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Not exactly, there are a lot of factors IMO, that determine whether "the
juice is worth the squeeze" when deciding what a piece are art is worth
to an individual. In this case a piece of comic art that was created for
reproduction, was never really intended to be hung as an actual piece
of art. "The Destroyer" by Frank Frazetta in its current incarnation was.
Also, there is an inherent quality to a piece that goes beyond a
person's personal taste. This is nothing against Miller and Janson's
work, but there pen and ink over pencil page isn't in the same ballpark
as the Frazetta painting I'm referring to. Also, both Miller and Janson
are still living, and as of Tuesday, Frazetta will have been gone for a
year. There will be no more Frazetta paintings made ever again.

"It might be easy enough to dismiss this as just being what the buyer can "afford" -- but that PAWN STARS incident illustrates that it soon becomes what the seller is asking. Selling price and asking price are two very different things, but if too many sellers start asking prices only the megarich can afford, the hobby withers and dies. "

Would this be the hobby of collecting original artwork, or do you think insane orginal artwork prices carry over to collecting comics? I would have looked at colelcting the art as a commodity hobby that would be directed by regular laws of supply and demand. Wouldn't a lack of demand bring the prices back down until an evantual equilibrium is found?

Another thought:

I imagine that it's possible that whoever bought the Dark Knight piece might also own a lot more original art, possibly a lot of Miller/Janson stuff. If he loves their stuff enough to shell out half a mill, it's probably not the only piece he has.

Let's say that he's cornered the market with 200 Miller/Janson pieces at between 500 and 3000 a page. After the half a mill page, asking price for those pages rises to maybe 5-10.000 for a while, with key splash and cover pages going 20 - 30K. Plus other artists get a hike, too.

If the guy who bought the piece is an art dealer, this kind of superpriced buy is like those mechanical hares they have at dog tracks to make the dogs run faster.  It raises the general price for hot pages, and then, when he's sold off a lot for inflated prices, he can sell off the Dark Knight Page itself and even at a loss, he's made money.

I know there are quite a lot of price-inflating scams in the "fine art" world, and I think only a few of the comics art buyers or dealers would be able to spot one transferred to comic art collecting.

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There are one or two THUNDERBIRDS spreads by Bellamy that I think I could probably find room for!