DALLAS, TX.- Original art from a global who's-who of comic-book creators realized more than $1.57 million last weekend at Heritage Auctions, heralding the upcoming Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction event sure to make this a record-smashing spring for the Dallas-based house.

Nearly 2,900 bidders competed for almost 800 lots in the almost entirely sold-out International Comic and Animation Art Signature Auction event held March 13-14 at Heritage's global headquarters and conducted in English and French for a worldwide audience. The appreciation of — and demand for — comic-book art from around the world has never been higher, whether from well-known American titles or profoundly influential books from Europe and Asia. That, too, is abundantly clear from Heritage's enormously successful weekly Comics & Comic Art auctions — the most recent of which, held March 14-15, realized nearly $600,000.

That was evident early on during the International Comic Art event, when an extraordinarily rare — and now record-setting — piece from acclaimed award-winner Charles Burns hit the blocks. Burns' cover to 1982's RAW No. 4, Art Spiegelman and wife Francoise Mouly's beloved international comics anthology, realized $87,500 — by far, the highest price ever realized for one of Burns' original works. Until last weekend, that distinction belonged to the cover of Burns' Harvey Award-winning Black Hole No. 3, which Heritage sold in 2019 for $37,500.

Burns wasn't alone among the record-breakers last weekend: Jamie Hewlett's original cover to 1995's Tank Girl vs. America No. 4 realized $68,750, shattering the previous high for a Tank Girl original set in 2019 when a complete story sold for $40,800. To illustrate the size and scope of the event, a Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge page from 1995's Swedish weekly Disney comics magazine Kalle Anka & C:o (or, Donald Duck & Company) set a Rosa record when it realized $23,750.

In all, dozens of pieces by myriad comics greats sold in the five figures March 13-14, among them offerings from Tintin's Belgian creator Hergé, whose original illustration for 1978's Le Paradis des Jouets realized $40,000; France's acclaimed and oft-imitated Jean Giraud (best known asMoebius); and Serbian-born writer, artists and filmmaker Enki Bilal, whose page from 1977's Mémoires d'Outre Espace Gare au Plitch sold for $21,250.

"These artists — these international pioneers — continue to thrill collectors, as evidenced by the results we saw last weekend," says Olivier Delflas, Heritage Auctions' European-based Director of International Art. "No other venue lines up ligne claire pioneers and leaders of the bande dessinée school alongside underground heroes and historical Japanese animation gems — not to mention Moebius gliding to the stars with his beloved Silver Surfer in the same auction as such American legends as John Buscema and Don Rosa."

Notably, Moebius' top lot in the International comics-art event comes from a very American comic book: 1988's Silver Surfer: Parable No. 2, a tale penned by none other than Stan Lee. It realized $37,500. From two decades earlier, John Buscema and Sal Buscema's page from Silver Surfer No. 7 sold for $18,750.

Which only serves to remind that there are several fantastic Surfer originals in Heritage Auctions' action-packed April 1-4 Comics & Comic Art auction — among them a John Buscema and Joe Sinnott page from 1972's Fantastic Four No. 121, and another by Jack Kirby and Sinnott from 1978's The Silver Surfer, considered by many comics aficionados as the first graphic novel.

These may be pages from what they used to call funny books. But Heritage's curators and collectors take these cultural and emotional touchstones very seriously.