Posted in: Comics, Original Artwork, Vintage Paper | Tagged: frank frazetta, Karl Edward Wagner

Frazetta's Dark Kingdom Sells for Record $6 Million at Heritage

Best remembered as the album cover of Molly Hatchet’s 1979 Flirtin’ With Disaster, Frank Frazetta's painting Dark Kingdom has sold for $6M.

Published Thu, 22 Jun 2023 21:12:09 -0500

by Mark Seifert

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One of the best known of Frank Frazetta's many iconic works, his 1976 painting Dark Kingdom sold today at Heritage Auctions for $6 million, a record for a Frazetta painting and also a fantasy art record. The sale price surpasses the previous record holder, Frazetta's famous Egyptian Queen, which sold at Heritage in 2019 for $5.4 million. Dark Kingdom was first used for the cover of Karl Edward Wagner's 1976 novel Dark Crusade, but is more famous as the album cover for Molly Hatchet's 1979 Flirtin' With Disaster.

In addition to Dark Kingdom and Egyptian Queen, other Frazetta paintings which have crossed the million-dollar mark include Death Dealer 6 at $1.79 million in 2018, A Princess of Mars at $1.2 million in 2020, and At The Earth's Core for $1,075,500 in 2016. By way of comparison, Frazetta's pen and ink Famous Funnies #209 original cover art sold for $552,000 in 2019.

Frank Frazetta Dark Kingdom Painting Original Art (1976)

DALLAS, Texas (June 22, 2023) – Frank Frazetta's 1976 painting Dark Kingdom sold Thursday at Heritage Auctions for $6 million, breaking the record for original comic book or fantasy art set in 2019 by Frank Frazetta.

Among the late artist's most potent and popular works, Dark Kingdom was first used as the cover of Karl Edward Wagner's 1976 novel Dark Crusade, one in a series of tales about the immortal pre-medieval warrior Kane. But it's far better known for its second appearance: as the album cover for Molly Hatchet's 1979 Flirtin' With Disaster, the Jacksonville, Florida, boogie rockers' second record.

"It's extraordinarily rare whenever an artwork universally considered the best in any genre becomes available on the open market," says Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Todd Hignite. "We're excited – and proud – that today's record-setting result reflects that status for this immediately recognizable image, which is burned into the consciousness of several generations of Frazetta fans."

Dark Kingdom depicts a brawny warrior wearing a winged helmet and wielding a blood-dripping ax as he steps over the skeletons of the fallen. It ranks among Frazetta's most reproduced works, from prints to posters to T-shirts to coffee mugs. But there is just one original, offered for the first time in Heritage's June 22-25 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction, which kicked off Thursday with a first session that realized $11,079,240.

Dark Kingdom dethrones Frazetta's 1969 painting Egyptian Queen, which was used as the cover of Eerie magazine No. 23 that year. Heritage sold the work in 2019 for $5.4 million. One year earlier, his 1990 painting Death Dealer 6, featuring Frazetta's iconic armor-adorned warrior in a horned helmet, sold at Heritage for $1.7 million. Several other Frazetta works have also crossed the million-dollar mark at Heritage, including 1970's A Princess of Mars, which realized $1.2 million.

Frazetta was the Norman Rockwell of the swords-and-sorcery set, a man who could make the brutal look sexy and the sexy look dangerous. His posters have long been tacked up in the rooms of rockers who'd never read a single John Carter or Conan novel or thumbed through an issue of Eerie or Vampirella.