By: Zaki Salleh
IPOH – The first comic created by the Royal Artist, Datuk Lat, titled “Tiga Sekawan Menangkap Pencuri” (Three Friends Catching a Thief), has successfully been sold for nearly RM4,000 in an online auction.
The comic book was purchased by a collector known as WMK Izzad for the price of RM3,888 through a bidding session on Facebook.
The original price of this comic when it was first published in 1964 was 35 sen (cents).
Based on social media research, WMK Izzad is an education officer residing in Terengganu and has an extensive collection of old books and comics.
The bidding session on the Facebook page “Kolektor Buku2 Semalaysia” was conducted by one of its members, Ross Limbong, hailing from Alor Setar, Kedah.
The bidding session, which lasted for approximately 5 hours last night, concluded at 9:59 PM with nearly 600 bidders.
The book was in used condition with its centre pages separated from the stapler, starting at an initial bid of RM1 and escalating freely until the bidding period ended.
The auction generated heated competition as bidders, mostly private book collectors and enthusiasts, competed, driving the bids to RM1,000, RM2,000, and RM3,000.
However, it cannot be confirmed whether this bid for Datuk Lat’s comic is the highest in Malaysia for local work.
Datuk Lat’s first comic publication, “Tiga Sekawan Menangkap Pencuri,” was released by the Sinaran Brothers in 1964 when Lat was 13 years old.
The company accepted materials submitted by Lat without realizing he was a teenager and paid him $25.
In 1968, at the age of 17, Lat began creating the comic series “Keluarga Si Mamat” for the newspaper Berita Minggu, which was published in the newspaper every week for 26 years.
