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1938 Superman Comic Sells For $1M
slasher999 writes in to note a new world record sale for a comic: an instance of Action Comics #1, 1938, sold for $1 million at auction. Both the buyer and the seller remain anonymous. This comic marked the first time a superhero went to work in a city, and the first time a man flew without mechanical aid.
Well, if they both remain anonymous, how do we know the sale has happened?
In other news, I just bought a superman comic for $1M +1 from an anonymous seller.
Ha!
It may be valuable as a cultural artefact, which pushed up its price to a million dollars, but is it worth it? A comic book, really?
Although imo, it's still far more meaningful than a lot of what passes as modern 'art'.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
I say call me when you have issue #0 for sale.
Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."
Comic values are down overall. I suspect that AC #1 might get lots more money in a more favorable economy. This one may be a great investment. I remember saving #1 issues of comics in the early 70's. Anyone else notice what crap, worthless comics debuted during that era? ;-)
I must say, the timing on this sale was impeccable. Didn't these #1 Supermans used to be worth $25,000 or so? Right now is the time to sell. The whole superhero/comic book thing is getting old already. These trends only have a certain lifetime, and I'd say the peak is right about now, if it hasn't passed already. Oh, collectors items will always be worth something, but just not as much as they are right now due to the demand. Any analogs to other trends?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
not "fly" (at first at least)
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
...l'm quite keen on comic books.
Especially the ones about superheroes.
I find the whole mythology
surrounding superheroes fascinating.
Take my favorite superhero, Superman.
Not a great comic book.
Not particularly well-drawn.
But the mythology...
The mythology is not only great,
it's unique.
Now, a staple of the superhero
mythology is,
there's the superhero
and there's the alter ego.
Batman is actually Bruce Wayne,
Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker.
When that character wakes up
in the morning, he's Peter Parker.
He has to put on a costume
to become Spider-Man.
And it is in that characteristic
Superman stands alone.
Superman didn't become Superman.
Superman was born Superman.
When Superman wakes up
in the morning, he's Superman.
His alter ego is Clark Kent.
His outfit with the big red "S" -
that's the blanket he was wrapped in
as a baby when the Kents found him.
Those are his clothes.
What Kent wears - the glasses,
the business suit - that's the costume.
That's the costume Superman wears
to blend in with us.
Clark Kent is how Superman views us.
And what are the characteristics
of Clark Kent?
He's weak... ...he's unsure of himself... ...he's a coward.
Clark Kent is Superman's critique
on the whole human race.
How much this sketch is worth at auction: http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10206
"This marked the first time a superhero went to work in a city, and the first time a man flew without mechanical aid, in a comic."
You Americans have about 4000 years of prior art, largely in the form of European and Asian mythology.
as subject, lameness filter, meh
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
best. price. eva.
Because when you have gold, you can do all of it you mentioned :-)
God's gift to chicks
Only 70+ more years until my comics from the 80s are worth something.
Maybe my grandkids will have it made?
Ah, who am I kidding. Those comics from the 80s/90s where way over produced and collected and none of them were as groundbreaking as the 1st Superman.
Wha it Shaq or D. Howard?
Superman didn't flew in Action Comics #1. He just leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Superman is a terrible hero. He has every major advantage you could ever need to defeat any form of villain on Earth, and because of that there is never any reasonable doubt that he can get through any situation.
Tied up? Super strength out.
Locked in a mile deep underground basement - fly / tunnel out.
Screwed up and someone you liked died - turn time backwards.
Need to stop missile - use the fricking laers in your eyes.
Someone sneaking up on you with a crowbar (as if it matters)? Super hearing!
He has one weakness, to an element that might as well be called Unobtainium, but for story reasons keeps appearing in the hands of villains who don't possess FTL or even the means to detect it...they just get really freaking lucky and get some!
Even if he gets real unlucky and fights Lex Luthor, who has some unob....I mean Kryptonite, and he's been suckered once again into standing right next to a box of it...he could call a friend to close the box, or maybe nuke the site and spread it all over. All the baddies die, he lives, and the unob^H^H^H^HKryptonite is dispursed enough to not matter.
There's simply no other situation he can punch, fricking laser, or fly his way out of.
Superman makes me want to root for the bad guys.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Maybe it's a tax-avoidance scheme.
I always liked the way Superman fought for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" implying that whatever the "American Way" is, it doesn't include Truth and Justice ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
A citation of Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, by Larry Niven.
Best Slashdot Co
Is this comic available as a torrent somewhere? I'd love to read the original.
Collectible comics, that is.
I was heavy into collecting at one time. I still have my #1s of "The Nam" and whatever reboot cycle Supes was going through at the time.
Here's what put me off the whole business: At that time, the business model of collectible comics dealers was based on ripping off little boys. They'd come into shops with their few bucks and dealers would sell them crap by always hinting that "This is gonna be the next TMNT #1! Buy it now! Only a buck over cover!" I've never known any business that bought stock, put it out, stored it away when everyone realized it was crap and didn't sell, then dragged the same crap out of storage a year or two later, slapped on a higher price, and called it a "collectible". That shit is just ridiculous.
What broke the camel's back was when I managed, some time after the fact, to piece together what had happened with the Dark Knight hardcovers. When they were announced, you could prepay something like $75 and reserve a signed copy. There were delays and by the time all the signed copies had shipped, the book had totally blown up. The demand for the signed collectible hard cover was huge, with new stock selling for $300.
Every lousy fucking dealer in Houston that I was able to get info on (except one, A Few Books and Records on the SW side), told every kid who had prepaid for their book that their book never arrived and the order needed to be canceled. They refunded the $75. Some of them didn't wait a week before they stuck that kid's book in the display case with a huge price tag on it.
With just one exception, every comics dealer I've ever known has been a scumbag.
has anyone read this one yet? Ive only watched the movie, so i thought buying issue #1 would be a good way to figure out more about super-mans. is there more than one? why is his underwear on the outside?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Action Comics #0, Zero Hour event tie-in from 1994.
This belongs in a museum !
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
How did a basement-dweller get his Cheeto-and-semen-coated hairy palms on $1M?
A million DOLLARS?? For this old thing?? Hell, he could have had this copy for half that. Tard.
I remember reading it (the reprint, obviously, not the original). It was pretty bad.
Yeah, well Superman is one of the few superheroes I *do* like. The superheroes I find truly annoying are the ones like Batman who have no special powers and yet act totally contrary to any form of rationality. If Superman is *overspecced* to be a superhero, the the exact opposite is true of Batman and other "regular human" superheroes. They fly in the face of every bit of common sense imaginable. They have no superpowers, but refuse to use guns or other practical weaponry which might actually give them an edge (there is a reason cops and soldiers carry those guns). They wear absolutely ridiculous costumes in which no one could possibly fight (Batman's costume is the worst of the lot--with no peripheral vision and that silly cape in the way he would be laughably easy to beat down). They have silly modes of transportation (why would a supposed vigilante who's trying to stay under the radar drive something as gaudy and easy to spot as the Batmobile/Batcopter/etc.?!?). Basically, the only "normal human" superhero who has ever made any sense was The Punisher (closer to what a real-world vigilante superhero would look like than any moron running around with a big cape on).
Superman may have too much Deus ex machina going for him. But at least he makes *some* sense, given his set of superpowers. Sure, it's silly for him to wear a cape too. But at least with him it doesn't matter (Superman could fight in a ballerina costume and still be every bit as effective). With Batman--the cape, the stupid costume, the ridiculous car, etc. are all just fucking stupid. He's supposed to be this smart detective, but he dresses like a drag queen and acts like brain-dead retard.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If we can add silly suffixes then what about the ironic age.
Like new outfit Ug, really suit you. I guess not fit the bear either?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow, I never knew Superman was inspired by the Progressive Era fascination with eugenics. I guess after the Nazis it all got whitewashed with "high gravity" on Krypton and "lack of Kryptonite on Earth".
It was in a Henson the storyteller like production, that did Greek mythology.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Bullshit.
1. Actually human civilization has existed for a long time without coinage or an equivalent in metals at all. See, for example, ancient Egypt. But really, the first coins appear around 550-600 BC in Anatolia, or according to other historians there is some stuff in 900 BC in China which could pass for a coin. Even the equivalent in metal weight comes actually after more than a millenium and a half of human civilization.
2. Even then, not everyone used gold. Chinese coins for example had for millenia been _bronze_, which had the advantage that at least you could do something with it. If all else failed, you could actually melt those coins and make a sword out of that bronze, or even viceversa. (Private minting of bronze coins was actually allowed for most of their history.) Or in ancient Egypt, we have plenty of transactions which happened in deben (a weight unit) of copper, or bronze, or whatever.
So basically if human civilization had actually waited for gold to begin, you'd probably still wear a leather loincloth and hunt gazelles.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...however, Kevin Smith has been spotted acting very giddily today.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=1536
According to link about, he got a total of $1.6 milliion for his entire collection, including a mere $86,000 for
Action Comics #1.
True that was 7 years ago but geez, what a markup. Consider all the stories about his financial woes, I bet
he wishes he'd held on to his collection.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Wow, the guy who paid 1 million must feel like a jackass now.
You don't buy a vintage comic book to read it. You buy it to have it. The story has, no doubt, been republished in collections and so on - even without the download there were surely ways to read the story, if that's all you wanted.
Bow-ties are cool.
Even as a kid I noticed that nearly all the comic book heroes had super human powers, bestowed on them by magic or some other pseudo-scientific explanation, except for Batman. Under the suit Batman was still only human. Very smart, in good physical shape, disciplined, and with all the technology his billionaire wealth could buy, but still just human. Comparing them to the ancient myths, Batman was like Odysseus, an extraordinarily smart man, while Superman, Spiderman, (Hercules, Perseus) etc. were gods. In my childhood fantasies, my understanding was that Superman's powers would forever be denied to me in the real world. But Batman was something I could actually become. (At least that's what I thought when I was five).
This is a bunch of crap. Watch companies do this all the time to bump up the interest in 'collecting' their wares. The plan is simple:
1) Buy the item in a private sale at whatever price.
2) Hand it over to an auction house for sale.
3) Have an accomplice bid for the piece. If you want real big numbers (so you get the free publicity), bring 2 friends to bid against each other.
4) Advertise that your company's 'collectibles' are worth these huge prices, based on the auction price.
5) Profit when everyone runs out to buy the next big 'collectible.'
You don't actually believe this BS, do you?
woooosh.
woooosh.
Yeah, OK, whoosh. Fine. Whatever. I didn't see anything to the post I replied to apart from face value. If there's anything more to that post, I still don't see it. So as far as I'm concerned, you "whoosh"ed me for no goddamn reason.
Bow-ties are cool.
Let's say I already have enough CPUs, as many as I can fit. My legs are tired, though. You, on the other hand, have a computer without a CPU and you prefer to sit on the floor because you're into manga. Or something like that.
The obvious problem with the GP's system is that the obvious solution to our problems wouldn't make sense.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."