Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's iconic The Dark Knight Returns cover just sold for nearly $2.5 million.
On June 16, Miller and Varley's original cover art from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Book One, which features the iconic image of Batman/Bruce Wayne's silhouette in front of a bolt of lightning, sold to a buyer for approximately $2.4 million at Heritage’s June 16-19 Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction. “We’re thrilled to see Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s influential work reach a level often associated with classic American art,” Heritage Auctions vice president Todd Hignite said. “It deserves that, as this is easily one of the most famous comic-book covers from any era, and it defined the superhero genre from the 1980s to this very moment. I can’t think of a more important piece of comic art to have ever come to auction.”
The purchase is the first DC Comics original art to sell for more than $1 million, according to Heritage Auctions. The previous record was a $600,000 cover for 1973's Batman #251 by Neal Adams, which sold for $600,000 at Heritage Auctions in 2019. Last year, Heritage also sold a copy of Batman #1 for $2.2 million.
Miller previously did an interview posted on Heritage Auctions' YouTube page discussing the iconic cover and his thoughts on The Dark Knight Returns. "I was finding my identity as an artist, and to me, the silhouette is the most important language of that," he said. "What you can convey in silhouette is going to impact the minds and the emotions more intensely than anything else ...I got a knack for silhouettes and if you want a real nice rendering of something, I am not your guy. I'm just not good at it. But I can punch out a kickass silhouette."
In total, the first day of Heritage’s June 16-19 Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction brought in more than $11 million. Other notable transactions include a $1.6 million purchase of a near-mint copy of All Star Comics #8, a $43,200 purchase of Gabrielle Dell'Otto's The Amazing Spider-Man #677 variant cover, a $504,000 purchase of Jim Lee's Batman #619 variant cover, a $228,000 purchase of Mike Mignola's Batman #438 cover, a $288,000 purchase of the Batman #428's "A Death in the Family" Part 3, and a $180,000 purchase of Bob Kane's original Detective Comics #59 cover. Individual story pages and cover art for Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #16 also sold for a combined total of $1.3 million, while Don Heck's original art from Tales of Suspense #14 sold for $216,000 and Bill Everett's original art from Daredevil #1 sold for $204,000.
The auction continues until June 19. For more information, visit Heritage Auctions.
Source: Heritage Auctions