Legendary Comic Artist Jim Lee is helping his way in the Covid-19 pandemic by doing what he does best: drawing superheroes!

Here’s the description in his own words:

“Here’s a chance to get some Jim Lee original comic art and do something good during these unprecedented times. I’ll be drawing and posting 60 different sketches – one a day – over the next two months which I will then be auctioning off with all the proceeds going to a fund (Book Industry Charitable Foundation) which will benefit local comic shops/brick and mortar stores in need. High bidder of each sketch gets to pick the next DC character I draw for the next sketch in queue! No character (version) to be repeated!”

Prices will go up:

These 60 pieces of original Jim Lee art will then be collected by DC Comics in a single volume, and each drawing is going to be published as a variant cover to a future comic book (adding to the value of the original art). Auctions are going great, the first 10 pieces already raised almost $90K, I’ll be following along documenting these auctions 10 at a time, so come back next week for auctions 11-20.

I think he started with the idea of doing “quicker” sketches (look at #1, Nightwing), then when he/DC decided to publish them, began to add more detail, culminating (for now) in #9: a cover quality depiction of Batman and Catwoman.

End prices vary, based on character and detail, from the $4,800 of Bizarro to $17,300 of Batman/Catwoman. I’ll be putting them in a chart, we’ll see at the end (in a final post) how the curve goes.

Click here to see current original art auctions from Jim Lee!

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Winter ended a few days ago, so it’s time again for our report on the best original comic art sold on eBay during the last 3 months! As usual we have a top ten for auctioned pages and one for Buy It Now sales. The order of this chart is by highest price only.

Are you all fans of Rob Liefeld? If you follow ebay sales on the Original Comic Art Tips Newsletter (subscribe on the homepage of this website) we experienced a flood of original art by Liefeld since December, (here’s a link to original Liefeld art sold since January, I counted 29 pieces) most of the best pieces were sold by the same two accounts, but after seeing the very high prices for vintage Marvel art many collectors followed putting for sale their original art. So that said, let’s see the chart, with 6 out of 10 pieces drawn by the same artist! (altro…)

 

1) Gene Colan: Howard the Duck #11 Original Cover Art – $11,988

A high price for eBay standards, but for a classic and funny cover with high display value. The last two covers sold on Heritage (#6 and Annual #1) went for much higher prices, and I find this one better. Great inks by Steve Leialoha. (altro…)

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1) Jack Kirby: The Mighty Thor #161 Original Comic Art – $7,300.

As it often happens Jack Kirby comes first, with a solid Thor page. An action panel, 2 Thor portraits and a full Mjolnir panel. It’s not rare to find nice Kirby pages on eBay, auction houses lately put for sale 20+ Kirby originals in every auction, with the risk for mid-price pieces to get lost. (altro…)

 

Charlie Adlard – The Walking Dead “Here’s Negan” splash page. $900

Original art by Charlie Adlard from The Walking Dead isn’t rare to find (there are a couple pages every week on eBay for example) and it’s also very affordable… that is if you want pages with LIVE people only. Pages with people fighting Zombies are very rare and often sell for premium prices. Here we have a cover quality splash with Negan fighting a big group of walkers, the end price is pretty cheap, probably because this page was from a spinoff series and not published in the regular TWD series. (altro…)

 

1 – Whilce Portacio, Iron-Man vol. 2 #4 Original Cover Art (click here to see the original listing), $6,000.

Heroes Reborn was a big deal in the mid-90’s, Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (with artists from theis studios) briefly returned to Marvel Comics to revamp some of their classic characters in a decade dominated by mutants. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to find a Marvel cover from the 90’s for under $3,000, the price seems right.

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1 – Bob Layton/Joe Rubinstein, What If? #32 Original Comic Art (click here to see the original listing), $15,300.

Great cover art, detailed inking and with a lot of display value. High quality pieces like this one are rare to find on eBay. This is almost a record for Bob Layton penciled original art, an Iron-Man cover was sold for $19k in last February’s Heritage Auction. Prices for Layton’s art in the last year have taken a good leap forward. (altro…)

 

Jack Kirby, Journey Into Mystery #124, page 16 original art, $5,1k. Pretty obvious that the King would win this chart. Nice pieces like this one usually go to other auction houses or, when on Ebay, they’re usually for sale with unrealistic Buy it Now prices.

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Frank Frazetta, Buck Rogers, Famous Funnies cover art, $552k. Frazetta is probably more known/collected as a fantasy painter, so a price like this for early comics work is especially interesting. At the same time this is one of his most beloved pieces of original comic art, we’ll see if this result will drive to an increase in price for all of his non painted comic art.

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