Investing in Superheroes? Comic Art as a New Alternative Investment

Abstract

We build quarterly and semi-annual indexes for American and European comic art based on a dataset of more than 106,000 comic art items sold at auction. We find that this new alternative investment can outperform US and European equities and bonds. Between 2002 and 2017, annualized returns of US comic artworks outperformed most asset classes with a solid 11% annualized return, while European comic art achieved 25% yearly returns on average after 2009. We show that comic art delivers significant diversification benefits to an investment portfolio due to low correlations with other assets and geographical diversification between European and American markets. These outcomes contrast with fine art in general, which delivered few diversification benefits when compared to equities and bonds between 2002 and 2017, and whose geographical markets are closely tied.