Joseph V. Tirella calls it Super-Priced Art:
But it’s not just comic books and their cinematic adaptations that are big business; the market for comic art — the original pencil-and-ink drawings used to produce comic books — is in the middle of a boom that keeps moving into uncharted territory. “It hits a high point and then another and then an even higher point,” says Albert Moy, a New York-based dealer who has been buying and selling comic art for over two decades. (See a slideshow of works that have sold or are for sale.)While some insiders estimate the global comic art market to be worth $25 million annually, others say it’s more like $70 million to $100 million. At the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International in July, Joe Mannarino of All Star Auctions and Comic Art Appraisals in Ridgewood, New Jersey, did $1.2 million worth of business in four days, selling the Neal Adams/Bernie Wrightson artwork for Green Lantern No. 84 for $115,000 — a world record for the artist, he says — and two oil paintings by fantasy artist Frank Frazetta for more than $451,000. Anthony Snyder of Anthony’s Collectibles in New Jersey recently set a personal record when he closed a deal worth $150,000 for a 1964 Spider-Man page drawn by John Romita Sr. And dealers say the economic crisis hasn’t yet put a damper on things.