Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: jim lee, Thomas Fish, x-men

Jim Lee X-Men #1 Original Cover Art Was Bought To Match The Rest Of It

Published Sat, 15 Jan 2022 08:57:10 -0600

This may have been an even wiser investment than it may have seen at the time. All four covers to X-Men #1 that form a quadriptych cover for the fifth, had their original artwork sold in a private offer last year. Now Thomas Fish has posted the pages to his ComicArtFans account, followed by many admiring comments.

This is also the week that the original artwork page that shows the moment that Peter Parker, Spider-Man bonded with the symbiote Venom costume, by Mike Zeck from Secret Wars #8, sold for $3.37 million at auction, a new record for internal original comic book art.

Thomas Fish is the co-owner of Blowout Cards, founded in 1999, as is the leading online retailer of sports and other trading cards in the hobby today, with a brick-and-mortar storefront The Fantastic Store in Northern Virginia. Fish is a well-known collector of original comic book art, and who previously paid the second-highest amount for a comic book internal page, the original artwork by Herbe Trimpe featuring the first appearance of Wolverine from Hulk #180, for two-thirds of a million dollars. At the time Thomas Fish told Beckett.com that "I believe the first published image of Wolverine represents a fantastic investment opportunity. Comic book characters such as Spider-Man, Superman, Batman and Wolverine are billion-dollar franchises. Comic book sales have already topped $1 million, and it's only a matter of time that comic art sales reach seven figures. Comic art is used in the production of those comic books and they are one of a kind." Of course, that happened this week.

Thomas Fish also previously owned and sold the original art for the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #300 by Todd McFarlane, bought for $16,000 and sold for $125,000, the cover to X-Force #1 and the first appearances of Ghost Rider and Mary Jane Watson. It was also reported in that article that he owned the original art from the complete issue of X-Men #1 by Jim Lee. Now it seems that he has the cover art to match.

The rest of us will just have to settle for the Jim Lee X-Men Artists Edition, which Thomas Fish will have made possible for IDW to publish. It just got a second printing as well.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!