Rare Superman comic book fetches stellar price at auction

17 December 2021, 20:24

Superman
Superman. Picture: PA

The 1939 comic showing Superman leaping over tall buildings was sold to an anonymous buyer.

A rare copy of a Superman comic book that sold for a dime in 1939 has been purchased for 2.6 million dollars (£1.96m) in an auction.

The comic showing Superman leaping over tall buildings on the cover was sold to an anonymous buyer, according to ComicConnect.com, an online auction company.

The seller, Mark Michaelson, bought the comic in 1979 from its original owner and kept it in a temperature-controlled safe.

Mr Michaelson, now semi-retired and living in Houston, paid his way through college by buying and selling comics.

The character created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster is a pioneer of the superhero genre, and comics featuring the Man of Steel have netted huge prices recently.

ComicConnect announced in April that a copy of Action Comics, the comic that introduced Superman in 1938, had sold for 3.25 million dollars (£2.45m).

“Now you look at the comic books and you go ‘superheroes everywhere.’ You look back in the ’30s, there was no such thing. So this was literally the first superhero,” said ComicConnect CEO Stephen Fishler.

By Press Association

Latest World News

See more Latest World News

Conan O’Brien

Conan O’Brien to receive Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in comedy

Police behind police tape in a snowy street in Slovkia

Student held in Slovakia after two people fatally stabbed at high school

US astronaut Suni Williams works outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk

Nasa’s stuck astronaut steps out on spacewalk after seven months in orbit

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol outside the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials in Gwacheon, South Korea

Court upholds detention of impeached South Korean president

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu: No Cabinet meeting until Hamas backs down on ‘last-minute crisis’

Signage at TSMC headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC posts 57% surge in profits thanks to AI boom

Student protesters in Belgrade holding banners

Woman hurt as car ploughs into crowd of anti-government protesters in Serbia

Marine Le Pen

Crowds attend Paris memorial for far-right French leader Jean-Marie Le Pen

Pages from the United Healthcare website are displayed on a computer screen

UnitedHealth books better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit

Vatican Pope Falls

Pope hurts his arm in second fall in a month

A miner is transported on a stretcher by rescue workers

Death toll rises to 87 as stand-off between South African police and miners ends

Russia struck Kyiv with a drone during Sir Keir Starmer's visit

Putin’s forces launch drone attack on Kyiv during Sir Keir Starmer’s visit

BP sign outside a petrol station.

BP to cut 4,700 jobs in fresh wave of cost-cutting measures

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifting off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin launches new rocket on first test flight

Man's hands on a laptop keyboard

Biden executive order aims to shore up US cyber defences

South Korea Martial Law

Lawyers say detained South Korean president will refuse further questioning