Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: brian bendis, mark bagley, miles morales, original artwork, sara pichelli, spider-man, ultimate fallout
Mark Bagley's Miles Morales Spider-Man Cover Art Sells For $225,000
The original Mark Bagley Miles Morales Spider-Man artwork to the cover for Ultimate Fallout #4 was purchased this week in a private transaction for $225,000 by an anonymous buyer.
The cover is the first appearance of Miles Morales: Spider-Man, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli in 2011. A copy of the comic with this cover, Ultimate Fallout #4, recently sold on eBay for $2000.
Originally created as a parallel universe version of Spider-Man, he joined the rest of the Marvel Universe five years ago, was the lead character in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, helped launched the Playstation 5 with the Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales game, has his own Air Jordan collab and is expected to appear in the upcoming live-action Spider-Man 3.
The buyer is rumored to be a known entertainment figure and notable art collector. The sale is the highest price ever paid for American superhero comic book art published in the 21st century.
Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer #6 cover from 2004 sold for seven figures, but that was a repurposed painting from 1990. The all-time public record for superhero comic book art of $657,250 was set in 2012 by the Todd McFarlane cover for Amazing Spider-Man #328 and for the exact same amount in 2014 by the last page of Incredible Hulk #180 by Herb Trimpe and Jack Abel which is the page that features the famous Wolverine cameo. The highest previous recorded public sale for superhero comic art published this century, was the $78,000 sale of the cover for NYX #3 at Heritage Auctions with first appearance of Wolverine's daughter, X-23.
As Bleeding Cool has been reporting, original comic book art has seen an explosion of interest and skyrocketing prices, especially for pages or covers that feature first appearances, especially as more comics creators turn to digital rather than physical creation.
Indeed, the cover to Ultimate Fallout #4 is notable as it represents the only actual physical art from this issue. The interiors by Sara Pichelli and the variant cover by Marko Djurdjevic were all created digitally, therefore no physical art exists.