Art News

Man’s childhood comic collection fetches $3.5 million at Heritage Auctions in New York

DALLAS (AP).- Billy Wright plunked down dime after dime for comic books while growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, caring for the collection he started around the age of 9 until his death more than half a century later. On Wednesday, most of that collection sold for a whopping $3.5 million. Wright’s 345 comics, nearly all of which were published from 1936 through 1941, included many of the most prized issues ever, including Detective Comics No. 27, which features the debut of Batman, and Action Comics No. 1, in which Superman’s first appears. Experts say Wright’s collection, which included 44 of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide’s top 100 issues from comics’ golden age, was remarkable for its number of rare issues, but also because it was compiled by a single person in childhood who kept it in good condition until his death in 1994 at