DALLAS, TX.- The timing couldn’t be better: On June 10, the documentary Frank Miller: American Genius will screen in theaters for one night only. Only a few days later, during its June 20-23 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction, Heritage Auctions will offer several significant pieces of original comic book art showcasing Miller’s genius, among them his earliest cover to reach the auction block: 1980’s Daredevil No. 165. It’s fitting, as Miller and Daredevil are Men Without Fear.

There are, of course, numerous Golden Age essentials featured in this auction, the keys that revved an artform during its infancy — among them Batman’s first swing through Detective Comics No. 27, Superman No. 1, Batman No. 1, Marvel Comics No. 1 and Captain America Comics No. 1. There’s also a little Shazam! in this event with the highest-graded unrestored copy of Whiz Comics’ premiere issue — featuring the debut of Captain Marvel — Heritage has ever offered. In fact, there is just one other copy graded CGC 7.0 and only two graded higher; getting this Whiz is like capturing lighting in a bottle.

And among the myriad must-have works of original art in this event, there’s Alex Ross’ photo-realistic, double-spread painting of Captain Marvel lifted from 2000’s oversized Shazam! Power of Hope — the perfect bookend to that first Whiz. Ross’ Man of Steel soars, too, in this double-truck from 1998’s Superman: Peace on Earth. But Ross’ work — shiny like freshly polished gold in the mid-day sun, crisp as a chilled apple — couldn’t be more dissimilar to that of Frank Miller, whose characters always come from his pencil or paintbrush looking battered, grizzled, frayed. Miller might have been influenced by just about every other artist in this event — from Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr. to his mentors Will Eisner and Neal Adams and those pioneers featured in collector and historian Roger Hill’s legendary assemblage of pre-Code comic art — but there’s certainly no one like the American Genius working today.

The Daredevil cover in this auction hails from that (brief) period when Miller was transitioning from comicdom’s fill-in to its main attraction — and, simultaneously, helping resurrect a title gasping on its deathbed. As Miller once told The Comics Journal, “What I’m doing on Daredevil is a lot different from what was done before on Daredevil, and I think it’s rejuvenated him a bit ... he’s a fresher character.” Miller’s Daredevil work has become particularly coveted among collectors in recent years, with each auction generating new record highs for his original Hornhead artwork, culminating with the record $252,000 realized by his cover of Daredevil No. 190 in April.

Daredevil No. 165 came toward the end of Miller’s collaboration with Roger McKenzie, the former Creepy and Eerie writer who got to DD shortly before Miller and started slathering the title in darker shades than his predecessors. Miller was still a couple of issues away from taking complete control of the title, of elevating “the poor man’s Spider-Man” into “something much cooler” by “punishing him for my mistakes and sins,” Miller once said. Yet the cover, featuring a Daredevil (times four!) eluding the arms of Spider-Man’s nemesis Doctor Octopus, is recognizably Miller: a kinetic, grim good time.

From Daredevil No. 166 comes this page from the story in which Daredevil must take down the Gladiator so he can make Foggy Nelson’s wedding on time — a relatively light moment before Miller dropped Daredevil into a Hell’s Kitchen of his own making. Yet no matter the context, even this page showcases Miller’s ability to turn the static into the cinematic, the two-dimensional tussle into a full-bodied — and fully bloodied — tussle.

By Daredevil No. 188, in which a poisoned Black Widow spends the entire issue looking for a Man Without Fear too scared to emerge from an isolation tank, Miller had complete control over the title (with collaborator, inker-penciler-and-colorist Klaus Janson). This action-packed page from that period is major Miller: a brutal, beautiful swordfight involving a member of The Hand — Miller’s mystical ninjas ordered to kill Daredevil — wrought in shadow and sound you can almost hear. From that same year comes another coveted Miller page from his four-issue, limited-run team-up with Chris Claremont, 1982’s Wolverine, in which the Hand also has a hand in the violence spread across its bloodied pages.

Four years later, of course, followed Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the work that made Miller a rock star to kids who hung out in comic shops. Pages from that mini-series will rank amongst collectors’ most sought-after so long as comic books continue to crib from the story about the retired Batman who, in middle age, again dons cape and cowl to fight mutant and Superman alike.

From that mini-series’ second book, “Dark Knight Triumphant,” comes a page that kicks the tale into overdrive: Batman’s just been thrashed by the Mutant Leader, only to be rescued by the 13-year-old girl who wants to be his next Robin, Carrie Kelley, against Alfred’s demands. The president has summoned Superman to get Batman under control — “to settle him down” by any means necessary. The mayor has been murdered. The Joker’s about to be freed. Bruce Wayne believes he’s dying. All is seemingly lost — until this page set in the Batcave, where Batman dons the cowl to proclaim, “But the war goes on.”

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was just one book from the 1980s that “slapped the genre awake,” as Miller once told Heritage. The other was Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 12-issue murder-mystery dressed up in superhero Spandex that, like Dark Knight Returns, has been misinterpreted and misappropriated by subsequent generations of writers and artists who thought it enough to make their stories violent and sexualized. This page from Issue No. 7 makes the case that Watchmen was much more than a bleak superhero satire.

It’s from the issue “A Brother to Dragons,” its title lifted from The Book of Job passage that reads, “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.” The almost self-contained story reunites Silk Spectre (Laurie Juspeczyk) and Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg), thrust together out of loneliness, nostalgia, lust — and the deep need to be seen as heroic after decades in hiding. After an awkward, failed tryst, they dust off the Owlship and their masked-avenger get-ups to remind themselves of what it meant to be needed, at which point they espy a packed tenement ablaze. In this single page, Laurie’s heroism and Dan’s libido are awakened, while a child caught in the blaze wonders, “That guy in the space rocket, is that Jesus?”