Great Original Comic Art was sold in the first three months of 2023, so I thought it was time to dust off one of the most popular kind of articles published on this website: the seasonal highest prices top 10.

What prompted me to write this was mostly the sale of two original X-Men pages by John Byrne, something you never see on eBay. Considering that eBay auctions are deleted after three months I wanted to preserve a record.

And this chart is not only about Byrne, you’ll find some great vintage pieces by Art Adams, John Buscema, and even a Pre-Code horror cover.

Before we start with #1 please remember that this blog is very rarely updated, cause the time I have for writing about original art is spent every week for the Original Comic Art Tips newsletter, where I review auctions and auction results.

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Original Comic Art Top 10

1. Mike Mignola The Quarantine Sketchbook Original Cover Art – sold for $40,100

Many Hellboy and other character sketches were sold by Mike Mignola last year, with all proceeds going to charity. On December 31 2022 he sold this last piece, the cover to “The Quarantine Sketchbook”, a book compiling all of the sketches drawn and sold for charity during quarantine in 2020 (you can find a copy of the book here).

This was a surprise result, much higher than market value, but justified by the charity aspect.

2. John Byrne – Uncanny X-Men #124 – page 22 Original Comic Art – Sold for $38,400

It was a long time since an X-Men page by John Byrne appeared on eBay. They usually end on Heritage now, to maximize views and bidders, but eBay has the advantage of much lower commissions for the seller and zero for the buyer.

This seller appeared on eBay one day, putting for sale five premium JB pages, and obtained a good result. This was the top one, with the full team and even a kiss (a known boost for page value).

3. John Byrne – X-Men #130 – page 5 Original Comic Art – Sold for $21,600

Another Byrne X-Men page (from the same seller) sold for a high price for eBay standards, I like this kind of quieter pages, but comic art with no action and costumed heroes is less valuable.

4. John Buscema – Conan the Barbarian #139 Original Cover Art – Sold for $11,660

This is a “made for eBay” piece instead. It has everything: big name artist, top character, it’s a cover… but at the same time it’s not the most desirable Conan cover ever drawn by Buscema. Probably in a bigger auction it would be overshadowed by better classic pieces.

5. Al Avison – Chamber of Chills #26 Original Cover Art – Sold for $8,977

Another piece hard to find on eBay. Pre-Code horror covers, especially from Chamber of Chills, are hotter than ever lately. Not a lot of horror in this scene, more of a monsters/Fantasy piece, so it stayed low compared to more iconic covers.

6. Arthur Adams – Web Of Spider-Man Annual #2 – page 9 Original Comic Art – Sold for $8,700

Arthur Adams Original Comic Art has always been sought after, but prices have gone up quickly in the last two years, the same can be said about Spidey’s Black Suit.

7. Esteban Maroto – Savage Tales #3 Red Sonja original illustration – Sold for $8,600

I’m a big fan of Maroto, he can draw powerful images without making them look supeheroistic, a real fantasy illustrator (and a great comic artist). This is a top piece for any collection, and do I have to tell you how sought after are classic Sonja pages?

8. Arthur Adams – Web of Spider-Man Annual #2, page 31 Original Comic Art – Sold for $7,000

Another great page, but Spidey is less visible, so the price remained lower.

9. E.C. Segar – Popeye 1937 Original Daily Strip – Sold for $6,090

I missed the boat for a Popeye daily by Segar a few years ago, now I can’t afford to buy one of them anymore, but this one went for a really good price. A strip like this on a specialized auction could go for around $10k.

This strip is a bit static maybe, but it features four Popeye panels and one with Olivia and the Jeep, being from ’37 I’d consider it a mid-level strip for collection purposes, but still you’d be lucky to own any Segar strip!

10. John Byrne – Power Man #50 page 31 Original Comic Art – Sold for $5,233

This one is really #11, a Solar cover by Don Perlin was sold for $6k, but I can’t find an image. So we are looking at another nice Byrne piece. I always liked end pages, with the “next issue” blurb, giving the page more context, since you can’t read the entire issue.

$5k is starting to be the entry level price for vintage Byrne pages.

10.2. Don Perlin – Solar Man of the Atom #8 Original Cover Art – Sold for $6,000

After linking to this article on last week’s Comic Art Tips newsletter, a reader (thanks!) replied with a scan of this Solar cover he saved, so I’m updating it with the real #10 of this chart, but I left the Byrne Iron Fist page cause it’s nice to look at…

End Notes

Let’s do a quick recap: John Byrne original art obviously wins, but you can also notice that 7 out of 10 pieces are from Marvel Comics, with zero DC art. Then we have a Dark Horse/Independent cover, a Golden Age cover and a classic comic strip.

Since you’re reading till the end there’s a bonus piece: at the end of March a top Batman page by Kelley Jones was sold for almost 15k.  It had to be #4 of this chart (and that DC piece we asked for!), but it was then discovered that it was a printed fac-simile of a page, used by Graphitti Design as a flyer to advertise the Batman Gallery/Artist’s Edition they published (find a copy of the book here). The end price is still a useful info to have, since Batman original art by Jones very rarely comes to the market. I think it could go even higher since many collectors knew it was not the original art and avoided bidding on it.

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