Heritage sold many incredible items from the Keith Fromm Estate collection on Oct 17, including the original cover art of Ghost Rider #5 by Frank Frazetta, OA of Hit Comics #5 by Lou Fine, and even OA of Mac Raboy’s Master Comics #27.
Undeniably, the marquee item up for sale in this auction was Todd McFarlane‘s Batman #423 Cover Original Art (1988), which sold for $781,250 at Heritage Auctions last Friday.
This sale helps cement McFarlane as one of the most famous, commercially successful, and well-regarded working comic artists of our modern era.
The Image Comics co-founder is also widely known as an all-around awesome person who was teaching kids to draw animals at a zoo in Arizona last September.
Batman #423 is one of the most collected Batman covers. The comic itself goes for $1,500 on average, graded at 9.8.
This $781K price makes it the highest-selling piece of original art by McFarlane on Heritage, after The Amazing Spider-Man #328 Cover Original Art (1990), which sold for $657,250 in July 2012. This piece could fetch a higher price on the current market, as McFarlane is more closely associated with his Spider-Man work than with Batman. It’s also possible we’ll see more McFarlane comic art go up for sale in the future, which will also affect prices.
While most of the big price auctions can be found in books and comic art released before the late 80s, Heritage has sold modern comic art, such as the first appearance of Deadpool in page 14 art from The New Mutants #98 (1991) by Rob Liefeld, which sold for $960,000 in November of 2024.
Heritage’s most expensive comic book ever sold at auction is still Action Comics #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, which sold for $6 million in 2024, and the most expensive comic book art sale was Frank Frazetta‘s painting for the 1967 Conan novel, which sold for $13.5 million last September.
