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A rare piece of primordial Marvel Comics history has been unearthed, and instantly became the most expensive ever sale of original comics art. The first page from 1963's Tales of Suspense #39 from Marvel Comics has sold at auction for a record-setting $3,875,000 in an event organized by Heritage Auction. Why? It's the first appearance of Iron Man in comic form.

“A fantastic image and a historic book combine for a record price. Very few of the early Marvel splash pages are known to exist," says Heritage Auctions' director of comics & comic art, Joe Mannarino. "When one shows up, the market is ready to react.”

The Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #39 was drawn by the modest but magnificent comics artist Don Heck. Heck, who passed away in 1995, was one of long-time Marvel boss Stan Lee's go-to artists in the '60s, second only to Jack Kirby. 

"Stan called me one day and said you're going to be doing a new character called Iron Man. I had no idea what it was, what I was going to do," Heck said in an interview with long-time Jack Kirby assistant Mark Evanier. "Kirby had designed a costume and contributed some ideas. Stan and I expanded on those ideas and then Larry Lieber wound up writing the final story. I liked doing that strip, especially the character bits with Tony Stark, Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts."

For decades, it was erroneously believed that Heck's pages of Tales of Suspense #39 were drawn based on layouts by Kirby. Kirby and Evanier both perpetuated those claims, but in the early '80s, Heck spoke out against that in Comics Feature #34, saying, "That's not true. I did it all. They just didn't bother to call me up and find out when they wrote up the credits. It doesn't really matter. Jack Kirby created the costume, and he did the cover for the issue."

Evanier later retracted his earlier claims, saying Heck and Kirby both told him privately Kirby did the layouts but were "mistaken."

Like most high-profile auctions, Heritage Auctions is keeping the identities of the new owner and the previous owner secret. During the time this page was drawn, Marvel historically didn't return the original art and kept it as giveaways or to be taken by staff. Whoever previously owned this piece did get Stan Lee to sign the original art, as seen in the credits box.

The $3,875,000 sale price of this page from Tales of Suspense #39 is now the highest-selling original comic art page known to have occurred, eclipsing the 2022 sale of a page from 1984's Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #8 by Mike Zeck (and others), depicting the debut of Spider-Man's black costume.

Other Don Heck original art is readily available on Heritage Auctions and other vendors as well. Romitaman has a complete 13-page story from Tales of Suspense #36 by the same creative team as the Iron Man debut, drawn just three months prior to the record-setting Iron Man page.

Interested? Here's where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here's a guide to how (and where) to read comics online.