DALLAS, TX.- Bestselling novelist and Sandman creator Neil Gaiman spent most of Thursday at Heritage Auctions’ world headquarters in Dallas, offering more than 125 prized pieces from his collection — everything from original comic artwork to signed books, a Coraline puppet used in the film to limited-edition sculptures, handmade Christmas stories given as gifts, to the awards he received. It was a day well spent: The completely sold-out Neil Gaiman Collection Comics & Comic Art Signature ® Auction, which drew more than 1,200 bidders worldwide, realized $1,029,392.

A portion of the auction’s proceeds will benefit The Hero Initiative, which provides medical and monetary assistance to veteran comics creators, writers and artists needing a helping hand. Some proceeds will also go to the Authors League Fund, which assists professional authors, journalists, critics, poets and dramatists in financial need because of medical or health-related problems, temporary loss of income or other misfortunes.

Gaiman will also share some of the proceeds with the artists who made his imagination tangible enough to put on Bristol board.

“I love the idea of benefitting charities that look after authors who’ve fallen on hard times, that look after the artists and writers and creators of comics who’ve had hard times,” Gaiman told the packed auction gallery Thursday morning. “And I like the idea of normalizing the idea that we who do have art we bought for $50 a page or $100 a page that now sells for tens of thousands of dollars a page get into the idea of giving something back to the artists who originally drew it. That seems to me an important thing to do.”

The auction’s top lot was a gift from writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons: a signed and inscribed page from their mini-series Watchmen in which the Nite Owl awakens from a horrific dream in which he and Silk Spectre are lovers obliterated by a nuclear blast. Gaiman, who spoke frequently during the event, reminded the audience he’d worked on the 1986 title and was among the three people to whom Moore and Gibbons dedicated Watchmen. He explained that he chose the page because he loved everything about it, including its use of dreams. “I was obsessed by dreams,” Gaiman said, “and I had yet to come to write Sandman.”

That single page from Watchmen No. 7 sold Thursday for $132,000.

Not far behind was the only piece of Sandman-related artwork Gaiman had ever purchased: Jean Giraud’s 1994 painting of Death of the Endless, sister of the titular Sandman whose epic tale spans the universe’s origin through the present day. This painting by the man called Moebius sparked a bidding war that drove its final price to $96,000. That was also the amount realized for John Totleben’s cover of Miracleman No. 16, the last issue written by Moore before Gaiman took the reins.

One of the auction’s most sought-after, fought-over pieces was among its smallest: an on-screen, camera-used puppet of Coraline in her orange polka-dot pajamas accompanied by her ever-present companion, The Cat — “fully posable actors,” as Gaiman explained. He told the audience that Coraline “has been in my bedroom in a glass case since 2009, and I had more qualms about letting her go than I did anything else in this entire auction. She’s there. She smiles at me. She’s special.”

It was so special that a bidding war broke out over Coraline, who eventually went to a new home for $72,000.

Some four and a half hours after the auction began, Gaiman had raised more than $1 million for his good causes.

“I am so thrilled,” he said at the event’s end. “It’s going to do so much good for so many people.”

“It was a privilege to work with Neil and his team to realize his vision for this auction,” says Roberta Kramer, Heritage’s Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Development. “Heritage is proud to have assisted in raising these funds for these artists Neil is working to support.”