Neil Gaiman is always telling a story, even when the creator of Sandman and best-selling author of such novels as American Gods, Good Omens and Coraline is auctioning some of his prized pieces. Look no further than Jean Giraud’s 1994 painting of Death of the Endless, sister of the titular Sandman whose epic tale spans the universe’s origin through the present day.
This painting, rendered in bottomless blacks and carotid crimsons, is among the myriad centerpieces in Heritage’s Neil Gaiman Collection Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction, which is open for bidding and culminates with a live auction on March 14 with Gaiman in attendance. It’s not just a famous artist’s painting of a beloved character, it is also a chapter in this auction’s rich narrative.
Numerous artists have illustrated Gaiman’s Sandman stories or depicted Dream and his siblings for promotions or pleasure. Many of their breakthrough pieces can be found in this event — those by Michael Zulli, Jill Thompson, Yoshitaka Amano, Gaiman’s Stardust collaborator Charles Vess and Mike Dringenberg, who Gaiman says was “utterly the quintessential Sandman artist in many ways.”
Most of the works in this auction were gifted to Gaiman, tokens of reverence and affection from the interpreter to the inspiration. But that Death by Giraud — better known as Moebius, the Franco-Belgian author and artist whose reach extends into every medium — is the only piece in this auction Gaiman purchased for himself. Simply because “I love that piece so much,” he says.
When he was 14 in 1974, Gaiman visited France with his classmates. There, the young man from England spied the first issue of the French comics anthology Métal hurlant, which Giraud co-founded, and bought a copy with all the money he had saved. Gaiman couldn’t understand French, but Moebius’ work, which looked like comic books from the future, needed no translator. Gaiman would later say that single issue made him want to create comics when he grew up.
Gaiman saw the Giraud Death, painted in 1994, in a New York gallery and bought the small piece that cost almost as much as Gaiman was paid to write a single issue of Sandman.
This is but one story among the 126 lots in Neil Gaiman’s auction, one that ties it all together — the moment the inspiration feted the inspired. From the original artwork to the signed comic books, the Coraline puppets used on-screen to the limited-edition sculptures, the handmade Christmas stories given as gifts to the awards he was given, everything in this auction was chosen by Gaiman to spread that joy and to spin another tale.
A portion of the proceeds from this auction will benefit The Hero Initiative , which, since 2000, has been providing medical and monetary assistance to veteran comics creators, writers and artists in need of a helping hand. Some of the proceeds will also go to the Authors League Fund , which, since 1917, has helped professional authors, journalists, critics, poets and dramatists who find themselves in financial need because of medical or health-related problems, temporary loss of income or other misfortunes.
Gaiman will also share some of the proceeds with the artists who made his imagination tangible enough to put on Bristol board. And, as one might expect, there’s a story behind this auction, too: Gaiman was inspired by his friend Geoff Notkin, the star of TV’s Meteorite Men who played drums in Gaiman’s punk band when they were kids and started illustrating comics while Gaiman was still a young journalist. Notkin has held two auctions through Heritage, with a portion of those proceeds going toward causes dear to the Meteorite Man.
Gaiman asked Notkin why he was parting with his beloved treasures, among them rocks that had fallen from space. To which Notkin replied, These things have been making me happy for decades. Now, it’s time for someone else to find pleasure in them. Gaiman was reluctant at first. But slowly, he came around to the idea that he was not meant to safeguard these things forever.
The auction goes back to that moment when the grown-up Gaiman rekindled his love affair with comics in his early 20s: when he discovered Alan Moore’s take on DC’s horror staple Swamp Thing. Here, in the telling of Gaiman’s origin story, is a Steve Bissette and John Totleben page from 1984’s Saga of the Swamp Thing No. 27 that pays homage to Jack Kirby’s The Demon. There’s another by the same tandem from 1985’s Swamp Thing Annual No. 2 co-starring Deadman, who later came alive in several of Gaiman’s stories. There’s also the cover of Swamp Thing No. 66 by its writer, Rick Veitch, whom Gaiman nearly succeeded on the title.
That was in 1984, and within two years Alan Moore had taught Gaiman how to write comic-book scripts and asked him to assist with some research on a story he was writing, Watchmen. Moore also chose Gaiman as his successor on a book called Miracleman. Both were essentially comic books about readers’ relationships with superheroes and the medium.
As a thank-you, Moore and his illustrating partner Dave Gibbons gifted Gaiman the page from Watchmen where the Nite Owl awakens from a horrific dream in which he and Silk Spectre are lovers obliterated by a nuclear blast. Watchmen’s creators signed and inscribed the piece, the series’ lone 17-panel page, which is available in this auction along with John Higgins’ original color guide. Here, too, is a cover from Miracleman– Issue No. 16, the last issue written by Moore before Gaiman took the reins.
Some of Moore’s most significant DC work is here, as well: a page from the 1989 issue of Secret Origins in which he gave Poison Ivy the tragic origin story that continues to define Batman’s adversary. The page was drawn by Mark Buckingham, best known for creating the modern-day fairy tale Fables.
Some of the auction’s most intimate items may well prove among its most coveted: a signed limited printing of “A Writer’s Prayer,” an autographed unpublished American Gods short story gifted at Christmas to a fortunate few, his Christmas short story “Nicholas Was” created with longtime collaborator Dave McKean. He has also included Charles Addams’ 1956 Cosmopolitan illustration “Suburbia,” featuring the oddities next door.
There’s also an iconic portrait of Gaiman by Michael Kaluta that served as the cover of 1999’s God & Tulips, a benefit book for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund containing three of Gaiman’s speeches, including “Good Comics And Why You Should Sell Them.”
Gaiman knows that his story would be incomplete without his Sandman Morpheus, represented in this auction by 56 pieces that chronicle Dream’s evolution from idea into acclaimed literature into action figures and plush toys.
Gaiman had no idea how huge the series had become until it appeared in paperback form and started selling by the thousands — and even then, he believed it thrived only among a boisterous, affectionate cult. Yet the series spawned reverent praise: Norman Mailer wrote that it was a “comic strip for intellectuals, and it’s about time.” Tori Amos, whose songs often reference Gaiman, treated The Endless as though they exist in this world. “On bad days,” she wrote in the introduction to 1994’s collection Death: The High Cost of Living, “I talk to Death constantly.”
There are several works here, as well, by Death co-creator Mike Dringenberg, whose “Sandman really defined the look and the feel of the character,” Gaiman says. Among this significant lot is a mixed-media piece featuring Dream that has been seen only once — on a flyer announcing Gaiman’s signing at Night Flight Comics in Salt Lake City in 1990. Dringenberg also gifted Gaiman a mixed media portrait of Death, done in 1992. The piece was originally a test for a Death graphic novel.
Here, too, is another Sandman rarity: one of the few double-page spreads from the series, in which Michael Zulli and Dick Giordano introduce the sea serpent.
There is magic dust sprinkled throughout this auction for every fan of each of Gaiman’s works, including 2002’s Coraline, a terrifying “young adult” novel in which a young girl is abducted by mirror-universe versions of her mother and father, who want to keep, and perhaps eat, her. Gaiman had always envisioned his book as a film, and in 2009, animator Henry Selick made one of those beautiful rarities that parents love watching as much as their children.
From that film, Gaiman offers an on-screen, camera-used puppet of Coraline in her orange polka-dot pajamas accompanied by her ever-present companion, The Cat. Like everything else in this auction, Gaiman struggled with letting Coraline go. He did so only because the right reason had come at the right time.
Now open for bidding, the sale will culminate in a live auction on March 14 where Gaiman will be in attendance. In the meantime, highlights will go on display at Heritage’s Chicago offices from March 4–6, and there will be a livestreaming salon hosted by Jill Thompson on March 6. The collection will be available for view by appointment at Heritage’s Dallas HQ from March 11–13.