The thing about collecting something is that its value, should that be what interests you about it, is determined solely by the demand/desire others have in the item.

When I was younger and just getting into comic books, comic book legend Jack Kirby’s career was, sadly, on the decline.  If you don’t recognize the name, you certainly recognize many of his creations or co-creations: Just about every superhero character present in the enormously successful Marvel films.

Captain America?  Co-created by Mr. Kirby

Hulk?  Ditto

Iron Man?  Co-created/co-designed by Mr. Kirby

Thor?  Kirby

Ant-Man?  Kirby (though his cinema incarnation has a longer path involving many more creators over the years)

Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and Galactus?  Kirby either created or co-created most of the characters.

And so on, and so on.

But as I said above, when I was first getting into comics in the 1970’s Jack Kirby’s star was on the decline.  Hell, it was worse than that.  There were many who derided Mr. Kirby’s then new work as being nothing short of terrible.  Quite the turnaround considering the 1960’s were arguable Jack Kirby’s biggest, most popular creative decade.

Even more sad is the fact that when Mr. Kirby passed away in 1994, he was engaged in a years long legal fight with Marvel Comics to get back the artwork he was certain they were holding from him.

This comic book artwork was considered worthless back when he made it.  In fact, almost every one of the artists working on comic books for the first thirty plus years of the industry viewed their artwork as disposable and many of these pieces were indeed thrown away.

Which is why classic original artwork, especially any by Jack Kirby from the first decade of Marvel Comics, is so very hot today.  Check this story out, involving the original Jack Kirby artwork for the cover of Thor #159 (the article linked to below mislabels the cover as belonging to issue #158), which was valued at £5000 and wound up selling at auction for a whopping £44,000:

Thor comic cover which hung on girl’s bedroom wall for 30 years sold for £44,000

Amazing, no?

Here’s what the Kirby illustrated cover looked like on the actual 1968 comic book:

And here’s the original cover artwork…

The most amazing thing about all this to me is it proves how hot Jack Kirby’s artwork is these days.  IMHO, while this is a pretty damn good cover, it is hardly one of Mr. Kirby’s better or best known works, yet it still merits a truckload of cash!