When a 10c investment can reap a million dollars or more, maybe its time to consider comic book collecting?

by Rachel Hyland

1933's FAMOUS FUNNIES #1, popularly held as America's first comic book

With all the Bat-hoopla fluttering about us at present with the advent of The Dark Knight Rises, and amid all the discussion of which Batman is the Batman – or whether we care about that at all – it may behoove us to remember that before he was any man he was a static 2D representation given in four-color splendor to the children of a post-Depression America. For a mere 10c back in 1939, dirty-faced ragamuffins could, when they weren’t busy yelling “Extra!” on street corners, organizing pickup games of stickball or contracting polio, purchase for themselves a moment’s respite from the drudgery of their pre-Xbox lives and delve into one of the then-newfangled pulp comic books, all the better to forget about the Hindenburg disaster and their nation’s imminent entry into World War II.

(History!)

Had you told any one of those youngsters that one day their dime store indulgences would be worth over a million dollars, they’d doubtless have scoffed at your lunacy roundly, in a chorus of “pshaw!”s and “nuts to you!”s before they headed down to the soda fountain for an egg flip or similar. But the fact is, these theoretical children (the concept of whom, yes, has been made up here almost exclusively with reference to The Newsies and assorted Mickey Rooney movies) were living in what comic book collectors now refer to as the Golden Age, running from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, a time when heroes the likes of Batman were born and the possibilities must have seemed truly endless—following which came the Silver Age, which is usually defined more precisely as comics printed between the years 1956 and 1970.

Nowadays, of course, the comic book industry is Big Business, with lavish corporate offices and dedicated movie studios and expensive square footages taken out at each year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Serious collectors buy at least two copies of each issue of their favorite titles; one to read, and one to keep, and even more to keep if there are variant covers. (Which there so often are.) But back in the Golden Age, fans of the art form – remember, it would be decades before anyone referred to a comic as a “graphic novel” – had no idea how much someone would one day pay to have in their possession a copy of the first appearance of Ant-Man or Wonder Woman or Spawn, and so across the years the earliest comics, printed cheaply on substandard paper and usually remanded, we must recall, into the care of children, have all but disappeared.

This rarity is part of what makes the following five comics among the most valuable today. Seeing these figures, it’s almost impossible not to wish that your grandfather (or great-grandfather) had been at least as big of a geek as you are, isn’t it?

ACTION COMICS #1

Publisher: National Allied Publications
Date: June, 1938
Original Price: 10c
Number of Copies Printed: 200, 000
Estimated Copies Remaining: 50 – 100
Why it’s Valuable: The first ever appearance of Superman.
What it’s Worth: In 2011, a copy sold for US$2.16 million.
What You Get: Thirteen pages of Superman origin story and a bunch of random stuff about people called Sticky-Mitt Stimson, Scoop Scanlan Five Star Reporter and Zatara Master Magician and the like.

READ IT HERE

TRIVIA: Actor Nicolas Cage, a celebrated Superman aficionado (he has a son named Kal-El) had his copy of Action Comics #1 stolen in 2000, and was later recovered in 2011. The story of his comic’s abduction is currently in development as a feature film.

DETECTIVE COMICS #27

Publisher: Detective Comics, Inc.
Date: May, 1939
Original Price: 10c
Number of Copies Printed: Approx. 200 000
Estimated Copies Remaining: 100 – 200
Why it’s Valuable: Features the first appearance of Batman.
What it’s Worth: A copy sold at auction for US$1,075,000 in 2010
What You Get: Batman in his first adventure, “The Case of the Criminal Sydicate”, plus no less than five stories with the word “murder” in the title and a Fu Manchu mystery.

TRIVIA: Batman is spelled herein “Bat-Man” and it seems early Bruce Wayne smoked a pipe.

AMAZING FANTASY #15

Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: August, 1962
Original Price: 12c
Number of Copies Printed: Unknown
Estimated Copies Remaining: 1500
Why it’s Valuable: First appearance of Spider-Man.
What it’s Worth: A copy sold for US$1.1 million in 2011
What You Get: Eleven pages of a story called “Spider-Man!”, and then the unrelated by similarly exclamatory tales “The Bell-Ringer!”, “Man In The Mummy Case!” and “There Are Martians Among Us!”

TRIVIA: This comic book was initially named Amazing Adventures then segued into the ill-conceived Amazing Adult Fantasy before closing out its run as Amazing Fantasy with #15. It would be close to a year before Spider-Man would return again, in The Amazing Spider-Man #1.

MARVEL COMICS #1

Publisher: Timely Comics
Date: October, 1939
Original Price: 10c
Number of Copies Printed: 80, 000.
Estimated Copies Remaining: Unknown
Why it’s Valuable: First appearance of the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner.
What it’s Worth: Somewhere around US$500, 000.
What You Get: The Human Torch, the Submariner, and a glimpse at the beginning of the Marvel Universe, back when there was only one of them…

TRIVIA: After selling out its first printing, Marvel Comics #1 was rereleased the following month and the issue sold, in total, an estimated 900 000 copies.

ALL AMERICAN COMICS #16

Publisher: All-American Comics, Inc.
Date: July, 1940
Original Price: 10c
Number of Copies Printed: Unkown
Estimated Copies Remaining: Unknown
Why it’s Valuable: First appearance of the Green Lantern.
What it’s Worth: A copy sold for US$203, 000 in 2011
What You Get: A visit with the original Green Lantern, engineer Alan Scott, as well as, among other things, an adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Part 3 of a story redundantly entitled “Traitor’s Treachery”.

TRIVIA: The character of the Green Lantern was inspired by a Wagner opera and a train guard with a – seriously – green lantern. Alan Scott has no affiliation with the Green Lantern Corps.

Seventy years from now, which of today’s comic books will be worth a similar many, many times their original cover price? Will it be Avengers vs. X-Men? Or perhaps The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius? Will it be one of DC’s New 52 titles? (Yeah… unlikely.) The ill-fated J. Michael Straczynski Wonder Woman reboot, perhaps? Incorruptible? Girl Genius? Fray? We really can’t even begin to speculate. What we do know is that with the shift into digital publishing, and the almost inevitable decline in the numbers of physical copies that is bound to eventually bring about, the time to start your comic book collection, for fun and profit, is right… about… now.

And if you like comics, you could do worse than to start with this one, Issue #1 out this month, from Image Comics:

When it nets you half a trillion latinum credits half a century from now, don’t forget who gave you the hot tip.

– Rachel Hyland

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