How much do you love Marvel comics? Enough to spend over $3 million on a single page of artwork? The original artwork for story page 25 of Secret Wars #8 sold on Thursday for a record $3.36 million at Heritage Auctions. What’s so special about the page is that it depicts the origin of Spider-Man’s symbiotic black costume. In fact, it could ultimately be called the origin moment of Venom himself.
Check out the artwork below, which was featured on Heritage Auctions’ official Twitter account:
The credit for the artwork goes to Mike Zeck “and others,” as John Beatty, Jack Abel, and Mike Esposito all contributed to the artwork of this particular issue. However, it’s unclear if any others besides Zeck worked on this specific page. The story was scripted by longtime Marvel editor Jim Shooter.
“This page was the big reveal teased on the cover! This is where Peter Parker actually got his spiffy new black costume. But… it’s a costume with a secret! Because it very soon turns out to be alive and have its own agenda. This is the origin of the character Venom!” Heritage Auctions’ official description reads. “The costume first appeared months earlier when characters from this series returned to the Earth. But there was no explanation for Spidey’s new duds. …Until this page seven months later!”
It’s not every day that a comic book page sells for this much money —this is the highest price ever paid for an interior story page of original comic book artwork, although certain covers and complete books have sold for more. Back in September of 2021, a copy of the 1962 comic Amazing Fantasy No. 15 sold at Heritage Auctions for $3.6 million.
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