Heritage Auctions Will Auction Iconic Batman Cover From Frank Miller's 1986 Four-part Series

This is fantastic news for all Batman lovers.

The original cover artwork for Frank Miller's 1986 four-part series will be auctioned at Heritage Auctions.

Heritage Auctions will offer the original cover artwork for Book Three of Frank Miller's 1986 four-part series in its historic April 7-10 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction. With Miller's new Robin – 13-year-old Carrie Kelly — hunkered under the Bat-Signal, this is a milestone offering from the title that definitively converted the Caped Crusader into The Dark Knight and irreversibly altered the character, comic books, film, and popular culture.

Rarely do anything from Miller's victory come up for auction, much alone one of the four highly sought-after, well guarded covers. Indeed, it has been over two years since even a single page from the miniseries was offered at auction — and nearly a decade since Heritage Auctions sold the cover to Book Two (for $478,000), the only previous occasion a cover from The Dark Knight Returns was offered.

"The continuing relevance and attractiveness of Miller's Dark Knight cannot be emphasised, nor can the collectors' demand for any original artwork from the incredibly restricted amount made," says Heritage Auctions Vice President Todd Hignite. "Given the rarity and competitiveness, obtaining a cover from the series may have felt impossible, and we couldn't be happier that this one — the only one showing Miller's new Robin — is going to public auction for the very first time."

The third part of The Dark Knight Returns was titled "Hunt the Dark Knight," with Superman leading the hunt. With the debut of Clark Kent as a government pawn, the Joker's escape from jail, and the revelation that Selina Kyle has been changed from Catwoman to madam, Book Three proved to be a watershed moment in the series. And in the last pages, the Joker embarks on a violent spree, only to viciously hurt Batman and break his own neck (!) in order for his demise to be put on The Dark Knight.

Miller's comic book, even now — maybe particularly now — resonates as if it were released yesterday or the day after tomorrow.

Of all, The Dark Knight Returns is first and foremost a Batman narrative, undoubtedly among the finest ever written – Miller's reluctance, but unavoidable follow-up to his bleak, brutal work on Marvel's Daredevil. It is the storey of an aged vigilante who finds himself unable to hide in the shadows of a city — of a world — that has become even more scary and cruel than when he first put up his cape. The streets have been taken over by mutant gangs; the sky are densely packed with Russian missiles; and television screens are screaming with the inane jibber-jabber of empty talking heads. And familiar adversaries like as the Joker and Two-Face were already on their way out of the institution.

Batman: The Return of the Dark Knight #3 (DC, 1986) NM/MT CGC 9

Miller conceived The Dark Knight Returns on a plane flight to Dallas, in part as a result of his personal brush with criminality after a series of muggings. As he said in 2016 to The Hollywood Reporter, "That brought home to me the fact that Batman was the most powerful icon DC had. While Superman can fly, Batman transforms me back into that fearful person who also happens to be the one who can come and rescue him. It's the ideal myth."

And The Dark Knight Returns is still the definitive Batman tale.

Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen, stated in his introduction to the 1986 hardcover collection The Dark Knight Returns that Miller "has taken a character whose every trivial and incidental detail is ingrained in the hearts and minds of the comic book fans who comprise his audience and successfully redefined it dramatically without contradicting a single word of the character's mythology. Everything is identical, except that it is all completely different."

A HISTORIC event

Thirty-six years later, The Dark Knight Returns continues to serve as the blueprint for the contemporary comic book and the standard by which all subsequent works are measured.

From April 7-10, 2022, Heritage Auctions' 'Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction' will include the original Frank Miller Batman cover #3.

Heritage Auctions Overview

Heritage Auctions is the nation's leading fine art and collectibles auction company and the world's largest auctioneer of collectibles. Heritage is headquartered in New York City, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, and Hong Kong.

Additionally, Heritage receives the most online traffic and cash volume of any auction house on the planet (source: SimilarWeb and Hiscox Report). HA.com, the most popular auction-house website on the Internet, with over 1,500,000 registered bidders and a free searchable library of five million historical auction records with prices achieved, descriptions, and enlargeable photographs.