DALLAS —Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the most valuable comic book in the world.
A copy of Action Comics No. 1, the comic book that introduced Superman to the world in 1938, sold for $6 million on April 4 at Heritage Auctions during the first session of the latest four-day Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction. Graded Very Fine+ 8.5 by Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), the issue from the Kansas City Pedigree is one of the world’s finest copies. Only two other unrestored issues featuring Superman’s first flight – or, at least, his first leap over a tall building – have ever graded higher.
Courtesy Heritage Auctions
Superman soars over the world record previously held by … Superman. According to CGC’s list of the most expensive comic books ever reported sold, a copy of Superman No. 1 sold privately for $5.3 million in 2022. The previous auction record was held by the CGC Near Mint+ 9.6 copy of Amazing Fantasy No. 15, featuring the debut of Spider-Man, which sold for $3.6 million at Heritage in September 2021.
There are just 78 copies of Action Comics No. 1 in CGC’s population report, with the grading service estimating there are a scant 100 survivors of the comic book that launched superheroes into popular culture — 100 out of the 200,000 copies printed by DC Comics’ predecessor National Allied Publications. Little wonder copies are so coveted by collectors when they appear at auction. Look no further than Heritage’s September 2023 sale of an issue graded CGC 0.5 for $408,000, which leaped over the previous record in a single bound.
Courtesy Heritage Auctions
Action Comics No. 1 is hailed as the most important comic ever published, and the Superman who first appeared in 1938 remains remarkably like the version still filling comic-shop shelves every week or awaiting yet another big-screen turn in writer-director James Gunn’s retelling of the tale. He was more violent than the Superman of the 1950s and ’60s, but that’s only because his creators wanted him to be “very serious about helping people in trouble and distress,” Jerry Siegel once said.
And in the case of Action Comics No. 1, trouble and distress were not in short supply: In his debut alone, Superman squared off against “unjust imprisonment, spousal abuse, disarmament and drunken driving,” as Les Daniels summed it up in “Superman: The Complete History.”
Courtesy Heritage Auctions
For more results from the Comic & Comic Art Signature Auction at Heritage, click HERE.
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