{"id":39757,"date":"2026-10-30T12:04:50","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T16:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=39757"},"modified":"2026-10-30T12:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T16:05:10","slug":"and-now-we-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2026\/10\/30\/and-now-we-know\/","title":{"rendered":"And now we know who paid for that Pop Art Green Lantern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/17\/no-evil-may-escape-my-sight\/\">In 2008<\/a>, I bemoaned the fact a Pop Art oil painting of the Green Lantern by Mel Ramos had that year sold at auction for $600,000, when a drawing by Martin Nodell, the man who&#8217;d created that character in 1940, had sold the previous year for only $77.68.<\/p>\n<p>That seemed wrong. It still does.<\/p>\n<p>Eighteen years later, the disparity between comics creators and those who exploit their creations remains, but one thing has changed &#8212; we now know who dropped that kind of cash for the Ramos.<\/p>\n<p>George Lucas, apparently &#8212; for it now hangs in the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LucasMuseumRamosGreenLantern.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LucasMuseumRamosGreenLantern-300x185.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"185\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-39758\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LucasMuseumRamosGreenLantern-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LucasMuseumRamosGreenLantern-1024x633.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LucasMuseumRamosGreenLantern-768x475.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LucasMuseumRamosGreenLantern.jpg 1131w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it was another gajillionaire who purchased the painting, and who then lent it to be displayed there. But until I hear differently, I&#8217;m putting my money on the man behind the <em>Star Wars<\/em> money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2008, I bemoaned the fact a Pop Art oil painting of the Green Lantern by Mel Ramos had that year sold at auction for $600,000, when a drawing by Martin Nodell, the man who&#8217;d created that character in 1940, had sold the previous year for only $77.68. That seemed wrong. It still does. Eighteen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39761,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39757\/revisions\/39761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}