Comic Art & Graffix Gallery was founded in 1986 by comic art collector and dealer Richard Halegua. Born in New York City, Rich started collecting comic books in 1962, at the tender age of five years old. When he was nine, so that he could afford to buy comics for his collection, he began selling comics to his friends. For some books he got as much as $5.00 !!!! Then in 1967, high school teacher Phil Seuling sponsored the first major comic book convention in New York. Called the Comic Art Convention, there were tables and tables full of golden age and silver age comics, big little books, newspaper strips, pin-ups, movie posters and original artwork. By the time Rich was 18, he had become a full time comic & collectable dealer in everything from comics to movie posters to baseball cards, monster mags, rock & roll posters and related stuff. He began dealing in original art some years later. |
That's my booth displaying artwork and comics at WonderCon in Oakland in April 1996. See me at the San Diego Comicon International at the San Diego Convention Center every year. |
During the middle eighties he was part of a crew of dealers who found large amounts of collectables, including finding the old warehouses of comics publishers Fawcett and Standard. In these warehouses were everything from comics, pulps, premiums, artwork, movie magazines, etcetera, etcetera. In the interim he had moved out of NYC and relocated to Ohio, where he opened an art gallery in 1986 and called it, you guessed it, Comic Art & Graffix Gallery. Over the next several years he became the pre-eminent dealer of classic original comic art from 1890-1970, buying and selling thousands of pieces of art by such artists as Hal Foster, Joe Shuster, Jack Kirby, Alex Raymond, Frank Frazetta, Berni Wrightson, Steve Ditko, George Herriman and loads of others. He became known as a major collector of classic strips and in particular a major collector of silver age DC comic art and covers, acquiring many choice pieces including the Joe Kubert "Hawkman" cover to Brave & Bold #36, the Hawkman splash page to Brave & Bold #34 , several Carmine Infantino "Flash Covers" and many other great pieces. Beginning in 1991 Rich was asked by several different magazine publishers to write articles on comic artwork which were published in a wide assortment of titles. Many of those articles are included in this online resource. In 1993, Rich moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and has been there ever since enjoying the sunny playground city. He hopes that you find this site useful and visit often looking for updates which he tries to add regularly. Look for Rich at the San Diego Comicon International (in the summer) and Wondercon in Oakland (every April) where you can see him displaying all that great art he has for sale. He'll be looking for ya'. |
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