Rumour has it that Paul Cezanne's Card Players recently traded hands for $250 million in a private sale. The price would more than double the previous record for Giacometti's Walking Man, which sold for $104.3 million at auction. Read more at the Art Market Monitor. 

India's 2nd Annual Comic Con will feature recluse artist Robert Crumb, famous for pioneering the underground comix movement in the 1960s. The show will take place from February 17-19 in Dilli Haat and New Dehli on the heels of Crumb's ill-fated visit to Sydney, Australia, which he canceled after receiving brutal criticism in the local media. Visit the website here. 

Dorothea Tanning, Surrealist painter and wife of Max Ernst, died at the age of 101 this week. An exhibition of her work is currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Read more at The New York Times.

Heritage Auctions, the world's preeminent auction house for comics and original comics art, is holding a massive sale in New York City on February 21st, featuring some of the top comics available. Original cover art of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes calendar will also be auctioned off, as well as Robert Crumb's cover to The People's Comix, and John Romita's cover to Amazing Spider-man Annual #3. Check 'em out below.

Comics: 

Detective Comics #27 (DC, 1939) CGC FN+ 6.5, the first appearance of “The Bat Man” (Estimate: $475,000+); 

Action Comics #1 (DC, 1938) CGC GD/VG 3.0, the most important comic book ever published (Estimate: $325,000+); 

All-American Comics #16 (DC, 1940) CGC VF 8.0, the debut of Green Lantern (Estimate: $125,000+); 

Batman #1 (DC, 1940) CGC VF+ 8.5 (Estimate: $125,000)

Marvel Comics #1 (Timely, 1939) CGC VF- 7.5 (Estimate: $125,000+).

Orignal Art:

John Romita Sr.’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3 cover art

Dark Knight Returns #1 original double page spread, pages 46-47

Bill Watterson cover art for the Calvin & Hobbes 1989-1990 18-month calendar

Robert Crumb cover art for The People’s Comix

Read the full press release here.

German officials have returned 45 relics to Iraq that disappeared during the US led invasion in 2003. The archaeological objects included a 6,500-year-old Sumerian gold jar and the head of a Sumerian battle axe.  According to German law, smuggled Iraqi artifacts discovered after 1990 must be returned to the country upon confiscation. Via Reuters.

Two British studies have found that psilocybin mushrooms, also known as "magic mushrooms", have similar functions on the brain as anti-depressants, which surpress certain areas of the brain with very dense connections.  According to researcher David Nutt, "We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as strange." The results on test subjects were profound enough to discuss the drugs in the context of psychotherapeutic treatment, although researchers were quick to warn that more research was required. Via Reuters.

According to Commodity Online, the Hang Seng Bank will be launching the first Yuan based Gold ETF on February 14, another sign that Eastern economic powers, led by China, continue to reduce their reliance on the US dollar for international trade.

10 years after Neil Gaiman took Todd McFarlane to court for copyright infringement for Spawn #9 (released way back in 1993!), the two comic titans have finally settled, according to The Associated Press.  Gaiman, who created the Angela character under dispute, as a guest writer, has been entitled to 50% ownership of the first three issues where she appears. One has to wonder, though, if this was Gaiman's plan all along, seeing the opportunity for lucrative gains by creating a new character in the hottest comic book at the time. Via Bleeding Cool.

Beijing Poly and China Guardian have begun competing with Sotheby's and Christie's in 2010, having achieved the status of the world's third and fourth largest auction houses in the world. Although most of their sales are exclusive to the Chinese market, the two companies were able to pull in almost a third of the revenue of their American and British counterparts, another sign of China's growing economic power. I suppose the picture of their headquarters says it all, though.

Impressively, Heritage Auctions, whom we often profile in the Book and Comics section, ranked fifth.

Via the BBC.   

Is China's meteoric growth depleting the world of its natural resources? So says bestselling author Stephen Leeb in his new book, RED ALERT: How China's Growing Prosperity Threatens the American Way of Life, which warns that American living standards will dramatically decline without a mass mobilization — on the scale of a world war effort — towards the development of renewable energy. Using data accumulated from world governments, international agencies and transnational mining companies, Leeb demonstrates how China's enormous appetite for natural resources has exerted a heavy pressure on global supplies, resulting in dramatic price spikes for just about every major commodity, including oil, copper and corn, in the last 10 years.

Fascinatingly, Leeb attributes America's decade long economic malaise, particularly the declining income of the middle class, to the surge in the cost of natural resources, which functions as a massive tax on business and the cost of living, an appealing thesis by virtue of its simplicity. According to Leeb, the credit crisis was, in fact, precipitated by the increasing need of Americans to borrow to keep their standard of living at the same level, as prices for just about everything rose, epitomized by the price of a barrel of oil reaching $150 in the summer of 2008. Worse yet, his mind numbing charts show how prices are likely to continue rising by several more multiples in coming years as shortages become more acute.

Leeb's gravest concern, however, is that America seems unaware of the fact that it is in a full fledged economic war with China for the world's remaining resources. While America lies asleep, oblivious to the existential threat of resource scarcity, China scours the globe, securing major resource deposits to fulfill the needs of future generations. Equally impressively, the country is investing half a trillion dollars a year, the equivalent spending to GDP of the United States during World War II, on renewable energy development and infrastructure, planning for a future when fossil fuels are either depleted or too expensive to extract. Interestingly, Leeb argues that China's aggressive pursuit of renewable energy constitutes a danger to the United States, as the world lacks the necessary resources to roll out two separate large scale renewable energy systems, threatening a long lasting, and perhaps even permanent, negative impact on the American way of life if the country does not begin taking immediate action.

Leeb, the humble money manager who graduated from the University of Illinois with a Masters in Mathrmatics and a PhD in Psychology in only three years, an all time record for the school, is careful to distance himself from the notion that Red Alert is "anti-China," describing the "Middle Kingdom" as an adversary pursuing its own self-interest, rather than an enemy. Nevertheless, Leeb's work is a massive expose of the deceptive nature of Chinese foreign policy, which he traces to Sun Tzu's The Art of War, from which he quotes, "Hide your ambitions and disguise your claws," as a major key to understanding their strategy.

Leeb cites the 2010 Copenhagen Climate Summit as a prime example of their hidden intentions, arguing that the conference was completely derailed by the Chinese government through a series of strategic maneouvers, such as sending lower level diplomats into high level meetings with world leaders while President Hu Jintao hid away in his hotel room. According to Leeb, the failure of the conference to reach any meaningful resolution decelerated a global shift toward renewable energy, resulting in a historic sleight of hand by the Chinese that has enabled them to pursue the development of renewable energy infrastructure with much less competition.

With massive government subsidies, China has become the world's leader in solar and wind energy in two short years, selling photovoltaic panels, for example, well below market cost in order to win over the industry, as they did in the past with rare earths.  This makes it extremely difficult for non-Chinese players to compete, as demonstrated by the slew of difficulties facing American solar companies. As Leeb points out, these companies are not simply competing with other Chinese solar companies, but with the Chinese government itself, which sits on $3.2 trillion in cash.

As essential commodities become increasingly depleted, Leeb claims today's 'resource liberalism' will give way to 'resource nationalism', a process, he maintains, has already begun with China's restriction of rare earth exports in 2010, Saudi Arabia's reduction in oil exploration, for the stated goal of preserving oil reserves for future generations, and even India's expected decrease of iron ore exports, of which it is the world's third largest exporter, by 30%-40% in the 2010-2011 fiscal year, in an effort to supply increasing domestic demand for the metal.

Leeb attributes America's short sightedness to the partisan nature of its democratic political system, contrasting its lawyer dominated, bickering congress with China's one party system, ruled by an elite of well educated scientists and engineers that are able to tackle issues as part of a long term, unified strategy. This enables them to more effectively tackle the major challenges of the century, i.e. resource scarcity, as Leeb states, "If we look at how the Chinese reacted to the 2008 crisis, there is no mistaking that they have become even more aware that resource scarcity is, by a very wide margin, the most critical economic concern of our time."  Leeb explains how America is at a further disadvantage for moral reasons, citing China's impartiality in dealing with dictators and bribing officials, such as in the resource rich African Congo, something American companies are forbidden to do. Leeb points to the Afghanistan war as perhaps the most illustrative example of how critical the situation has become, with America spending billions of dollars on a war to spread American values, while China spends billions of dollars on mining one of the world's largest copper deposits in the same country.

Doom and gloom books on the economy are hardly a rarity these days, yet Red Alert has a sobriety and immediacy that most books decrying economic apocalypse often lack. Stylistically, there's little to complain about either. It's thoughtfully layed out, well written, and persuasively argued. The detailed analysis of charts and tables from the US Geological Survey, the International Energy Agency and BHP Billiton give credibility to what some might consider to be a panic stricken thesis, illustrating in stark graphic terms how shortages in basic commodities, such as oil, copper, silver and even iron ore will begin as soon as this decade.

If Leeb is right, America is running short on time. He advises resource scarcity advocates and environmentalists to join forces, even though they've rarely seen eye to eye in the past, as both groups have similar end goals, i.e. to begin building massive scale renewable energy infrastructure. Without dramatic action, America risks losing everything as the cost of oil and essential metals become prohibitively more expensive. As he states, this is not a shooting war, but the outcome of the conflict may very well yield similar results, with the loser suffering a much lower standard of living. The key to a healthy democracy is having a well informed public, and, in this respect, not only is Red Alert an intellectual feast, but a must read book for anyone that cares about their children's future.

Alan Moore gave his take on why he thought Guy Fawkes masks, which he originally invented as part of the V for Vendetta comic series, had achieved iconic status at protests around the world.  Although cautious in putting too much of his own stamp on what it represented, the 58 year-old author told The Guardian that he believes the identity shielding mask has an appeal as a unifying image of the "voice of the people": "And I think that if the mask stands for anything, in the current context, that is what it stands for. This is the people. That mysterious entity that is evoked so often – this is the people."

Via The Guardian.

NASA is launching a new $2.5 billion, nuclear powered rover to Mars on Saturday. Scheduled to land in August 2012, 'Curiosity' has a mission to find water deposits that might have once harboured life. According to the NASA Astrobiology Program Director, Mary Voytek, "Mars could very easily have evolved the complex chemistry that is necessary to be a habitable environment. And that information is still on Mars."

With all the funding cuts at NASA under the Obama administration, it seems as if the space agency is attempting to create a headline-friendly mission that has large appeal to the public's imagination. Either way, PR campaign of hard science (probably both), it's great to see the US continue to invest in space travel.

Via AFP and The Vancouver Sun.

 

A never before seen Robert Crumb cover intended for The New Yorker surfaced last week when Vice contributor Nadja Sayej discovered it among her belongings after attending the Venice Biennale. Bizarrely, on the flight home, the reporter was flipping through a catalogue from the Danish pavilion, where she found a cardboard bookmark that featured Crumb's illustration of a gay couple applying for a marriage license. Sayej contacted Crumb about the mysterious image and subsequently learned that it was submitted as a cover to the New Yorker, only to be later rejected by the editor, who never replied. Sayej asked Crumb what he thought about it:

I don’t expect an apology. But if I’m going to work for them I need to know the criteria for why they accept or reject work. The art I made, it only really works as a New Yorker cover. There’s really no other place for it. But they did pay me beforehand—decent money. I have no complaint there. I asked Françoise what was going on with it and she said, “Oh, Remnick hasn’t decided yet…” and he changed his mind several times about it. I asked why and she didn’t know. Several months passed. Then one day, I got the art back in the mail, no letter, no nothing.

Via Vice.

In a somewhat surprising development, libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is in a statistical dead heat in Iowa, tying Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for first place, according to a Bloomberg poll. Paul has also placed second place in New Hampshire with 17% support, trailing Mitt Romney who leads with 40%. 

Nevertheless, Newt Gingrich may be the one to watch. He is now surging in the polls after strong performances in the debates, which have highlighted his experience and rhetorical skill.

The first appearance of Sgt. Rock in "Our Army at War" #83 sold for  $16,730 at Heritage Comics Auction, a new all time record for a war comic. Somewhat surprisingly, the comic was graded CGC 8.0, a relatively low grade for a record auction price, illustrating the difficulty of finding high grade DC war comics.

Via Heritage Auctions.