As many of you have heard, John Biernat, former owner of The Dragon Lady comic shop and a key figure in the Toronto comic book community passed away in September. Observant customers will also have noticed that there has been a large influx of comic book and comic strip reprint collections coming into the shop as we have purchased portions of John’s personal library.

John’s estate has made a generous donation of some of his comic art collection to form the core of a holiday charity art sale. This includes cover recreations by C.C.Beck and Martin Nodell and prints by Bob Kane and Dick Sprang. We’ve expanded the offerings by asking artist friends of the store to contribute drawings along the golden age super-hero theme. 100% of all sales will go to benefit Maggie’s, one of the country’s oldest sex-worker justice organizations, who recently lost their offices in a fire.

We are listing the pieces as they arrive in our artstore so that you can see what sort of pieces are coming.

Holiday Charity Art Sale at the Beguiling Art Store

The sale will be in a silent auction format, wrapping up at 7PM.  We have received and are welcoming more advance bids if there is a piece here that catches your eye and you can’t make it on Wednesday, you can email mail@beguiling.ca. We are only able to receive exact bids and not proxy bids. Any items not sold on the 6th will be available at a set price for the next two weeks.

There are many great potential gifts for the holidays here as all of the art from John’s collection is elaborately professionally framed.

Some highlights from the collection include:

Secrets of the Bat Cave by Dick Sprang 33″ x 23″ (estimate $700-1000 CAD)

Master Comics #21 cover recreation painting by C.C.Beck  11″ x 15″ (estimate $2400-3500 CAD)

All Star Comics #33 cover recreation painting by Irwin Hasen 16′ x 23′ (estimate $1000-$1500 CAD)

We have received donations from many cartoonists in support of this fundraiser, including Rick Taylor, Chester Brown, Jeff Lemire, Fiona Smythe and Maurice Vellekoop. Please check out the artstore and our social media chanels to see new additions as they come in.