Home ›› 09 Apr 2022 ›› Show Biz
A near mint comic featuring the very first appearance of Captain America sold Thursday for just over $3.1 million, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
The sale marks a record for the comic, Captain America Comics No. 1, and is now one of the top five most expensive comics ever sold. The final price was $3,120,000, which included the buyer’s premium. It sold as part of Heritage Auctions’ comics and comic art events that runs through Sunday.
The comic hit newsstands in December 1940, a full year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that would thrust the United States into World War II, and features one of the comics medium’s most iconic covers: the hero punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created the hero for Timely Comics, the predecessor to Marvel Comics, with the now well-known tale of a frail young man named Steve Rogers who is injected with a serum that turns him into a super-soldier.
Also introduced was Cap’s sidekick, Bucky, who in modern times would become the hero known as the Winter Soldier and be featured prominently in Marvel Studios movies and a Disney+ series. The comic was an instant hit and sold hundreds of thousands of copies a month.
There are only three copies at the high CGC 9.4 grade, and only one other time has one of them been up for auction. (According to the CGC census, a sole 9.8 copy exists but has never seen the light of an auction house).
Several more are part of the $2 million club. A Marvel Comics No. 1 from 1939 sold last month for $2.4 million, while two copies of Action Comics have made sales in that range, as has a Batman No. 1, which sold in January 2021 for $2.2 million.
