DALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions swings into the new year with one of the most famous and beloved covers of the Bronze Age: Al Milgrom’s original art for The Amazing Spider-Man No. 194, which, in the summer of 1979, introduced Black Cat — the “starling new villainess” who’s been Spider-Man’s on-again-off-again love interest ever since. The cover has never before been to auction and is among the numerous fresh-to-market centerpiece offerings in the January 9-12 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction that brims with newly offered comic book and comic art treasures that come in shades Golden, Silver and Bronze.
Originally, Black Cat — real name: Felicia Hardy, daughter of a cat burglar — wasn’t even intended as a Spider-Man villain. As her co-creator Marv Wolfman has explained numerous times, including in the letters page that ran in Spider-Man No. 194, she was created during his run on Spider-Woman. But when he jumped titles at the end of 1978, he took the Cat with him. And, in the end, her real-world origin story proved in some ways more intriguing than her comic-book bow.
Despite the inevitable comparisons, Wolfman has long said he “never even thought of Catwoman” when creating Black Cat. “I got the idea for her from a Tex Avery cartoon, Bad Luck Blackie,” he once told Comic Book Resources, referring to a 1949 short film about a black cat who brought bad luck to anyone who crossed its path. Wolfman took the idea to artist Dave Cockrum, who had revamped the X-Men with Len Wein in May 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men, introducing the likes of Colossus, Storm and Nightcrawler, the latter a two-toed, three-fingered, tail-wagging transporter who DC Comics had once rejected as “too weird-looking.”
When Cockrum died in 2006 at 63, Neal Adams told The New York Times that Cockrum created “just crazy characters,” which included Black Cat. That same year, Wolfman told Wizard that Cockrum’s “designs were not only clear but perfectly thought out” and that Black Cat’s white-fur-accented outfit was “definitely one of the great costumes.”
Milgrom, who’d previously worked on Captain Marvel and the “Guardians of the Galaxy” stories for Marvel Presents before co-creating Firestorm at DC, had just returned to the House of Ideas and landed on Spider-Man just in time to catch Black Cat’s first leap onto a comic book cover. His run at Marvel, where he served as an editor beginning in 1979, was remarkable: Milgrom drew and inked, among other titles, The Avengers, Defenders, Secret Wars II, Captain America, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, What If ... and on and on. He got his start working for Murphy Anderson, inked Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and worked with Neal Adams at Continuity Associates. You name a title, he likely laid a hand on it throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
In all, as penciler and inker, Milgrom was responsible for more than 1,000 covers during his tenures at DC (including the All-Star Comics revival, Weird War Tales and Batman) and Marvel. But in the end, his cover for The Amazing Spider-Man No. 194 leaps to the front of the line as the most famous one of his 50-year career.
“As we saw with Rob Liefeld’s Deadpool debut in our last auction, where it sold for nearly $1 million, first appearances of major characters are hugely sought after by collectors and represent many of our strongest prices in every auction,” says Executive Vice President Todd Hignite. “Bidding on this cover will be very exciting.”
Indeed, moments after the auction went live Tuesday morning, bidding on Milgrom’s cover rocketed to $60,000.
But numerous original works in this auction could have served as centerpieces, chief among them Jack Kirby and Mike Royer’s cover of 1978’s graphic novel The Silver Surfer(or, as it’s come to be known, The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience) — “a stone-cold Marvel classic!” as the catalog announces with a subtlety Stan Lee would have appreciated.
The Surfer, natch, ranks among Kirby’s most potent and popular creations — one who “came out of a feeling,” Kirby told the San Diego Comic-Con audience in 1970. He said Galactus was intended to be a God, with the Surfer “some kind of fallen angel” kicked out of paradise and exiled to earth. This graphic novel wasn’t just the first of its kind but ranks among Kirby’s finest work — as intimate as it is imposing, lithe and lyrical. No less significant is Kirby and Joe Sinnott’s splash page that kicked off 1969’s Fantastic Four No. 83, an Inhumans tale that asked “Shall Man Survive?”
One of this auction’s most significant offerings hails from Daredevil No. 5, best known as the issue where Wally Wood (as Wallace Wood) was introduced as the title’s new artist — “a permanent artist of sufficient stature” — in collaboration with writer Stan Lee. Wood’s move was so significant it was even hailed on the issue’s cover: “Under the brilliant artistic craftsmanship of famous artist Wally Wood, Daredevil reaches new heights of glory!” From that issue hails this original “Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up” featuring the Man Without Fear walking a highwire; just two issues later, Wood redesigned Daredevil’s costume before abruptly leaving the title he helped define for decades to come.
Speaking of, Frank Miller collectors will find a more modern Marvel included here: a page from Daredevil No. 166, in which the Man Without Fear tangles with Gladiator. Miller’s run on Daredevil has become particularly coveted of late, second only to his work as creator of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
Fortunately, that Batman rips through this auction, as well — on the cover of 1986’s ’Mazing Man No. 12, of all things, the final issue of Bob Rozakis and Stephen DeStefano’s comic book about a diminutive hero with a tossed-together costume and a sitcom’s worth of friends. The Dark Knight debuted earlier that year, and Rozakis, who counted among his numerous DC duties its production manager, hoped Miller’s beefy Batman could save his dying book. It didn’t. But Rozakis considers that cover “the missing piece of [Miller’s] Dark Knight collection.” No doubt collectors will, too.
Last month, collectors seized upon one of Harvey Kurtzman’s most famous covers, 1954’s Mad No. 10, which realized $204,000 — close to a record for the man once dubbed “The Matisse of Mad Magazine.” The January event features an equally coveted cover dating to his tenure decorating EC Comics’ war titles: the cover of 1952’s Two-Fisted Tales No. 26. The thousand-yard stare of the Marine disturbs the reader, as intended; you’re having a conversation with the nearly frozen soldier. This work, one masterpiece among many in Kurtzman’s catalog, is yet another significant piece making its auction debut after decades hidden in a private collection.
That goes for comic books, too. Look no further than The Lester Schilke Collection, which Heritage Auctions Vice President Barry Sandoval says is “an incredibly fresh-looking, original-owner Golden Age and even pre-Golden Age collection.”
That’s evident in the CGC Very Fine 8.0 copy of 1940’s Detective Comics No. 38 that appears on this auction’s catalog cover. It’s the best copy of this historic book Heritage has seen in more than 15 years and just the second unrestored copy certified with white pages. And, as though it needs more introduction, this is the book in which Robin made his debut, just a handful of issues after The Dark Knight’s debut in Detective Comics No. 27.
The Henry Morrison Collection offers a stunning showcase of Showcase comics, “almost every one of which is the best copy we have ever seen,” Sandoval says. It’s almost as though Rip Hunter traveled back to the 1950s to snatch these copies off the newsstand, especially this CGC Near Mint 9.4 Showcase No. 20 — one of the three best-known examples of the book that introduced the Time Master.
The new year brings another new copy of a classic book to market: this CGC Very Good 4.0 copy of Suspense Comics No. 3 published in 1944 by Et-Es-Go. High-grade copies of this book are extraordinarily difficult to come by and extraordinarily expensive when they do pop up, like in 2017, when a near-mint copy realized $262,900 in 2017. But it’s among the most coveted copies in the hobby, to the point where it’s often referred to as the most valuable non-superhero comic ever published because of its Alex Schomburg cover and inclusion as a “very rare” entry in Ernst Gerber’s Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books.
