An Iconic Batman Image Just Sold For $2.4 Million. Who Actually Created It?

The cover to the first issue of the iconic 1986 comic series The Dark Knight Returns sold by Heritage Auctions last week for $2.4 million, at once an eye-watering amount for a piece of original comic book art, and still vaguely disappointing compared to pre-auction estimates bandied about in collecting circles. Even so, the sale is remarkable, especially when you delve into the details of the piece. It turns out that the highest-priced original American superhero comic artwork to change hands in public to date was in large part the work of a female creator, color artist Lynn Varley, executing the design of Frank Miller.

Just to be clear, there is no issue of credit-stealing or misattribution. Though Miller is widely recognized as the key visionary behind The Dark Knight Returns, Heritage Auctions listed the piece under the names of both Miller and Varley, and it is initialed by both. Varley, Miller’s creative partner and one-time spouse, was widely recognized for her talents and received numerous industry awards when she was active in comics. But when a piece of artwork sells for over $2 million, and is a collaboration between an artist whose hand-drawn originals sell for mid-six figures and another whose work sells for considerably less, it’s worth taking a moment to unpack exactly who made the art, even if it’s clear who and what made the art famous.

First some context. The Dark Knight Returns was a mini-series published by DC Comics in 1986, originally as four deluxe individual issues, and subsequently as a graphic novel that has been a perennial best-seller for the past three and a half decades. In the series, writer/artist Frank Miller reimagines Batman as a grim, middle-aged avenger dispensing brutal justice in a post-apocalyptic landscape dominated by violent gangs and blanketed in vacuous media.

The tone of the story was shockingly dark by the standards of ordinary superhero fare, and it galvanized readers hungry for a more serious and substantial take on the characters they grew up reading. It not only revolutionized the American comics industry and reinvigorated the character of Batman, it laid the groundwork for Tim Burton’s gothic Batman movie in 1989 and subsequent media versions of many other superheroes. This is what made demand for the artwork, and the price, so high.

The cover to issue #1 set the tone for the series. The image is brutally simple. It shows Miller’s chunky, ragged-looking Batman silhouetted against the night sky, illuminated by a dramatic flash of lightning. The sky is a deep, cobalt blue, usually the color of Batman’s cape. The lightning bolt glows and jags angrily down the page, bisecting the figure and giving drama and direction to the scene.

“This is an iconic piece of comic art, of comic history,” says Todd Hignite, Vice President at Heritage Auctions. “Even the most casual comic fan identifies this artwork right away; it is one of the most recognizable images of one of the most popular superheroes ever created.”

Credit for this revolutionary version of Batman goes entirely to Miller, who had already been a rising star in comics through the early 1980s, but saw his reputation elevated to the stratosphere with TDKR. Miller wrote the scripts, drew the pages in pencil, pioneered the visual storytelling techniques that made reading the comic such an exciting experience for fans, and conceived of the distinctive character designs. He was, in nearly every sense, the auteur responsible for the work and its acclaim.

But in comics, the matter of artistic attribution is a bit more complicated. The original artwork is not necessarily produced to be sold as a standalone piece; it is part of the production process of a commercial item (the book itself) and is often the result of collaboration between several people whose work all contributes to the final product. For example, most of the interior pages of TDKR were finished in ink directly over Miller’s pencils by Klaus Janson, and colored on a separate overlay known as a “color guide,” by Varley. Janson and Varley’s contributions can be seen most clearly in a deluxe Gallery Edition shot from the original art plates, published in 2016 by Graphitti Designs and DC. That volume reproduces the original art of the cover of TDKR #1 that just sold, featuring Miller’s hand-drawn rough and the finished color art.

Again, the question of art direction is not in doubt. The silhouette concept is Miller’s, and is a trademark of his style. “If you want finished, rendered artwork, I’m not your guy because I’m not very good at it,” Miller said in a promotional video released by Heritage ahead of the auction, “but I can do a kickass silhouette.”

The figure on the finished art exactly follows the hand-drawn rough. But all the other details of the finished piece including the precise delineation of the figure, the lighting and the sublime color scheme are the work of Varley. Does this division of labor matter? Are her contributions as instrumental in the iconic quality of the piece as Miller’s, and to what extent are the marks on the paper Varley’s work rather than Miller’s?

Experts will tell you it’s complicated, especially as it concerns pricing of works. Among comic art collectors, the black and white line-art, usually pencils finished in ink, is considered the “original.” The color overlays, which were done by hand (often by women) until the advent of computer coloring in the early 90s, are less desirable, even though they are also one-of-a-kind, handmade artifacts of the production process.

Varley’s original color guides for TDKR have occasionally come up for sale and fetch prices in the thousands of dollars, definitely on the high end for this type of artwork, but a pale shadow of the prices realized on what collectors consider “proper originals” – that is, the pen-and-ink drawings.

So is this piece, which apparently was sold without the accompanying rough done in Miller’s own hand (Heritage Auctions did not reply to a request for clarification of this point), strictly speaking, a “Frank Miller original?” TV writer/producer David Mandel, who has collected original comic art including the largest individual collection of TDKR pages, weighed in on this issue on a podcast with art dealer Felix Lu earlier this week.

“I don’t think it’s a color guide,” he said with some hesitation. “I don’t know what the cover is, and I don’t know if the buyer knows or cares. I know it’s not pen-and-ink Frank Miller, which is how I define my Frank Miller.”

Mandel went on to describe the situation as akin to the production methods used by Andy Warhol in his famous “factory,” where other artisans actually did the printmaking and construction of his works – a detail deemed entirely irrelevant to anyone spending millions on a Warhol “original” that bears his distinctive approach and his signature.

At the end of the day, the power of the piece is greater than the sum of its parts. $2.4 million dollars bought one of the most effective collaborations between an artist’s hand and an artist’s brand, and a defining image of a global icon.