A preserved copy of “Superman” No. 1 has become the “world’s most expensive comic book,” selling for $9.12 million on Nov. 20, according to Heritage Auctions.
The 1939 original featuring the Man of Steel—a character created by two Jewish men, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—was found in a box of old newspapers by a Northern California family clearing out the attic of their late mother’s home.
Heritage Auctions authenticated the volume and confirmed it as the highest-graded unrestored copy ever recorded, scoring a 9.0 on a 10-point scale from the Certified Collectibles Group.
Lon Allen, vice president of the auction house, called the sale a “milestone in pop culture history.”
Originally priced at 10 cents in 1939, “Superman” No. 1 was the first comic book devoted to a single superhero. Siegel and Shuster, both born in 1914 to Jewish immigrant families—Siegel in Cleveland and Shuster in Toronto—worked together on sketches and story ideas while in high school in Cleveland. While they first envisioned Superman as a villain, they eventually reimagined him as a hero shaped by biblical influences and the rise of fascism.
“Jewish fans have embraced him as a Jewish avatar,” Roy Schwartz, a board member of the American Jewish Historical Society, told JNS. “There’s a sense of personal pride in his popularity, a kvelling.”
Schwartz, the author of Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero, said the first “Superman” comic book is a “very Jewish story.”
He added that the issue, published “only eight months after Kristallnacht,” includes a prequel scene in which Superman thwarts a lynch mob—“highly evocative coming from the children of Russian Jews who fled the pogroms.”
“As the very first superhero, he’s imbued the whole genre with Jewish resonance,” Schwartz told JNS.
