'Dark Knight Returns': More Frank Miller art up for auction

Heritage Auctions is offering two more pieces of Frank Miller's original artwork from The Dark Knight Returns.

The illustrations, expected to sell for $50,000 (£31,474) each, are the cover to 2006′s Absolute Dark Knight and a splash page from the1997 10th anniversary edition of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Millar's splash page from the original edition of The Dark Knight Returns was sold by Heritage for a record $448,125 (£273,431) in May last year.

"It took me years to define, in my own mind, Batman as less a creature of vengeance than of vigour," the creator said of the Absolute Dark Knight cover.

"This piece is one of my personal favourites. To me, it sums the man up," he said, describing the splash page. "Like any hero, Batman is complex. Here we see him as a father figure, instructing one of my favourite creations, dear Carrie Kelly."

The Dark Knight Returns, widely considered one of the greatest Batman stories ever told, ran for four issues in 1986. The plot follows a middle-aged Bruce Wayne, who comes out of retirement to don the mantle of the bat once again.

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