Comic featuring first appearance of Superman sells for world record sum at auction
A COMIC featuring the first appearance of Superman has sold for a world record £4.75million ($6m).
The front cover of the 1938 Action Comics No 1 shows the caped superhero lifting a car above his head.
In his first adventure, he rescues love interest Lois Lane from a gangster who she rebuffs in a nightclub.
Superman also discovers he can “hurdle 20-storey buildings and outrun a train”, but decides that “he must turn his titanic strength into channels that will benefit mankind”.
There are only 78 surviving copies of the 200,000 first editions, which retailed for 10 cents — around £1.50 in today’s money.
This edition sparked a bidding war in Dallas, US, and soared up, up and away past the £4.2million paid for another Action Comics No 1 in April 2022.
Barry Sandoval, of Heritage Auctions, said: “Without Superman and Action Comics 1, who knows whether there ever would have been a Golden Age of comics, or if the medium would have become what it is today.”
A Heritage spokesman added: “We’ve never had the privilege of offering one as breathtakingly beautiful as this. The colours are stunningly rich, and the cover is almost pristine and largely unmarred.”
In the same sale was a letter by comic book writer Jerry Siegel outlining the concept for Superman to illustrator Russell Keaton in June 1934.
Siegel’s letter details the origin of Clark Kent, who lands on Earth as a child in a small time-machine.
It sold for £226,500.
An Action Comics No 1 that has previously been restored sold for £494,000.