DALLAS, TX.- The eye wanders, and the mind reels at the breadth and depth of history, virtuosity and delights offered in
Heritage's June 22-25 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction. Where to begin among the nearly 1,500 works and wonders available? With a Frank Frazetta painting so momentous it graced both beloved book and acclaimed album covers? With very-best Golden Age Batmans? Or pages documenting the birth of Bane, revolutionary work from an underground trailblazer, original Calvin and Hobbes strips, the first meeting of MAD's "Spy vs. Spy"? The list is boundless. And endlessly entertaining.
Better to begin at the beginning, or close enough, with a centerpiece as striking as it is historic: a Jack Kirby-Joe Simon splash page from just the fifth issue of Captain America Comics to hit newsstands, a work so early in the Sentinel of Liberty's forever-unfolding tale that the United States hadn't yet entered the Second World War. This work was a marvel before there was a Marvel, when Cap's publisher was called Timely and Simon and Kirby were scrappy young comers decades away from ascending to the realm of legend.
"The best Golden Age Timely art, such as this historic splash page, is basically impossible to find," says Heritage Auctions Senior Vice President Ed Jaster. "Only a scant few pages are even known to exist, and this is the best splash page we've ever seen – by miles – prominently featuring Captain America and Bucky. To describe it as museum quality is only scratching the surface."
Eight stories were stuffed into that issue of Captain America Comics No. 5, which hit newsstands on May 5, 1941. Among them: "The Terror That Was Devil's Island," in which Steve Rogers and his sidekick Bucky find their friend Tom Jason held captive by the cruel Commandant Pepo Laroc. All's well that ends well, with Jason freed to join the Greek air force's fight against the Nazis. But this splash, created by Kirby and Simon, hints at the grim realism that marked their early, best work – lean, lithe, brutal, tangible.
"The team of Simon and Kirby brought anatomy back into comic books," cartoonist Jules Feiffer wrote in his 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes, which for many fledgling fans served as an introduction to and explanation of the medium's Golden Age. "Not that the other artists didn't draw well ... but no one could put quite as much anatomy into a hero as Simon and Kirby. Muscles stretched magically, fore-shortened shockingly. Legs were never less than four feet apart when a punch was thrown. Every panel was a population explosion — casts of thousands: all fighting, leaping, crawling."
Nowhere was that more apparent than on their cover of Captain America Comics No. 1, represented in this auction with one of the world's finest issues: a copy graded Near Mint- 9.2 by Certified Guaranty Company. There are but three copies graded higher, making this issue – freshly graded and new to market! – among the most significant copies of one of comicdom's landmark titles.
A year before the United States entered World War II, Captain America laid knuckles to Hitler's jaw and crushed the Third Reich on the cover of Captain America Comics No. 1, which debuted December 20, 1940. Thanks to a government experiment, Cap was the scrawny soldier who became a punching patriot clad in an outfit that looked like something stitched together from Betsy Ross' leftover scraps. And for a short while, he was the best-selling superhero in the business – more popular, even, than that other muscle-bound man in tights fighting for truth, justice and the American way. From the 1930s through the '60s, Simon and Kirby were to comics what Rodgers and Hammerstein were to the American musical, as inseparable as they were influential. But Cap and his creators spent precious little time together: Simon and Kirby, whose influence on the medium spread across decades, worked on only 10 issues of Captain America Comics. They would leave Timely after a dispute over royalties with publisher Martin Goodman.
After working with old heroes and New Gods for DC, Kirby returned to Marvel in the mid-1970s, where he revisited Cap until again turning his eyes skyward – toward The Eternals, who may have been Kirby's most cosmic (and controversial) creations. In some ways, the title was a brassy summation of Kirby's career – a gaudy psychedelic freak-out pitting space gods against space gods.
The Eternals, which Kirby wrote and drew, lasted but 19 issues, and the entirety of that final issue is available in this event, from cover to climax. To find a complete Kirby is rare enough, but there's more: The original art for this issue, a collaboration with Frank Giacoia and Mike Royer, is signed twice by King Kirby.
There is, perhaps, a single work in this event that could overshadow such estimable Kirbys – and it's by the artist who holds Heritage's auction record for comic art, Frank Frazetta. It's entirely possible his Dark Kingdom could shatter the $5.4 million mark set by Egyptian Queen in 2019. After all, it's among his most potent pieces, depicting the swollen warrior with the winged helmet and the blood-dripping ax advancing over the skeletons of the fallen. And it's easily among his most recognizable and reproduced.
Frazetta – the Norman Rockwell of the swords-and-sorcery set, a man who could make the brutal look sexy and the sexy look dangerous – named it Dark Kingdom when the painting was first used as the cover of Karl Edward Wagner's 1976 novel Dark Crusade, one in a series of tales about the immortal pre-medieval warrior Kane. But it's far better known for its second appearance, as the album cover for Molly Hatchet's 1979 Flirtin' With Disaster, the Jacksonville boogie-rockers' second record and a best-seller. The band adorned several albums with Frazetta pieces – including its eponymous 1978 debut, which featured the Death Dealer – and it was like someone had dipped their swords into someone else's Southern rock. Frazetta posters were suddenly tacked up in the rooms of head-bangers in leather who'd never read a single John Carter or Conan novel or thumbed through an issue of Creepy or Vampirella. Dark Kingdom became among Frazetta's most-reproduced works. But there is just one original, and it's in this auction – available to the public for the very first time. "Frazetta probably generates more passionate interest than any artist to have ever worked in the field," says Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Todd Hignite. "So, without a doubt, it's a very special event when an unquestionably major painting from the artist's peak period comes to market for the first time ever – especially one so firmly implanted in the larger popular culture. Everyone who sees this dramatic image gets an immediate jolt of recognition."
Also taking their first spin at the auction block are several of Bane co-creator Graham Nolan's earliest originals featuring The Man Who Broke the Bat, among them five pages from his debut appearance in 1993's Batman: Vengeance of Bane No. 1. Nolan offers these pages from his collection from the first time, and they're among the most consequential in the juiced giant's origin story – those few pages where Bane meets the Bat, among them Page 42, where Bane gets his first glimpses Batman and concludes that killing the Dark Knight "will take finesse … requires talent." Here, as well, is the two-page sequence during which Bane and Batman have their first conversation: "Who are you?" asks Batman, to which Bane responds, "You will know my name one day. And on that day you will beg for mercy."
Thus began the "Knightfall" event. And within just a few months, in Batman No. 497, Bane broke Batman's back, a horror depicted by another Nolan 19 years later when Tom Hardy's Bane crippled Christian Bale's Batman in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. And in an event brimming with historical moments, here are two more from Graham Nolan: from 1992, his earliest conceptual rendering of Bane complete with notes ("acnes all over body as a result of steroid use"), which is signed and dated, along with another featuring accomplices Zombie, Trogg and Bird.
"Bane has been an integral part of my life and career since I first conceived of his look back in 1992," Nolan says. "I stopped selling my artwork more than 20 years ago, and some of these pieces have hung in my studio at least that long. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the printing of Bane's first appearance in Batman: Vengeance of Bane, and since then he has gone on to become an iconic character around the world. I can think of no better time to share with the world and the fans that love him the joy Bane and these pages have given me."
Of course, this auction has myriad other Dark Knight highlights, including Jim Lee and Scott Williams' cover for Batman No. 610, otherwise known as the third chapter in the "Hush" storyline. In this signed piece, Batman fends off Killer Croc's lethal advances – in the same issue that concludes with Batman and Catwoman locked in a passionate embrace. And from Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, one of the comics that changed the medium forever, comes a coveted offering: Page 14 from Book Four, which depicts, among other things, Superman trying to save 25 million people from death by a Russian nuclear warhead.
As for Batman books, two of the finest known Golden Age offerings make their auction debuts in this event: Batman No. 50 and Batman No. 59, each graded CGC Near Mint+ 9.6 only weeks ago. Each is historical: The former features the first use of "Harvey Dent" to refer to Two-Face, while the Suicide Squad's eventual co-founder Deadshot debuts in the latter (looking more magician than mercenary). But the grades are just as remarkable: No copies of either book are graded higher, and this Batman No. 59 is the single highest-graded example in the world.
Heritage is also thrilled to present these two brilliant beauties: original Calvin and Hobbes daily strips among the few ever to reach auction. One dates from March 28, 1986, less than a year into the strip's decade-long run, and features Bill Watterson's 6-year-old boy and his talking (stuffed) tiger donning sunglasses to look "cooler than we are." Watterson gifted the strip to a colleague upon whom he imparted his "best wishes."
The other Calvin and Hobbes offered in this event appeared on Dec. 30, 1987, and ranks among the series' classics: Here, Calvin and Hobbes build "the strongest snow fort ever made" … right behind the garage. "WHERE'S THAT KID?!" shouts his father, who realizes the family truckster is trapped by a wall of ice and snow. This strip, too, was a gift from Watterson, who inscribed the work to someone named Ann: "Best wishes with your ‘little Calvin,'" he wrote beside his familiar all-caps signature. Another beloved twosome, Antonio Prohías' "Spy vs. Spy," also appears in this auction – and theirs is a historic appearance. These six panels featuring the beady-eyed beak-nose agents clad in matching black and white outfits and dreaming of booby traps and revenge originally appeared in MAD No. 60 – the first issue in which Prohías' mute pair faced off. Prohías' creations debuted in January 1961, just eight months after he fled Castro's Cuba, having been accused of working for the CIA. When he arrived at the MAD offices, he spoke no English. But the joke was universal: In 1983, Prohías told the Miami Herald, "The sweetest revenge has been to turn Fidel's accusation of me as a spy into a moneymaking venture."
In an auction packed with milestone works by influential creators, Aline Kominsky-Crumb is right at home. From the woman The New York Times called a "pioneering comics memoirist" upon her death at 74 last year, Heritage is proud to offer the complete 10-page story "Wiseguys" from 1994's Twisted Sisters No. 4, the final issue of the limited series that took its name from the beloved and influential 1976 one-shot. It's one of Kominsky-Crumb's funniest stories, a flashback to the early 1960s filled with her father and his sketchy friends known to collect things that "fell" off the back of trucks. It's Martin Scorsese filtered through the underground guest-starring Robert Crumb instead of Robert DeNiro. "Wiseguys" is the story she recounted to the Huffington Post in 2017, when she said, "My father was a wannabe criminal. If he could have been a 'Goodfella,' he would have. But he wasn't Italian. He was Jewish. So he was a total loser." On the other hand, his daughter changed how women told their stories, and comic books would never be the same.
