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In the 1980s, the Justice League underwent a drastic transformation after DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. Instead of focusing solely on the heavy hitters of DC, the comic was re-imagined as a superhero comedy with characters like Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and Green Lantern Guy Gardner. Now, a premium page from early in the run has come up for auction, but it’s going to be an expensive purchase for anyone who wants it.
A seller on eBay, going by “doggiedonut,” has listed a page from Justice League #4 by artist Kevin Maguire and inker Al Gordon. This was the comic book series launched in 1987 by Maguire alongside writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis. It marked the beginning of the League’s comedic era, and the series was renamed Justice League International with #7.
Booster Gold Proves His Worth As a Hero To the Justice League
The page up for auction has some historical significance because this is the issue where Booster Gold officially joins the team. In the prior issue, Booster was brought to the League under false pretenses by an amoral businessman named Max Lord, who claimed to represent the team’s interests.
In this page, Booster begins to prove his worthiness to the League when he takes on the Royal Flush Gang outside of the Justice League headquarters. Batman and Guy Gardner are seen in panel 2 as they prepare to observe the fight to see what Booster can do. By the end of the issue, Booster was offered a place alongside the League.
Doggiedonut notes that this page was “originally purchased directly from the artist Kevin Maguire in person during a Chicago Comic Book Convention in the mid-late 1980s.” The seller’s asking price is $4,300, which is largely in line with our expectations. Maguire’s pages from that run have sold for thousands of dollars on Heritage Auctions, with the highest reaching $30,000 earlier this year for a splash page image of the team.
However, this is the second time that doggiedonut has listed Justice League #4 page 10 on eBay, which indicates that a buyer wasn’t found during the initial offering. Collecting premium pages isn’t a cheap hobby, but there is an option to “make an offer” to the seller and potentially pick up this piece of DC history. As with all comic art pages from this era, there is only one original. And that makes it a unique collectible for the buyer who is willing to meet the seller’s price. This isn’t the only high-end original art page recently spotted on eBay. A Todd McFarlane page from Amazing Spider-Man was put up for sale earlier this month.
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