Sotheby’s is auctioning off late Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s personal belongings, including a stack of Marvel and DC comics up for sale, giving fans insight into the titles collected by the famed musical artist before his tragic passing in 1991. Over thirty years later, the comics, featuring issues collected from 1965 to 1987, are a window into the interests of the gone-to-soon icon.
The Sotheby’s auction features issues of The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and an issue of DC’s Booster Gold. Also offered at auction by Sotheby’s are some of Freddie Mercury’s t-shirts, including a glitter Superman t-shirt. The auction, which runs until September 13, 2023, features “song lyrics, sketches, drawings” and a number of personal items, in addition to his comic books.
Freddie Mercury Was A Superhero In His Own Right
Freddie Mercury, along with his band Queen, helped to redefine the sound of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1970s and 1980s. A queer icon, who sadly passed from complications of AIDS in 1991, Mercury was a superheroic figure in his own right, and the insight into his comic book interests provided by Sotheby’s current auction is more taking a closer look at for both Queen and comic fans – but especially the many whose love of the two overlaps. Likely not the full extent of his collection, Sotheby’s lists twenty-two issues of Fantastic Four from 1965-1977, three 1987 issues of X-Men, and a single Booster Gold from 1987.
Freddie Was An Old School Fantastic Four Fan
The majority of Freddie Mercury’s comics currently up for sale are Fantastic Four issues sporadically collected between 1965, just several years into the teams run, and 1977. This indicates that Mercury was a comic book reader at least somewhat consistently during the early years of Queen. Physical media was looked at differently fifty years ago; rather than seen as collectors’ items, things like comic books were viewed as disposable errata, with the value of their preservation only becoming clear in later years. It is likely that many of Freddie Mercury’s comics were passed around on the tour bus, left behind in hotel rooms, damaged, and destroyed. Thankfully, this handful of his comics was saved.
Sotheby’s auction provides an opportunity to get to know the long-passed singer better. It is always valuable to our images of pop culture figures to know what their interests were outside the medium they worked in. Elvis, for example, was a huge fan of Captain Marvel Jr. Music fans across the globe were robbed of decades more of Freddie Mercury’s output by his untimely passing, and even for those who don’t bid on his collection of Marvel and DC comics can take a moment to appreciate this window into the interests of one of the 20th century’s most pivotal performers.