In the late 1970s, Swamp Thing co-creator Bernie Wrightson began drawing a series of detailed pen-and-ink illustrations inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, endeavoring to draw the characters exactly as they were described by Shelley. He would work on these drawings in his spare time when he was able to take a break from paying gigs, and after seven years he had crafted approximately fifty Frankenstein illustrations. These were then published in a new edition of Shelley's novel by Marvel Comics in 1983. Twenty-five years later, Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein was re-published by Dark Horse Comics.
Yesterday, Wrightson's original cover art for the Marvel Comics release of Frankenstein went up for auction at Profiles in History in Los Angeles, and it sold for $1.2 million.
The artwork was part of a private collection that also included work by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and John Byrne. When you add the (substantially lower) prices the other work sold for to the $1.2 million the Wrightson piece went for, the seller made more than $3 million yesterday.
According to JustCollecting, this is only the second time a piece of art by an American comic book artist went for a seven figure sum at auction. The other was Frank Frazetta's Egyptian Queen artwork from the cover of a 1969 Eerie magazine, which sold for $5.4 million earlier this year.
The site notes that,
due to its remarkable level of intricacy, combined with its dramatic power, the drawing has since been described as Wrightson’s “Sistine Chapel”.
Wrightson, who passed away in 2017, was an incredible artist, and the Frankenstein cover is stunning to look at. I'm sure that artwork is going to be very well taken care of now that it's in the hands of someone who spent over $1 million on it.
Copies of Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein can be purchased on Amazon.