Heritage Auctions Comics & Comic Art Catalogs

While color art auction catalogs from any company are probably fun to thumb thru, Heritage has for some time settled in to having two, or more, specific auctions a year focused on just "Comics & Comics Art" each of which has been presaged by a substantial catalog. A good portion of these catalogs are full-color images of the many comic books for sale and many of such pages unfortunately crowd in too many of too small images (along with healthy comentary about them) to make the grade. However, the more recent books have used more of these pages to feature larger reproductions of the covers, making them more acceptable. Then, it's really a dice roll if the page after page of presented original art will be single images, from either trading cards, covers & splash-pages, or just pages of sequential art. Heritage Auctions is assiduous in identifying comic inkers as part of the artistic 'team' responsible for an image or page, but I have made my own decision here to dispense with that when dealing with primary pencilers whose own 'style' has become so recognizable. I should also mention that occasionally one of a catalog's included page-ads for upcoming auctions will provide a 'well-presented' piece and when so, I've added that artist's name to the detailed list without any special note. The issues here are ordered starting with the most recent first - if you're curious about their presentation ranking, of those catalogs that made it 'above the line', 2013(May) would be the highest, followed then by 2015(May), 2012(July), 2004(Oct), 2005(May-B) and 2004(Oct-C).

2015 May ( # 7136 ) This 396-page book has barely made it up on to The List by 168 of those pages having the art-presentation edge out the commentary & sales-info. Of those art-pages, you will find 34 of them sporting a singular large reproduction worthy of note. These catalogs are rarely as thick (and heavy) as this one it, and indeed it weighs in at being slightly bigger than what we find acceptabe. The artists so 'well-presented' here are: Neal Adams, Bernard Baily, C.C. Beck, Charles Biro, Brian Bolland, Wayne Boring, John Byrne (3), Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, Dave Gibbons, Bob Kane (2), Gil Kane, Jack Kirby (7), Jim Lee, Winsor McCay, Frank Miller (2), Sheldon Moldoff, Fred Ray (2), Alex Raymond, Nestor Redondo, Marshall Rogers, Alex Schomburg, Dick Sprang, Herb Trimpe, and Boris Vallejo*.

* - note that Vallejo's piece here also appears 'well-presented' in his own collections farther up The List.

2013 May ( # 7076 ) In our still small sample here of the Comics & Comic Art catalogs of Heritage Auctions, this particular release scores as the best gathering & presentation of this type of paintings & drawings, so far. It has 278 pages (with additionally both inner cover leaves as full-bleed art reproductions), 152 of those count as having the single-image art allowed to dominate, and of those, 39 pages feature large reproductions without being too cluttered with other needed 'business'. The artists so featured are: William Bouguereau, John Buscema, Dave Cockrum, Gene Colan, E. Irving Couse, Steve Ditko, Al Feldstein, Frank Frazetta*, Dave Gibbons (3), Kelley Jones, Michael Kaluta, Bob Kane (3), Jack Kirby (4), Todd McFarlane (2), Frank Miller, Bob Montana, George Pérez, Alex Raymond, John Romita Sr. (2), Alex Ross (3), Norman Saunders**, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson, Curt Swan, Michael Turner, Boris Vallejo*, Bernie Wrightson, and Mike Zeck.

* - note that Frazetta & Vallejo's pieces here also appear 'well-presented' in their own collections farther up The List.

** - note that Saunders's piece here is not found 'well-presented' in his own collection farther up The List.

2012 July ( # 7063 ) A 364-page catalog with 28 of those with large featured reproductions and another 147 collecting together multiple images (though there is then 93 more where all the images are just too small to count as 'art' pages). The 'well'-presented' artists here are: Mark Bagley, Jon Bogdanove, Robert Crumb, Steve Ditko, Creig Flessel, Jeffrey Catherine Jones**, Bob Kane, Dale Keown, Jack Kirby (8), Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane (6), Frank Miller, Sheldon Moldoff, Joe Quesada, Alex Schomburg, Joe Shuster, and Joe Simon.

** - note that the 'well-presented' piece here by Jones cannot additionally be found so in her own collections on The List.

2005 May ( # 816-B) The Random House Archives (these auctions were entitled simply "COMICS" at the time) A special catalog, additional to and meant to accompany the main one for this period's Comics auction. The giant publisher, Random House, ended up with the materials from Western Publishing, seeming to be specifically from the comics & juvenile-books operation. So this catalog has mainly file copies of Dell & Gold Key comics, displaying their covers, and then large bound collections of their comics, that were reference volumes for the offices, where each lot was keyed to other cover images. The images are all crisp & clean, being reproduced from examples that are unusually well-preserved, having been 'stored' while in brand-new condition. There is then a 16-page section showing-off original art that went into the making of some of the comics. A significant portion of those are early Little Lulu single panel cartoons. Also here you will find the three full-page reproductions by Morris (Mo) Gollub, Chester Gould, and George Wilson (the last being mis-attributed to George Evans). So, in all, those three pages are joined by the 89 more that have multiple images, most usually six-to-a-page, along with their lengthy captions describing the lot being auctioned. While among those there are a handful of healthy-size examples, I'm afraid perusers are going to find most images not big enough to be fully satisfying. Anyway, the catalog has 20-odd remaining pages of information and displays of photographic comic covers.

2004 Oct ( # 813) (these auctions were entitled simply "COMICS" at the time) 172 pages with only five of them being featured large reproductions and another 116 with multiple images (mostly of comic book covers, four-to-six to a page, sharing the space with text descriptions). Original art represents about a third of the book, but it is substantially sequential-art-pages for sale. The 'well-presented' artists here are: Bernard Baily, Jack Kirby, Howard Purcell, J. Allen St. John*, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

* - Note that St. John's 'well-presented' piece here can be found so in his own collection up on The List.

2004 October ( # 813-C) The Kelly Freas Collection (these auctions were entitled simply "COMICS" at the time) A special catalog, additional to and meant to accompany the main one for this period's Comics auction (other than his years with MAD & CRAZY magazines, the comics connection here certainly seems more tenuous than others). Over 300 images are to be found here, mostly on the 65 pages that collect four images together. There are large reproductions on the cover and one ad page, but both images are better presented in his color monographs, all noted higher up on The List here, namely AS HE SEES IT, A SEPARATE STAR, and FRANK KELLY FREAS - THE ART OF SCIENCE FICTION. A good number of the images here repeat from those better books, but then again, a good number don't. Included among the newly seen works are some preliminaries, comps and color studies produced in service of final paintings. There are also interesting later abstracts joining drawings made when the artist was a youth. Freas' wife Laura, an artist in her own right, collaborates with him on some works here, as well as having a couple of her own included. All-in-all, I'd say that, while this isn't the most excitingly presented book one would wish for, you can't ignore that there is just too much Freas art here which is not fated to be collected elsewhere. If you want to seek out this volume, make sure you are purchasing this supplement and not this auction's main catalog. (Note - because this particular publication focuses on a single artist, it gets its own separate duplicate entry elsewhere on The List.)

2003 July ( # 807-B )(was entitled "ORIGINAL ART" at the time) [-BELOW THE LINE-] With the many small reproductions of the sequential art sheets, combined with lots of text to discuss everything up for bid, there just isn't as big a portion dedicated to cover images, or even splash pages. This catalog is 189 pages, and only 57 can be said to be majorly about that particular large-image kind of art. Of those, only 11 pages are given over to a large reproduction of a single piece. Art pieces by only the following artists gets such a good presentation: C. C. Beck, Johnny Craig, Lou Fine (2), Frank Frazetta (3)***, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Alex Schomburg, Gustaf Tenggren and Wally Wood.