Again, let us review: Several of you alerted me to a drawing currently being sold on eBay and represented by its seller as an original sketch by Sergio Aragonés. It is not. It's a forgery and a pretty bad one. As explained here, I wrote to the seller and told him as much.
Now, here's the update. He wrote back to me and said…
You are entitled to your opinion. I stand behind each and every autograph and drawing from my collection. I acquired this and various other Mad drawings years ago while into my Mad phase. I have no doubt about the authenticity of this item or anything else I sell. I stand behind it with a 100% moneyback guarantee! I am not here to make enemies with you or anyone else but I am not going to pull any of my items because someone doesn't like them.
So now I've just sent the following to him…
It's me again, Mark Evanier, partner of Sergio Aragonés. Sergio says the drawing you're selling as one of his is a fake and I think he's going to notify eBay of this. He's also had me put up an announcement on his website at www.sergioaragones.com to beware of fake sketches on eBay. Do you still have no doubt about the authenticity of this item or anything else you sell?
I'll let you know what the guy says…but I suspect the auction will disappear and if I get a response at all, it'll be along the lines of, "My Goodness! For the first time in my many years as an autograph dealer, I've been hoodwinked by a fake!" This has been the result in the past when I've called sellers on forgeries…which I only do about half a percent of the time I see them.
This morning, the weblog for The Comics Journal took brief note of my little crusade here. I'd like to suggest that it would be a valuable service — for them or any news outlet that covers the comic and cartoon market — to at least follow up on this, if not to start some sort of Consumer Watchdog column or something. I'll gladly furnish any reporter with the contact info for the eBay vendor in this case. He's a major seller with a whole website of other allegedly authentic sketches and autographs. He claims in his e-mail to me to have "the world's largest autograph, cartoonist and fine art drawing collection in the world." (It must be big. It has a world on either end.)
But the point is that this is not a unique situation. This kind of thing goes on a lot with comic art and especially with animation cels. eBay polices their auctions to a limited extent but if someone offers a bogus "Charles Schulz" sketch — as happens quite often there — eBay doesn't notice that and couldn't verify it if they did. Generally, the worst that happens to the seller is that he cancels one auction. I don't think it would hurt for there to be a little more publicity and attention paid to this chicanery. Folks need to be reminded that the verified, authenticated Walt Disney sketch that comes with a money back guarantee from a reputable seller may have been drawn in the last few months.