The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge! is sweet…

Neal Adams’ original art for the cover of Batman #251 has sold at Heritage Auctions for a whopping $600,000 — smashing the pre-auction estimate of $250,000.

That’s… wow.

Not that it’s not worth it. I mean, if I had that kind of cash, I’d lay it down. The Batman #251 cover is one of Adams’ two greatest — and one of the greatest in comics history:

So some lucky (and monied) collector came away with this — from an anonymous seller:

Damn. I can’t even.

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A few thoughts:

— Maybe I couldn’t afford it, but I did get to see this masterpiece up close at New York Comic Con in October. Click here.

— I’ve spent quite a bit of time here at 13th Dimension lately on this particular issue, which came out in 1973 and was written by Denny O’Neil (of course). It was central to our recent JOKER WEEK coverage, with appearances in our TOP 13 JOKER STORIES EVER (click here) and TOP 13 JOKER COVERS EVER (click here) rankings.

— I also made the point that the issue — The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge!, which was just re-released as a Facsimile Edition — was strong evidence that the Bronze Age was comics’ true Golden Age. (Click here for much more on that.)

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MORE

— ADAMS Discusses the BATMAN #251 Cover. Click here.

— O’NEIL and ADAMS Talk BATMAN #251 and Bringing Back the Joker. Click here.