The best comic book covers of the week – 06 April 2020

Posted on April 6, 2020

2 min read

How much would it cost to have a complete comic book collection? I’m not talking something modest like a full run of 1990s Nova comics or a longbox full of Deathstroke issues, I mean the whole thing. The entire kit, the full kaboodle. Can you put a price on all the comic books ever made? Probably! While such an estimate would most likely give you a heart attack, for several million dollars you can get a headstart on that almighty collection if you’re a fan of DC Comics.

Auction site Sotheby’s plans to sell roughly an entire forest of classic and modern comic books from the distinguished competition, in their upcoming DC Complete: The Ian Levine Collection. Sotheby’s says that the collection will include every printed comic book from DC from 1935 all the way up to 2014. That’s over 40 000 comic books, plenty of famous firsts and some proper pop culture history right there.

“The Ian Levine Collection is the holy grail for comics collectors,” Richard Austin, Head of Sotheby’s Books & Manuscripts Department in New York, said of the legendary DJ’s hoard via Newsarama.

Amassed over decades of hunting, Levine’s collection embodies the passion and fandom that has defined comics culture for generations, which today is best encapsulated not through printed issues but popular superhero films that regularly break box office records. Featuring some of the most valuable individual books as well as extremely rare promotional issues, the Levine Collection includes all the DC heroes that are among the most recognizable and versatile pop culture touchstones in the world.

If you’re wondering what kind of money you’d need to purchase that library, let me give you an idea: Action Comics #1 (First Superman appearance) sold for $3.2 million in 2014, while the first appearance of Batman in Detective Comics #27 fetched over $1 million back in 2010. Whoever walks away with this purchase is going to need one heck of a vault to store the greatest art collection in history inside of. A good thing then, that this week’s best comic book covers won’t cost you an arm and a leg!