Tom Sutton's Planet of the Apes Original Art Prices!

Years ago in the ultimate fanzine, Rocket's Blast Comic Collector, issue #132 had another favorite artist, Tom Sutton, selling off a number of his wonderful Planet of the Apes pages he drew for Marvel's black and white magazines. The ad had a future clad gorilla reaching out and shouting straight at you, ..."Hey human, wanna buy some ape stuff?" Having had some of these great pages, they were illustrated in the larger format of 19.5 x 13.5 inches, with lots of Sutton's spectacular detail that the artist claimed was "impossible to reproduce faithfully." For one hundred eighty nine dollars you could have his "Dreamer in Emerald Silence" from POTA #15, December 1975, which was one of Sutton's favorite stories for the series. Issue #24 "Shadows of Haunted Cathedralus" was selling for a mere $140 for the twenty page story, which averaged at seven dollars a page! He had eight gritty sets to hawk, selling only the complete stories if possible to his many fans. All his ape pages were offered at that same rock bottom $7 price, including the ones he inked on issue #19 with pencils by the dynamic Mike Ploog.

Sutton was even gracious enough to try to keep the stories together, when he said he would reproduce a double page spread that was lost for POTA #18, February 1976, "Graveyard of Lost Ships" for $75, plus the $126 for the eighteen pages he still had. Tom used lots of over the top blurbs to promote these pages, as he'd done before, like..."see the giant living brains!" he used for the "Messiah of Monkey Demons" from POTA #23, August 1976, or "experience the eerie ape city" for the complete twenty page story entitled "Society of Psychedrome" from April, 1976. Overall, Sutton had one hundred thirty seven pages of Planet of the Apes pages for sale from his later "Future History Chronicles" and "Jason and Alex Apes Series" storylines, that added up to $959 for the eight sets. But never wanting to miss a deal, the artist was willing to sell the whole lot to the first lucky buyer that wanted to purchase them all for only $600, or about $4.38 a page. Too bad I was still a teen collecting comics, before I later wised up to the real joy of owning the original art to these spectacular pages.