4 Factors Behind American Collectors’ Growing Interest In Original Comic Art

Heritage Auction’s Comics & Comic Art Department saw a record-setting $79,332,770 in sales across 2019, a massive $20 million leap up from 2018 ( which was itself a record-setting year). The auction house’s single most expensive sale ever, a $5.4 million artwork sold in May 2019, was by one of the bigger names in American comics art, sci-fi and fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.

Interest in comics art is rapidly growing among American collectors new and old, and a new art exhibition is opening this month to drive the point home.

Line and Frame: A Survey of European Comic Art, will be on view at Danese/Corey in New York City from February 27 through March 14. It’s presented by European comic art appreciation company Art9, in partnership with The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, The Consulate of the Kingdom of Belgium, The Cultural Services for Wallonie-Bruxelles International and The French-American Foundation. Among the 40 European artists featured is a rare strip and “crayonné” by Franco-Belgian master Hergé from his series The Adventures of Tintin: Les Bijoux de la Castafiore — the first time it has been displayed in the US.

Philippe Labaune, founder of Art9, has a few ideas explaining why American collectors are getting into original comics art right now.

“The American collector is moving steadily towards the collection of original art,” Labaune told me over email. “The shift in collecting comic-based art can be attributed to four factors.”

First, Labaune says, there’s a bit of a bubble in the comic magazine collecting community, as many sellers are opting to sell at the same time and the listed prices don’t reflect the actual market. Second, since so many copies of supposedly “rare” comic books are constantly being discovered, the value of a comic book isn’t as bankable as the value of the original art itself, since, by definition, just one copy of it exists.

“Investors in the published market have realized that new copies of old comic books are discovered often,” Labaune explains. “One example is Superman #1. In 2017, five new copies were discovered in addition to the 100 previous known ones, thus depreciating the market. By owning an original, there are no such risks, as there is only one.”

The third reason for the explosion of interest in comic art? General art collectors find it more approachable than collecting entire books — Just getting the original artwork is an gateway into the larger world of comic book collection.

The fourth and final factor is similar to the third: “There is an appeal to being able to display the artwork out in the open, versus being shuttered away in a portfolio,” as Labaune puts it. Original art can be framed and enjoyed, but an entire book can’t be easily displayed.

“The American art collector who enjoys comics might appreciate a character or artist but has no interest in owning a published copy of the comic. This type of collector instead is more likely to collect quality originals from well-known artists whose reputation is solidly established.”

Original comic art has been popular in Europe for decades, but US artists are on the rise. Labaune can rattle off a list of the top artists for both: Frazetta, Eisner, Kirby, Watterson, Miller, Romita, Ross, Buscena, Crumb, Eisner, and Ditko are huge in the US, while Hergé, Peyo, Bilal, Bess, Schuiten, Moebius, Mézières, de Crecy, Loisel, Manara, Pratt, Juillard, and Druillet are all big in Europe.

“Generally speaking,” says Labaune, “US and European comics have very different features such as a diverse spectrum of styles and stories. Each also has its own unique dominant modes of distribution and dissemination, and follows and reflects a unique aesthetic tradition. America usually publishes comics in 8-by-11-inch pamphlets while In the Franco-Belgian and more generally European comics are typically released in albums—8.4-by-11.6-inch bound books that tend to run approximately 50 pages. Each of these formats helps to shape certain visual traditions and expectations of the media.”

US art collectors are starting to care about these differences, as the market for both styles begins to heat up in the US.