There’s plenty of incredible art to savour in the upcoming Heritage’s 6th – 8th October 2023 International Original Art and Anime Signature Auction, including pages from 2000AD, art by Moebius and an host of American and European talents, including Dave Gibbons, Steve Ditko, David Lloyd, Frank Miller and Albert Uderzo.
Two of the most renowned sequences from two of the most important American comics ever published — both from 1986 — serve as the centrepieces of the auction. What’s even more remarkable: Neither the Joker’s death in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns nor the Comedian’s murder depicted in the first issue of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen has ever been offered at auction. In fact, the latter page was thought lost, until its recent discovery in Paris.
“It was bought in 1988,” says Olivier Delflas, Heritage’s Director of International Comic Art and Anime, “and then forgotten.”
As though such a thing were possible! The sadistic Edward Blake’s murder, which occurs just three pages into Watchmen, sets in motion the darkly comic story to come — one that forever changed how comics were written, drawn, read and interpreted, for better or worse.
Indeed, for decades Watchmen has been regarded as the pinnacle of the medium, the moment comic books “grew up” and “became literature,” as is often written. It was the lone comic series on Time‘s “All-TIME 100 Novels” list from 2010. And as the BBC put it in 2016, “Alan Moore’s graphic novel … paved the way for a current cultural obsession.”
Yet Moore has long struggled with his work’s impact, the way others seized upon its violence and grim worldview and spread it throughout the medium. In an interview published just days ago in the Daily Telegraph, the author said he objects to “the gentrification of comics that happened post-Watchmen: that neighbourhood has been lifted out of the reach of its original inhabitants,” by which he means the little kids for whom “innocent and inventive and imaginative superhero characters” were initially created.
Seeing this original work now, along with its matching colour guide, is to shove aside all the baggage that has accumulated over the last 37 years. That page can exist solely for what it is: the murder in Moore’s envisioned murder-mystery that allowed him to subvert the medium.
As Moore told Comic Book Artist more than 20 years ago, “I suppose I was just thinking, ‘That’d be a good way to start a comic book: have a famous superhero found dead.’ As the mystery unraveled, we would be led deeper and deeper into the real heart of this superhero’s world and show a reality that was very different to the general public image of the superhero. So, that was the idea.”
And it’s all here on this single page, one of two Holy Grails available in this auction rife with landmark works.
The other is from the work Frank Miller said “slapped the genre awake” when he spoke to Heritage last year: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. And it’s spread over two pages, which gave Frank Miller and collaborator Klaus Janson room enough to depict one of comicdom’s most horrific and controversial episodes: that moment in The Dark Knight Returns where Batman paralyzes the Joker but resists the urge to kill him. Ultimately, the Joker finishes the job by snapping his own neck — “With a devil’s strength … he twists … and twists” — to make it appear The Dark Knight committed an unimaginable murder. There’s been a long-held fan theory that Batman actually finished the job and that he only imagined Joker taking his own life.
That sequence continues to resonate on comic shop shelves to this very day.
Earlier this year, in Batman No. 135, writer Chip Zdarsky introduced the so-called Prime Earth Batman to his Dark Knight counterpart. Toward the issue’s end, “our” Bruce Wayne asks Frank Miller’s Batman if he killed the Joker. The Dark Knight responds: “No. I had his neck in my hands. And I didn’t finish the job.”
In countless ways, The Dark Knight Returns‘ echo resonates like a thunderclap 37 years later, much like Watchmen‘s.
Were those this auction’s sole highlights, along with Miller’s electric Elektra pages, that would suffice. But as Delflas says, “This auction is among the best in recent years, both for its American original art and its assortment of Franco-Belgian originals featuring many Golden Age legends, including Hergé, Andre Franquin and Albert Uderzo.”
2000AD is well represented, with plenty of pages by Carlos Ezquerra on offer, along with a cover by Mick Austin intended for use as a Warrior magazine cover, ultimately used for Laser Eraser and Press Button #4. There are some Marvel UK covers by Mick, and a poster image in the mix, too.
There’s even an “Andy Capp” strip by Reg Smythe tucked into the delicious mix of pages, sitting bizarrely alongside work by Moebius, Sanjulian and more.
Among the American icons, collectors will find Page 11 from The Amazing Spider-Man No. 36 by — who else? — the legendary Steve Ditko, who pits the web slinger against the Looter in the epic page rendered toward the end of Ditko’s 38-issue run on Spidey.
Another iconic Amazing Spider-Man page is on offer, too, from issue No. 52, in which John Romita Sr. and Mike Esposito show web-head going head to head with the Kingpin. There’s another marvelous Marvel in here, as well: John Byrne and Terry Austin‘s work from X-Men No. 129, the start of the Hellfire Club storyline that led to … the Dark Phoenix Saga!
Just hours after Heritage sold a 1939 Alex Raymond Flash Gordon original for $312,000, Delflas is thrilled to offer one from even earlier, published on 4th March 1934. The catalogue proudly notes, “This was just the ninth Flash Gordon strip ever!” It’s as historic as it is epic, as valuable as it is beautiful.
The international offerings are just as legendary … or legionary, if you will, in the case of Page 35 from Astérix Légionnaire (“Asterix the Legionary”) No. 10, one among numerous sought-after works by the adored Albert Uderzo. Initially published in 1967 in the French comic magazine Pilote No. 385, Uderzo’s pages from this landmark work — featuring the beloved Asterix and Obelix and Julius Caesar himself — are among the most coveted by collectors.
The catalogue notes that this page exhibits “the perfect marriage of line and word for Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny’s Laurel and Hardy, whose remain beloved pop-culture figures worldwide.
“Uderzo’s originals,” says Delflas, “are as rare as those by Hergé, Franquin or Peyo.”
From the collection of Enrico Marini comes a wraparound cover of 2000’s La Marque du Diable No. 1, which kicked off the cloak-and-dagger Scorpion series set in 18th-century Rome. This rendering of the titular Scorpion, Armando Catalano, “is a real feast for the eyes,” says Delflas, “and sure to turn the heads of collectors the world over.” It’s one of several works from Marini, including another of this event’s Batman must-haves.
When the auction opened, a page by Moebius jumped to the front of bidders’ line: Page 92 from 1979’s Major Fatal, The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius, which dazzles and delights as only Jean Giraud could.
A Giraud page from Blueberry, Arizona Love No. 23 is another of Delflas’ favourites, alongside Barry Windsor-Smith’s original art from 1979’s A Young Knight portfolio. The latter two works feature kissing characters — appropriate for an auction that’s a love letter to the medium.
The anime section of this event is no less spectacular, highlighted by, among other lots, “the most perfect, pretty Pokémon cel featuring Ash and Pikachu ever offered at Heritage,” says Delflas.
• Browse the entirety of Heritage’s 6th – 8th October International Original Art and Anime Signature Auction here
Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam and Hong Kong
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: 2000AD, Art and Illustration, British Comics, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Events, Other Worlds
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