I checked out Richard Guion’s fun site Giant-Size Marvel today and was pleasantly surprised to see that he’d posted the original art to the cover of an issue of Captain Marvel I wrote a long, long time ago.

When I asked Richard where he’d found the art, he told me that it had sold yesterday at Heritage Auctions—for $26,290.00!

And if I’m correctly interpreting the Heritage stats, it’s the second highest price ever paid for a Gil Kane cover, exceeded only by the cover to The Avengers #134, which went for $41,825 on August 13, 2013.

I guess when I wrote, “oh, what a killer cover from Gil Kane,” I knew what I was talking about!

Last week, I told you how my wife was selling her copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Adventures #1 so that in the far-flung future, we won’t be reduced to eating cat food. But … what if your tastes run more to original art?

Then how about the wonderful Green Lantern page below, drawn by Gil Kane and Sid Greene, which not only features an encounter between the Silver and Golden Age incarnations of the character—but is signed by Martin Nodell, who created Green Lantern back in 1940!

The page was published in Green Lantern #61 (June 1968), and if you’d like it to be yours, head on over to Heritage Auctions.

I was chatting with a couple of people a few days back who didn’t realize that original comics art was drawn larger than it was printed nor that the standard size for such art had shrunk over the decades. And it struck me: Hey, they might not be the only ones out there who don’t know that!

And so … here I am with two choice pieces from my collection.

In my left hand, I’m holding a page from All-Star Western #104 (1958; art by Gil Kane), and in my right, I’m holding a page from Dead of Night #11 (1975; art by Rico Rival). Supposedly, the change from one size to the other occurred in 1967, and was all thanks to Murphy Anderson.

I bought the Kane at either my first or second comic book convention; I think I paid $2.00. As for the Rival splash, it’s one of the pages I was given back at Marvel for having written that issue.

As Norma Desmond said in Sunset Boulevard: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Now you know.

Last night, Irene and I got to talking about our history with original comic book art. The subject came up because she and her sister are about to sell a few more pieces through Heritage, some of which are amazing. (How does a 1968 Neal Adams Deadman splash page sound? I can’t recall when I last saw one of those go up for sale!) I’ll tell you more about them later as the auction dates approach, but it got me thinking about, not the best, but the first pieces of art I ever bought.

It was 1970. I was 15, attending my first comic convention—one of Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend cons, of course. And while wandering the dealers room, I came across the following pages being sold for next to nothing.

First, a Gil Kane page from All-Star Western #104 (December-January 1958-1959), part of the Johnny Thunder story “The Gauntlet of Thunder.”

You can see it larger here if you’d like.

And the second purchase that long-ago weekend was this Joe Kubert page from G.I. Combat #64 (September 1958), part of the story “The Silent Jet.”

You can check out a larger version of that page here as well.

So what do I mean when I say I bought these two pages for next to nothing? Well, I picked up one for $1.00 and the other for $2.00, though I no longer remember which was the more (comparatively) expensive piece. (Please don’t hate me.)

So what was the best thing you bought at your first con?