Original Comic Art Tips - Issue #107

Welcome to #107 of original Comic Art Tips!! Another very long issue, mostly due to AuctionResults:

eBay: a few years ago high end pages were put for sale on ebay to gauge interest and sell for a lower price privately… Look at the Daredevil #4 page by Joe Orlando, instead, sold for $7,700 (a good price) and the Avengers page by John Byrne sold for $8k.

A Superman DPS by Dan Jurgens was sold for a best offer of $1,800, a Star Wars painting by Gabriele Dell'Otto went for $2,100. I’m pretty sure this Kirby Avengers page sold for $3k is fake… what do you think?

The Mike Huddleston Magneto cover went for $1,700, the JLA cover by Ed Benes for only $1k, Avengers original art by Perez for $1,000, the Warlock cover by Alan Davis for a best offer of $900.

High prices for Hero Initiative blanks, George Perez went for $2,500, Adam Kubert for $1,900 and Whilce Portacio for $1,100.

Heritage Sunday: the great Conan page by Buscema went for more than $4k, MOKF pages by Gene Day doubled prices in just a couple months. I think John Byrne is not accepting commissions anymore, but still the Cap/Witch piece went for $700, the exact “2 characters with no backgrounds” price JB asked a few years ago. This Lady Death DPS by Steven Hughes went for $400, I thought it would sell for two times that price. Any DPS inked by George Perez for $300 is good.

Heritage Charity Auction: the Batman portrait by Jim Lee went for $2,700, the Superman by Chris Samnee looked like his regular $500 commissions, happy this one went for $1,300. The Rom prelim by Bill Sienkiewicz went for $800, while the Superman one for only $230. The wraparound sketch cover by Adam Hughes went for only $660, a Superman DPS by Howard Porter for only $150. I really don’t know why a John Cassaday cover went for only $900.

The Frazetta illustration went for almost $500k.

Gaines/MAD auction: Original art from MAD artists is not often for sale, I’m not really aware of prices. Let’s say that almost all pieces ended over the $1k mark, the top seller was a CGC 9.8 copy of MAD #1 sold for $96k, then a Kelly Freas cover sold for $45k, a Will Elder illustration for $22k. A big drop to the $10k of this Don Martin page and all the rest.

Daniel Maghen: the auction went well and they even made an overview of the results, less work for me. This is a Google translation from french that I edited a bit adding links.

“Success for this 1st auction comic book and illustration by Daniel Maghen Auctions with 94% of the lots sold.

TOTAL RESULT: 2.406,079 € All tax included

BEST SALE

HERGÉ - The Black Island - The Little Twentieth - 1938 (cover of Petit Vingtième n ° 6). Realized price: 264 000 € All tax included. All the original Hergé (6 lots) were sold for 517 200 € TTC.

ANDRE JUILLARD - In the opening of this sale, a first part was dedicated to André Juillard; 29 works out of 31 were sold and reached 350 000 € TTC (estimate: 230 000 €).

The best selling of this section is an original color page of Blue Book (pl.6, 1993), estimated at € 10,000 and acquired at € 37,000 including tax.

NEW RECORDS

Some artists have set new world records: Juan Gimenez (cover of La Caste des Méta-Barons at € 37,700), Alex Alice (cover of the Third Testament at € 31,600) and Gos (cover of Scrameustache at 11,190) € VAT included).

BESTSELLERS

Among the best sales, we find André Franquin (the five lots were sold for € 279,120 including tax, including a cover of Spirou and Fantasio € 191,000 TTC and a half-board of Gaston € 47,400 including tax), Jean Giraud (The five lots sold for 85 100 € TTC, including a board of Blueberry 35 500 € TTC, Hugo Pratt (half-board of Corto Maltese to 52 640 € TTC), Enki Bilal (original plate of Hunting Party to 29 000 € TTC), Jean-Pierre Gibrat (the two lots to 43 430 € TTC including a board of the Flight of the Raven to 27 640 € TTC), Ana Mirallès (the two lots sold to 31 300 € TTC whose coverage of the integral from Djinn to € 19,140 including taxes), Joann Sfar (Rabbi Cat cover volume 8 to € 24,250), Benjamin Lacombe (Curiosities luxury cover to € 20,400) and Sylvain Vallée (Katanga board to € 14,000) TTC).

Some works have produced very good prices: Cosey (cover of Jonathan to 17 870 € TTC), Vance (cover of Bruno Brazil to 16 590 € TTC), Gotlib (board Superdupont to 14 480 € TTC), Roger (board of Jazz Maynard at 5 740 € TTC) and Sempé (illustration at 10 270 € TTC).”

What I noticed is that most of the pieces sold remained near the low estimate, the Blacksad page went for a high but regular price, two pages of original art by Enrico Marini went unsold, the Blueberry page (with a €13/15k estimate) was sold for more than €35K.

A half page of Corto Maltese went for $52k, while a watercolour sketch page stayed inside the regular evaluation.