Frank Frazetta’s $6m Dark Kingdom Becomes World’s Most Valuable Work of Comic or Fantasy Art

The four-day Heritage Auctions Comics & Comic Art auctions was capped by Frank Frazetta's Dark Kingdom, which sold for $6 million to become the world's most valuable comic or fantasy art.

Frazetta's painting graced the covers of Karl Edward Wagner's 1976 novel Dark Crusade and Molly Hatchet's 1979 Flirtin' With Disaster and was one of the late artist's most treasured works. Additionally, the preliminary watercolor sketch that eventually grew into the iconic At the Earth's Core, which appeared on the 1974 cover of the Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback, realized $52,800.

Elsewhere, a signed strip from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes from March 28, 1986 (Calvin and Hobbes don sunglasses to look "cooler than we are") sold for $174,000, making it the world's most valuable black-and-white Calvin and Hobbes daily. Not far behind was the black-and-white daily that appeared in newspapers on December 30, 1987 (Calvin and Hobbes build "the strongest snow fort ever made" directly behind the garage, much to Dad's dismay), inscribed  to someone named Ann: "Best wishes with your ‘little Calvin". This sold for $156,000.