Early in 2010, The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death by Todd Hignite was published by well-known art book publisher Abrams. This monograph was beautifully designed, with page after page of original art, sketches, poster art, partially completed drawings, color guides and more. The text was incisive and sensitive. I suspect any comics artist would be thrilled to have a monograph like this one written about their work. I would love to see more books like this.
In addition to being a writer, Hignite is Consignment Director for Heritage Auctions. Heritage Auctions is an auction house based in Dallas, TX. It primarily sells work in internet auctions, although it does also have floor sales. To quote Heritage’s website, “Heritage Auction Galleries is the largest collectibles auctioneer and third largest auction house in the world. We are also the undisputed Internet leader in our field.” That field includes a lot of comics and comics art.
In the past, Heritage has been somewhat weak on alternative or underground comics. They seem to have been making an effort over the past year to correct this. There has been a good deal of high-quality underground comix artwork sold (including a lot of very expensive items by Robert Crumb), and since March of 2010, there has been more-or-less weekly sales of Jaime Hernandez pages.