The famous opening scene to The Watchmen, one of the great cult classics of the comics medium, is open for bids on the Heritage Auction website. Masterfully drawn by Dave Gibbons, the page features the iconic, bloodstained happy face, passed over by the protagonist Rorshach, who is holding a sign that says "The End is Nigh".  Meanwhile the comedian, who’s about to be murdered, looks down from above. It will be interesting to see how much the page sells for as a gauge of both the impact of The Watchmen on our culture, as well as the increasing value of original comic art, which has been booming for the last two years.

Special Thanks to Bleeding Cool.

The bull market in original comic art that began during the 2008 financial crisis seems poised to make new all time highs with the auction of two golden age comic covers this week, the iconic Superman #14 and Detective Comics #69 featuring the joker. The negative stigma that has longtime been associated with comic books, also known as “graphic novels” by snobs like the New York Times, has created a situation in which original comic art has become grossly undervalued, particularly in relation to soaring prices in the fine art market. In the last two years, however, collectors and investors have awakened to the beauty, scarcity and cultural import of these artifacts, which are now playing catch up. In May, the cover to Daredevil #158 by Frank Miller recently secured $101,575  at auction, breaking the world record, which was followed in June by  an EC Comic Cover of Weird Science-Fantasy #29 (1955) by Frank Frazetta sold in a private sale for $380,000, the highest price ever paid for a piece of original comic art. More recently, Todd McFarlane's famous cover to Amazing Spider-man #313 sold for $71,200, an unusually high price for such a comic that was released in the late 1980s.

With the first million dollar auctions of Action Comics #1 (twice) and Detective Comics #27 selling back to back in February, 2010, I suspect we may see the first million dollar bids for comic art this week, which will only add fuel to what’s turning into a burning hot market. As time passes and old prejudices fade, I expect the gap between original comic art and traditional fine art to narrow further. After all, what’s likely to impress people more these days: an original cover to Detective Comics, or a metallic rabbit by Jeff Koons?

Mr. Unpredictable, pioneer dub master Lee "Scratch" Perry is about to open his first art exhibition at the age of 75. Announced on his MySpace blog page, the show, cyptictically entitled "Secret Education", is on display from November 13 to December 11th, 2010, at the DEM Passwords Gallery in Los Angeles. Judging from the promo picture, it looks to be an interesting show, the hand prints and foot prints evoking those found in prehistoric cave painting, while the red triangle mouth evokes the sophisiticated, yet primitive symbol-laden mysticism that is often found in his music.

The artist statement is written in the same improvised, medicine man style that characterizes his singing:

I am black shadow, the man and the moon. Paint am I, I am paint. Painted Africa, painted Ethiopia, painted globe. From the center of the Earth to the pinnacle of the sky to the edges of the Universe. Words, words, words, I am words. I am paint. I am art. I am stone and I am perfect, never tell a lie.

Lee 'Scratch' Perry is one of the great artists of the last 100 years. I'm grateful he's still with us.

Since I hadn’t seen anyone else mention it, I thought it was worth noting before the World Cup ended how similar the new Adidas football logo is to the Ableton Live logo from a few years back. Accidental? I doubt it.

Alex Grey unveiled his latest painting at the MAPS 2010 "Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century" conference on Saturday night.  Painted in acrylic on canvas, "The Shulgins and their Alchemical Angels" features the portaits of Ann and Sasha Shulgin, a husband and wife team who were pioneer psychedelic researchers, most famous for their books PiHKAL and TiHKAL, which Grey inscribes at the top of the image.  The molecule formation in Sasha Shulgin's hand is most likely a reference to the significant chemical discoveries he had made during his career.

Website io9 recently reported on a new exhibition of paintings by Mark Todd featuring classic Marvel and DC comic covers drawn by the likes of Jack Kirby, John Romita and even Don Heck.  Todd emulates the original covers fairly closely, in so far as the references can easily be recognized by anyone familiar with the  comics, though he deviates from them in ways that helps lend the works an air of artistic credibility.  Applying many of the motifs found in Pop Art, Todd changes the original color scheme, often using a monotone across the whole work and sometimes highlighting it with a few flecks of brightly colored paint.  He uses a variety of mixed media and draws in a scribbly zine style, which has become popular in the last few years.  To his credit, he changes and abstracts from the narrative content of the original covers, yet, apart from the cool references, I don't get the impression that Todd really has that much to say.  At best, there seems to be a vague sense of irony typical of postmodern art, but little else.

From what I can see, this is an idea in its embryonic stage, a great starting point from which to explore what makes comic covers from that era so visually impactful and what that might say about modern forms of visual communication.  But I feel like Todd has stopped short.  He hasn’t quite dismantled the format and reinterpreted it from a 2010 perspective.  As a result, the works suffer from an overreliance on the creativity of the original comic artists, leaving one feeling somewhat empty-handed after the novelty has worn off. The artist applies typical visual arts motifs that we’ve often seen in galleries and museums, but without any substantial analysis or commentary that separates the paintings from the original works in a significant way.  These are paintings that were conceived to look like art, rather than challenge the viewer to see something new in a familiar form.  It's a good start, but I think Todd needs to take it much further to deliver on its potential.  Conceptually, this is a sketch, not a finished product.

The wonderful world of Misney, a surreal mashup for the new decade. This print represents Disney's acquisition of Marvel in an image that unites the two iconographic fictional universes.  Though they seemed to previously reside in two separate areas of our imaginations, they are portrayed here in a new synthesis, providing a jarring but enjoyable platform from which to consider how these dissimilar worlds interrelate.    

Bob Dylan will showcase his painting talent in an international exhibition in 2010.  "Train Tracks" is taken from the collection called "Brazil".

Alex Grey's epic new painting Love is a Cosmic Force fuses the swirling imagery of the galaxy with the mingling energy of two lovers.  Grey's trademark translucent flesh produces a visionary rendition of the spiritual and the physical nature of love. 

Robert Crumb's website announces a reissue of a classic Crumb print A Short History of America.