Now Hulk Smash World Record! 9.2 #1 issue brings more than $125,000 at Heritage Auctions!

Nov. 20, 2009

Posted by Noah

Easy there, big fella... Easy there...

What I really want to know is why The Hulk's skin changed from more gray-green to more lime green over the years... A little too much broccoli, perhaps, and not enough irradiated beef?

Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week...

The real reason you're checking this post out is to find out more about the 9.2 certified Hulk#1 that sold at Heritage yesterday as part of our November Signature Vintage Comics auction, and I don't blame you. It is indeed an amazing copy of a groundbreaking comic book and it brought a price worthy of its title character yesterday when a determined buyer turned over $125,475 to take home that little beauty you see above and to the right.

Hulk was never really my thing - don't get me wrong, if someone wanted to, say, give me a comic book like this one, then who am I to say no? Right? - but I did always love it when he would show up in a Fantastic Four book and poor Ben Grimm would be forced to go fight him, much to Ben's chagrin of course. Allow me to paraphrase:

"Why do I always gotta go fight that guy? It don't matter how hard you hit him, he just gets madder and madder!"

Yeah, that is the problem with fighting the Hulk. I suggest he try a little looser pair of purple pants. I imagine the freedom granted him there might go a long way toward easing some of that , uh... anger... Yeah... Thank you! thank you! All week, as I said...

I also always wanted Ben Grimm to know that I was with him, in spirit, in those fights, and that the reason he always had to fight the hulk was because his stone skin made him nigh invincible. It's the eternal dillema of being The Thing, Ben, don't you see? And don't you, dear blog reader, see what a perceptive and brilliant child I was? All those hours of reading comics have sured paid off now! Take that, Mrs. Draper, my second grade teacher! I want my JLAs back!

Today, Friday, Nov. 20, is also the day that orginal artwork from The Joe Kubert Collection goes on the block - 1 p.m. Central time - and I'm dying to know what the pieces will bring. Joe is awesome, and one of the all-time greats. He's held on to his art all these years and is now starting to let collectors get their hands on it.

Nice of Joe, don't you think?

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

You’re a Good Man, Charles Schulz: Original Peanuts artwork readies for August Comics Auction

July 21, 2009
Posted by Noah

Okay, first I must unburden myself – and I don’t think I’ll be alone in this – by saying that Lucy Van Pelt should be ashamed of herself. I cannot tell you how many years, how many thousands of Peanuts strips I read through only to walk away with a burning sense of anger at the raven-haired nemesis of poor bald-headed Charlie Brown. Come on Lucy! Let him kick the darn ball for once!

Whew… I feel better… After spending the morning working on some PR for our upcoming Comics and Comic Art auction I just simply couldn’t go on without venting my lifetime of frustration with Lucy. Now, after today, and a decade of therapy, I think I might be able to let it go. I believe the history has vindicated my position of frustration with her, and my deep and abiding compassion for Charlie Brown – and it has nothing to do with the fact that we have the same haircut…

In the impressive trove of original Charles Schulz Peanuts art that will be featured in the aforementioned auction there is indeed a football-themed strip – it should bring a lot more than its $25,000 estimate – that features Lucy, as ever, simply unable to contain herself and her impish impulse to cause grievous bodily harm to Charlie Brown, who, also as ever, is too much of a simp to not fall for Lucy’s guile. Come on Chuck! Don’t fall for it! Don’t you see the pattern this sets up for your whole life? Man… and to think, he keeps pining after the Little Red-Haired Girl… As if…

Looking over these amazing 12 strips – especially the one pictured above, where Schroeder and Lucy compare music boxes, and guess whose is better? – I couldn’t help but remember a feature from a Mad Magazine of my childhood, I can’t remember which issue, where they tackled the subject of what would happen if the Peanuts gang were to age like normal folks… It certainly stuck with me, especially the panel of Snoopy and Woodstock as hippies in the 1960s. Let’s just say that when Woodstock comes out of Snoopy’s dog house he’s flying a little crooked. KnowwhatImean? There was also a great panel at the end that showed both Charlie Brown and Lucy as old fogies, on the day of Charlie’s retirement. They were married, and they were bickering. It was funny, but bittersweet. I guess Lucy never managed to get Schroeder to look her way, and I guess her meanness to Charlie Brown masked some more tender feelings beneath… Or maybe I’m just reading a little too much into it…

Our Director of Comics Operations here, Barry Sandoval, said that he was a little surprised by how popular the Schroeder and Lucy strip is, and in general how many people name the young piano genius as their favorite Peanuts character. Not Snoopy, not Linus, but Schroeder. If most of these people are like me, they like Schroeder because he has class and taste, because he plays the keys like an old soul, and because he was able to get the better of Lucy in almost every situation… Somehow, in small part, this made a big difference to anyone sick of watching her always pull that football away from Charlie Brown, sending him careening through space with an “Auuuuggghhhh!” and a thud.

To make a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

No one – I repeat – No One is faster than The Flash…

March 27, 2009
Posted by Noah

… and very few are more valuable, at least if you’re talking about Showcase #4, The Flash, 1956, from DC Comics. It’s the book that started the Silver Age, and is easily the most valuable Silver Age comic that exists. Did I mention that Heritage is auctioning off a copy of Showcase #4 in our May comics auction? Did I further mention that it’s from the Motor City Run, and that it’s the single highest graded copy of the book in existence? Forgive me for not saying so sooner.

I know that this was a comic printed in 1956, and that I was but a mote of cosmic dust at that point, but this was the comic book of my dreams as a kid. I also know that the Silver Age ended in 1970, the year I was born, but I bought ratty old Silver Age Flash comics with my meager allowance all through the 1970s, the more beat up the better, as I actually enjoyed reading them. I read many of them until they literally disintegrated in my fingers. The few that survived my slavish reading and re-reading of them, as I was very politely informed by Barry Sandoval when I started working here and brought them in on a whim, are worth maybe a couple bucks each. I think he was being charitable at that, as nice a guy as he is…

Showcase #4 introduces Barry Allen as The Flash, and tells his famous origin story. Many a kid, I imagine, was tempted to douse themselves in a stew of chemicals in the hopes of gaining the same speed. At least I know I was – thanks to my brother Matt for stopping me on that hazy July afternoon.

Barry Allen was The Flash of my childhood, and is still The Fastest Man Alive, in my opinion. Wally West is Kid Flash. Period. I know that very fact has become a big part of Wally West’s character, or was until 1996’s The Return of Barry Allen, but I still didn’t buy it, even as much as I enjoyed watching Dr. Zoom take yet one more thrashing some 3,000 years before he was born.

My passion for The Flash has never really died; it’s just changed over the years. Ii now mainly consists of a plastic Flash figurine on my desk. It’s of a later vintage, so I know it must be Wally West. That doesn’t matter to me, though. One of my oldest and dearest friends in the world gave it to me years ago. It has sat on every desk I have worked at for more than a decade, which is not so interesting. The real story of this Flash, though – and I think this proves that The Flash really does have superhuman powers, in all of his forms, even plastic – is that this one survived a rather nasty flood in 2005.

I had just moved to Amherst, MA to edit a couple antique magazines when I got the call one morning that the basement office where I worked in Palmer, MA, flooded to the ceiling overnight when the Quaboag River overran its banks, travelled across a football field, and a parking lot, to flood the whole street and all the buildings on it. Everything was completely destroyed. When we made our way in two days later, knee-deep in mud, paper slush and office equipment, I went to the area of my desk. There, miraculously, sitting right where my desk once was, was The Flash, stand and all.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a miracle, but it was pretty cool, considering it was really the only thing I was hoping to find.

Here’s a link to all The Motor City run comics in the May Comics Auction. You can look, but you can’t touch…

"If Colossus Should Fall – Who Shall Stop The Juggernaut?"

Feb. 25, 2009
Posted by Noah

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that very same question…

The fact is that Dave Cockrum’s original cover artwork for X-Men #102 – a seminal 1976 issue smack dab in the middle of the awesome 1970s Chris Claremont-written run of the X-Men that culminated in the single most popular X-Men storyline ever, The Phoenix Saga – is among several examples of classic original X-Men artwork featured in this weekend’s – Yes, this weekend! – Signature Comics & Original Comic Art Auction.

It’s a classic tableau of Bronze Age comics: Juggernaut and Colossus slug it out, toe to toe. Storm shields herself against a wall, paralyzed by claustrophobia, while Nightcrawler springs from a chandelier into action. The issue featured Storm’s origin story, as well as a side battle with Banshee and Black Tom, as well as some classic X-Mansion soap opera with Jean Grey, Cyclops and Professor X. But it’s the fight between Juggy and Colossus, in the very close confines of an Irish castle – Nightcrawler does cheesily end up in the clutches of some leprechauns at the end, if I recollect correctly – that steals this show. As a kid, I always loved when Juggy showed up, though I wished somebody would have just made a massive bottle opener and popped that creepy helmet off his noggin. Just knowing that the original art for this famous cover is in house as we speak is enough to make me want to go on a secret mission to bask in its glory.

In his run of X-Men #101-107, Cockrum established himself as the king of the Space Opera. In this septuplet of issues, Cockrum introduced probably the biggest, most ambitious scope for the X-Men universe yet with the creation of the Shi’Ar Empire, the JLA-parody Imperial Guard, the Starjammers and the M’Krann Crystal. And that’s just the start of the cast of thousands that populated this exciting slice of X-Men pie. It should be noted that Cockrum left X-Men after #107. John Byrne came on board for #108 and quickly brought the focus of X-Men universe back to earth.

I asked our Director of Comics, Barry Sandoval, about this art work a few weeks ago and he was equally animated – as animated as Barry will get, consummate professional that he is – about its presence.

“This is one of the great X-Men covers of all time,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of great X-Men art and comics in past auctions, but this auction is particularly heavy on great X-Men stuff. You have to count this chief among the grouping.”

I was a little more like: “What?!... Did you see-…. No way! I want it! I want it!”

I’ve looked through this auction catalog a few times now, and am quite impressed by the offerings overall, but for fans of X-men comics this one is special. There’s a ton of great Jack Kirby Art, some original Peanuts artwork, a ton of great pulps and original mint Disney comics, but give me this cover any day! This thing has already met its estimate at $20,000, so I’m probably priced out of the running. It will however, be exciting to see how this lot ultimately comes out. It comes up in the Friday, 5 p.m. session.

Re-thinking Superman

Feb. 11, 2009
Posted by Noah

There are so many fantastic things to drool over in the upcoming comics auction – Feb. 26-27 btw – that I would be hard-pressed to choose just one or two lots were a suitcase of cash to fall out of the sky and land at my feet. I still look up every day when I leave the house, but so far nothing… Where was I? Oh, yes… Comics auction, many great lots... There is one lot in the sale, however, that I keep coming back to. It’s one of those things that has wedged its way into my brain in a way that happens only with certain rare and complex lots. I’m talking about Lot 91577, the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster Science Fiction Fanzine "Reign of the Superman" Group from 1932. That’s right, a full five years before Supes appeared in Action Comics #1.

In this very early rendition of what was to become The Man of Steel, Superman is actually a villain, actually looks a lot more like Lex Luthor than Clark Kent and “The Superman” is used more in the sense of Friederich Nietzsche, which I am basing solely on my knowledge of Western Philosophy and my gut feeling whenever I see a maniacal bald man with an evil grit-toothed smile and creepy Montgomery Burns hands menacing me in a futuristic cityscape.

Let me be very clear: I would take The Flash, Mad Magazine or Groo the Wanderer any day over Superman. In my comics reading days – I was never so much a collector as a reader – I made a point of skipping Superman and heading to the latest JLA or Fourth World. There was never much mystery to Superman, as far as I was concerned at least. And he wasn’t particularly given to angst, which I loved dearly about Spidey or Ben Grimm, The Thing. After looking at this particular lot, and after being amazed to witness the sheer fact of its continued existence across the decades – read about it and you’ll do the same – I have definitely have to re-think the man from Krypton. How would the history of American pop culture have been different if Supes had stayed malignant?

There have always been many ways to read Superman. Siegel and Shuster were both Jews, and the comic book came about at a time when the world was heading for war, America needed a hero and the Nazis were starting their march toward world domination. Superman perfectly captured the American zeitgeist of the post-depression era. This original, villainous Superman can be seen also as an early reaction to the influence of Nietzschian thinking on Western civilization in the first half of the 20th century and its slide into totalitarianism. Either that, or it was a couple of kids jazzed by the sci-fi serials they were seeing at the movies and reading in fanzines, and they wanted to make one of their own. You choose.

An email to top all emails, from MAD Magazine

Jan. 26, 2009
Posted by Noah

One of the aspects of doing the job I do at Heritage that I like the best is that I get around, eventually, to all the categories in the company. One of the first I had a chance to work in when I started last fall was the comics category auction of the very best of the MAD Magazine cover art, including Norman Mingo’s cover art for MAD #30 – which went for an astounding $203,000+, btw. It was quite an introduction to the company, and I can assure that I wasted no time in asking our Comics Director, Barry Sandoval, if I could come downstairs to take a look at the art, as it would “help me write better.” Ha ha… Needless to say, I got a little bit weak in the knees looking at all that great cover art. Who wouldn’t?

I grew up on MAD Magazine, and I know I am not alone in this. MAD defined humor and satire, and gave me a million sarcastic comments to use on the playground or in gym class. I jumped at the chance to write an article for the April edition of Heritage’s in-house magazine about the MAD covers, and the MAD-Heritage relationship in general. Part of this story required me emailing MAD editor John Ficarra, an awesome comic talent, with a couple questions.

The funny thing is that I actually expected, for about a whole 30 seconds, to get a straightforward answer to my questions. Then I remembered it was MAD Magazine I was writing to, and I braced myself for the humor. Let’s just say that I wasn’t disappointed, that getting Ficarra’s response was one of the great moments of my professional life, and that I have printed the exchange, framed it and will make sure it hangs in every office I ever work in again.

You’ll have to wait until the magazine comes out in April to see that whole exchange and to read the story, in whatever form it eventually takes, but for now, here’s a single exchange, one small teaser, just because you been so good to me…:

Heritage: After having MAD auctions at all the major houses, including Heritage, what made you decide to come back to Heritage for the MAD Cover Art auction?

Ficarra: It was a combination of things. First, no one at Sotheby’s returned our calls. (You don’t have any contacts over there, do you?) As for Christies, they expressed a tremendous interest and enthusiasm in a MAD auction, before referring us to Sotheby’s. So, in reviewing all the facts, Heritage seemed like the right fit for us.

Awesome. I will never wash this hand, or my keyboard, again…

Picture with link: Norman Mingo’s iconic first Alfred E. Neuman Cover, for MAD #30, which brought more than $200,000 at auction last November.