Joe Quesada, Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment, is currently seeking assistance from the comic book community regarding hundreds of stolen pieces of original comic art. In a post on his Facebook page, Quesada detailed the events that led to discovering that much of his collection had been stolen and ended up in stores and auctions.
“In early June I was contacted by a longtime friend, he was looking at some comic art auctions and was curious as to why I was auctioning a piece that he knew was part of my personal collection and something I would never, ever sell. He sent me a link where I discovered 24 pieces in total from my private collection up for auction including pieces I did long before I was a working professional,” Quesada said in the post. “Further investigation uncovered that… at least 185 more pieces of my stolen art were sold at auction.”
Though the person responsible for the original theft, Francisco Bove, has since been arrested and is now in custody, Quesada wrote that he believes portions of his collection have been sold to “comic shops, dealers, and collectors in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, as well as parts of Long Island and New Jersey. It could be wider spread than that but I’m not at liberty to say.”
Quesada wrote that the art sold were pieces he never intended to sell and instead wanted to keep with his family.
“Drawings and paintings I did in elementary school, high school, and college. Practice sample pages I had done before ever seriously thinking I could be in comics,” he said. “This was art I was leaving behind for my daughter just as my father had left it for me. It kills me to think that I’ll never get this stuff back now that it’s been scattered to the four winds perhaps bought and sold more times than I care to imagine… or possibly even destroyed. So yes, heartbreak after heartbreak.”
Anyone with information leading to finding the stolen artwork is encouraged to contact the Sparta New Jersey Police Department, either via their website, their Facebook page, or by calling Detective Jeffrey McCarrick at (973) 726-4072.