that instead of containing really good beer, the bottle contains dirty dishwater. You open each and every bottle and discover that they too contain dirty dishwater. Come to find out, the brewer was really quite annoyed with you asking his distributor where your beer was. He decided to crack wise at your expense by putting dishwater in the bottles instead of his special beer.
How would you feel Schooly if someone said that you got what you deserve? They don’t like beer. They like wine. They don’t even consider beer to be a real beverage. They look down on people that enjoy drinking beer. They even say that PT Barnum was right when it comes to beer drinkers. This person then points out that you could have taken the$500 and used it to buy bottles of wine from one of your local New Jersey vineyards.
My point is Schooly that just because you don’t like comics doesn’t mean you cannot have empathy for this person. I myself wouldn’t pay $500 for someone to do a commissioned sketch. That fact doesn’t preclude me from feeling for this guy when he got ripped off.
But my point is still the same- I would never pay $500 bucks for a case of beer.
I guess what I’m saying is that anyone who pays a comic book artist $500 is getting ripped off.
Then think about something you would be willing to pay $500 for and exchange that with the Doctor Strange sketch. Just because you don’t personally dig comics doesn’t mean you cannot feel basic empathy for a comics fan that paid a large sum of money for an original piece of art and got treated poorly for it.
Your hu-man logic is powerless against The Mighty Schooly G, Rick! Surrender to his robust ignorance!
Maybe a a $500 dollar hooker.
Of course, when they’re that expensive, they’re called “call girls.” Or housewives.
Rick, good job helping to spread the word on the Golden blowup.