This isn’t a spiritual quest article.  I’m not talking about love or friendship or intangibles like a good reputation or a clear conscience.  Nor am I talking about that other form of intangibles, financial “securities” (which many of us have recently learned can disappear into the ether as easily as love or a clear conscience).  No, I’m just talking about physical, buy-and-sell-without-cosmic-implications kinds of “things”.  Short of cars and houses (which I didn’t actually own anyway; several banks did), I’ve held title to one physical item so far in my life with a five digit market value.  And since it’s now gone, I’m going to take a moment to document it; after all, it’s possible that in my next 43 years of life I’ll not own anything this cool again.

There used to be an annual comics convention in Orlando called OrlandoCon.  It was the biggest deal around for me in jr. high and high school.  In 1982, my dad sent me a couple hundred bucks before the event to “get some good investments”.  It was the year that Frank Miller was really starting to get attention for his work on Marvel’s Daredevil comic.  At the con — tho Miller was not there — there was a lot of buzz about him.  So much buzz, in fact, that the prices of Miller items rose over the mere two or three days of the show!  Dealers were pulling their copies of Spectacular Spider-Man #27, for example, out of the dollar boxes and tacking them to the wall with $10 price tags (that was the first book, in 1979, where Frank Miller drew the Daredevil character).

Well, I managed to get that book for a dollar before the wave hit.  But more importantly, I decided to forgo quantity in favor of quality; I spent the majority of the money my dad had sent on two pages of Frank Miller original art — Daredevil #175, pages 5 & 6.  Most Marvel original pages at the time were going for $15-25, depending on the artist; really popular artists, maybe $40 or $50.  Not sure how those pages were priced at the beginning of the show, but by the time I got to them I paid $75 each.

Me showing off my OrlandoCon booty, 1982

Now…  if you’re not into comic books, you may think $150 is a lot of money for a fifteen year old kid to be spending on funny book miscellany.  And it was, then.  However…

I won’t go into why Frank Miller is so freaking awesome as an artist and storyteller.  If you want to know, start with the Wikipedia article linked above.  The point is that no matter how popular he got in 1982, that was just the beginning of an outrageous career that’s still growing.  He went on to do some of the most successful and revolutionary comics in the history of the medium, including Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  That seminal work has influenced the comics medium at least as much — if not more than — Watchmen.  Frank Miller has also written and/or directed films such as Sin City, 300, and The Spirit.  His cult following has grown significantly, and the appetite for key Miller original artwork (like, say, pages from the book that first established his name, Marvel’s Daredevil), is now huge.

So it’s 2007 and we’re hurting for money.  I decide it’s time to cash out on my investment.  I loved that artwork!  It hung on the wall in my office and (along with my original 1973 Led Zeppelin concert poster and some other interesting items) served as great conversation fodder with the constant parade of nerds who pass through the office of a software product manager.  But off to eBay I go and post an auction:

The Artwork

Daredevil #175, October, 1981, pages 7 & 8 (story pages 5 & 6)
Story Art: Frank Miller
Finished Art: Klaus Janson
Letters: Joe Rosen

Two consecutive pages from the mid part of Frank Miller’s early Marvel career.  By this point, Miller’s style had evolved and he was really showing the world how pictures can tell a story by themselves.  These two pages are especially interesting to Miller buffs — there are actually two narratives going at once, one in words and one in pictures.  In words, we have Foggy Nelson casually catching a cab, thinking to himself and chatting about life with the cabbie, exactly the sort of scene that words are optimal for.  Meanwhile, all around him (but completely unknown to Foggy), there is a fugue of action as Daredevil fights off Ninja to save Foggy’s life — exactly the sort of scene that pictures are optimal for.  The juxtaposition of these two narratives — one written and one visual — is brilliant.  I bought these pages myself in 1982 precisely because they are such a definitive representation of Miller’s story telling ability.

The pages are in exquisite condition, just as originally purchased by me at OrlandoCon ‘82.  After purchase, the pages were immediately framed using museum mount, acid free matting and U-V filter glass.  There was a soft fold at one time, in the upper-right corner of the second page, which was flattened out by by the time I bought them (looking carefully, you can just barely make out some slight darkening where the fold used to be).  They’ve spent the majority of their lives hanging in a dark room.  There is no discoloration of the original drawing board.  Artwork will be packed appropriately for shipping (and insured), to protect both the artwork and the framing/glass.

The response was pretty wild.  I was only looking for a few $K or so (I think I had the reserve set to $4k), but the quality of my pages relative to other Miller Daredevil pages recently sold on eBay at the time was high.  When the bidding got to about $6K or $7K, I was contacted directly by one of the bidders asking me to sell to him directly for $10K cash and to remove the auction from eBay.  That’s one of the things your not supposed to do.  And eBay etiquette aside, letting the market set the price is, after all, the good Capitalist thing to do, right?  But this guy was unique.

Daredevel #175

The buyer who contacted me was building a personal collection of all the original art from Daredevil #175.  He’d been working on it for years and had more than half the pages already.  He couldn’t possibly achieve his goal without going through me.  Plus, get this, he was (is) a screenwriter who had just recently scripted a kids movie that Gwen really liked!  I checked him out a bit and he appeared to be who he claimed, with the motive he claimed.  Yes, I briefly considered milking the hell of out him (hey, I’m only human!).  But no, I was going to either sell direct or let the auction run its course and make him fight it out online.

I asked a buddy for some moral advice; he just said, “do what you think is right”.  Finally, I decided that as much as I needed money, clearly I was going to get a lot more than expected for these pages.  $10K was a pretty good haul, especially on a $150 investment; a 6567% yield, even over 25 yrs, is success by any standard.  So what if I might be compromising another grand or two.  I cared about the artwork; I wanted it to go to an appropriate new owner, not just a loaded one.  Who more appropriate than the guy who (with my help) might soon be displaying the entire book in his home?

It seemed like destiny to me, and I didn’t want to risk the artwork falling into another’s hands (forcing the guy I was talking with to either give up his goal or go crawling to the interloper and having to pay even more).  I told the screenwriter, “ok, $10K, as long as you add enough to cover the PayPal fee and send Gwen an autographed movie poster or something.”  He agreed and I canceled the auction early.  In fact, he sent Gwen the movie book autographed by him and the other two screenwriters! 

So…  I got some much-needed cash, on great terms.  The screenwriter/collector made progress on his passion.  Frank’s artwork found a good home.  And Gwen got a unique memento that she can show off to her friends.  I’d say that’s a pretty fine outcome to a twenty-five year long story.

Excelsior!