Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s color art for the cover of The Dark Knight Returns #1 was the latest mid-80s comic art piece to bring a top price: it sold for $2.4 million, including Buyer’s Premium, at auction this week. While not a record, the Dark Knight art is one of only a handful of original pieces of comic art to sell for seven figures.  The most recent was another piece of mid-80s art, the Mike Zeck splash page from Secret Wars #8 that introduced the black Spider-Man comic, which sold for $3.36 million in January (see “Auction Sale of Comic Art Breaks Record”)

The world record price for a piece of comic art remains “Egyptian Queen,” Frank Frazetta’s cover for Eerie #23, which sold for $5.4 million in May of 2020.