Rare Iron Man, Captain America, and Batman Comic Art to Auction

Gene Colan and Johnny Craig’s original opening splash page of Iron Man No. 1 from May 1968 will go under the hammer at Heritage Auctions’ September 25–27 Comic Art sale, part of a four-day event alongside an overlapping Comic Books auction.

The consignor is David Maisel, founding Chairman of Marvel Studios and was crucial in the development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its launch in 2008 with Iron Man.  

“Gene Colan created two things,” said Maisel. “He made the suit expressive and almost limber, and he was very cinematic in his art, almost foreseeing the MCU at some point in time almost 40 years later."

Maisel describes Colan’s Iron Man No. 1 opening page as one of the character’s four historically most important comic pages, along with the cover and first page of Tales of Suspense No. 39, the March 1963 issue that introduced the character, and the cover to Iron Man No. 1. The Iron Man No. 1 cover has been held by the same owner for decades, the whereabouts of the original art for the cover of Tales of Suspense No. 39 are unknown, and Page 1 of Tales of Suspense No. 39 sold on July 10 for $3.875m at Heritage Auctions.

Other highlights include:

• the Batman and Two-Face cover by Jerry Robinson for Detective Comics No. 68 from 1942. 
• the cover art for Action Comics No. 22 from March 1940 by Superman co-creator Joe Shuster
• examples from Frank Miller’s Daredevil with seven pages including Elektra’s first story appearance on Page 4 of No. 168 from 1981 and Page 35 of No. 181
• Jim Lee’s cover of 1992’s X-Men No. 6

Additionally, the auction features the second-finest known copy of Captain America No. 3, graded a 9.4, one of the treasures from the Merrimack Valley Collection, a recently discovered collection of Golden Age comics. The issue includes a text story by Stan Lee, his first work for Timely Comics. It also features a 9.0 copy of Captain America No. 1.

“This is a really, really exciting collection,” said Heritage Auctions Vice President Aaron White. “It’s an original-owner collection that was stored for the last 75 or 80 years in a brown cardboard box. Every book is terrific, the colors are stunning.”