Among the offerings in veteran art dealer Russ Cochran’s 90th auction is an original Sunday page from Johnny Hart’s B.C. dated 10/26/1969, folded between tiers.

“It’s a classic Johnny Hart B.C. gag, from a period when the strip was one of the most popular in the funny pages,” Cochran said.

“Notice that the first two panels have nothing to do with the gag. This is because many newspapers, trying to crowd as many strips on a page as possible, would ‘drop’ these first two panels when the paper had a one-third or one-fourth page format. It’s drawn as a half-page, of course,” he said.

This Hart original comes with the watercolored color guide, colored by Hart himself. There is also a selection of original daily strips including B.C. by Hart and Wizard of Id by Hart and Brant Parker.

Cochran said that he had worked to provide a wide selection of comic book and comic strip originals for this edition of Russ Cochran’s Comic Art Auction, which closes October 8, 2009.

Previously he had announced two beautiful examples of Sunday pages from George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Frank Frazetta’s cover to Blazing Combat #3 among the offerings.

“These are two truly excellent Krazy Kats, one from 1932 and the other from 1937,” he said.

“There’s an interesting bit of history that impacts both of these pieces. In February, 1935, the Hearst papers introduced their Saturday tabloid comic section. Prior to that, the Krazy Kat Sunday was in black and white and often printed in a different section of the newspaper. The older version has no logo and the originals are more or less square in shape.”

Cochran said that on February 3, 1935, Herriman changed the format by making the page taller and including the logo in the artwork, so all pages from 1935 until 1944 are in this tabloid format.

“I’m really pleased to have two distinct examples of the different formats in this auction, and in addition that just about any Krazy Kat Sunday could be the jewel of someone’s collection,” he said.

He said also that he was very pleased to feature Frazetta’s cover for Warren Publishing’s Blazing Combat #3 to the auction.

Following the company’s successful introduction of Creepy into the marketplace in 1964, publisher Jim Warren decided to launch a military-themed comic magazine edited and written by Archie Goodwin in 1965.

Although it only ran for four quarterly issues, Blazing Combat was seen as a spiritual heir to the EC Comics titles Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat because it portrayed the human cost of war.

In addition to Frazetta, the series featured the artwork of greats like Gene Colan, John Severin, Alex Toth, and Wally Wood. The series has been collected into one volume by Fantagraphics.

“The original is 14"x15", oil-on-board is from Frazetta’s greatest period,” said Russ Cochran, who will celebrate his 90th auction with this event.