Hand-Colored Calvin and Hobbes Artwork and Frank Frazetta Cover Art to Auction

A selection of historic comic books and original comic art will be going under the hammer at Heritage Auctions' June 26-29 Comic & Comic Art auction.

Bill Watterson has held on to nearly all of his original drawings from the Calvin and Hobbes strip’s 10-year run but has occasionally presented the odd exception as a gift to important people in his life, sometimes hand-painting color on daily strips that originally ran in black and white. An example of this is the piece at this sale that premiered November 18, 1985, featuring the first appearance of Calvin’s alter ego, interplanetary explorer Spaceman Spiff. It is inscribed “To Jim, Lynn, & Dylan, fellow explorers of the unknown” and gifted to Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman and his family.

Other highlights include:

• Frank Frazetta’s cover art for Famous Funnies No.214 (Eastern Color, 1954), one of eight covers he created for the series between 1953 and 1955, 
• a full, original, unseparated front and back cover wrap to the first issue of Action Comics from June 1938 
• the July 1940 All-American Comics No.16 in which Alan Scott survives a train wreck and encounters the Green Flame of Life, which ultimately ends with him fighting crime as the Green Lantern
• Fantastic Four #1 White Mountain Pedigree (Marvel, 1961), the 1961 comic book premiere of Marvel’s first superhero team and the first appearances of Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, the Thing and a re-imagined Human Torch as well as the Mole Man
• a near mint issue of The Incredible Hulk No.1 (Marvel, 1962)
• a complete run of Phantom Lady
• Dave Gibbons’ original art from page 18 in Watchmen No.11 (DC, 1987) in which Nite Owl demands answers from Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias