An awful lot of stuff gets sold on eBay and most of it, from what I can tell, is legit. One of the categories that seems to attract some amount of fraud, or at least bogus info, is that of original comic book and strip artwork. There's a lot of inaccuracy and occasionally some out-and-out lying in that area. At any given time, for example, you can bid on an awful lot of Charles Schulz sketches that Helen Keller could have spotted as fakes. (I loved the one a few months ago where Schulz signed his name "Schultz." Someone actually offered good money for that, and not a small amount of good money.) To be charitable, some of the sellers seem to have been duped and to be honestly unaware they're not only selling fakes but vowing for the authenticity of them…but some of this is just Art Forgery. There are also a lot of animation cels, recently painted in by the guy who's now selling them, claiming they were were used in production at some studio a few decades ago.
Another category is artwork that is not exactly phony…but if you skim the ad too quickly, you might get the wrong impression. Currently up for bids on eBay are two drawings of Groo and unless you read the listings carefully, you might get the idea that I'd drawn them. I did not. Nor did Sergio Aragonés, the gentleman who draws the Groo comic books.
The listing says, "This is Original Art work of Groo. Signed by Mark Evanier. This was done sometime in the early 1980's. Groo was created by Sergio Aragonés in 1981. Mark Evanier was recruited to do the art work." That's inaccurate. Sergio has done all the artwork for the comic book. I handle words…but the erroneous statement plants the idea that I draw Groo, which I don't. Three people have already e-mailed me to ask me about these drawings and all three thought the listing said they were my drawings.
They aren't. They're tracings of drawings Sergio did for the cover of Groo the Wanderer #27, which came out early in 1987, which is not "sometime in the early 1980's." I don't know for sure who did them. My sense is that Sergio and I were appearing at some bookshop — I'm thinking it was the Page After Page shop, now defunct, which used to be in Las Vegas — and the proprietor did these or had someone do them as part of a store display to promote our appearance. While there (or maybe later), I was asked to autograph them and I did. Those look like my signatures.
Unless you buy them — and I doubt anyone will — this is no big deal, and I'll give the seller the benefit of the doubt and presume he didn't intend to mislead anyone. But I was planning to post something here about the bogus Schulz drawings and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any. I know I was crushed when people started raising questions about my original Elzie Segar drawing of Popeye using a cell phone as he microwaved his spinach.