A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman sold Monday for $1 million, smashing the previous record price for a comic book.

A 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1, widely considered the Holy Grail of comic books, was sold from a private seller to a private buyer, neither of whom released their names. The issue features Superman lifting a car on its cover and originally cost 10 cents.


The transaction was conducted by the auction site ComicConnect.com. Stephen Fishler, co-owner of the site and its sister dealership, Metropolis Collectibles, orchestrated the sale.

Fishler said it transpired minutes after the issue was put on sale at around 10:30 a.m. Eastern time (1530 GMT). He said that the seller was a “well known individual” in New York with a pedigree collection, and that the buyer was a known customer who previously bought an Action Comics No. 1 of lesser grade.

“It’s considered by most people as the most important book,” said John Dolmayan, a comic book enthusiast and dealer best known as the drummer for System of a Down. “It kind of ushered in the age of the superheroes.”

Dolmayan, who owns Torpedo Comics, last year paid $317,000 for an Action Comics No. 1 issue for a client. Others have sold for more than $400,000, he said, but this copy fetched a much higher price because it’s in better condition. It’s rated an “8.0 grade,” or “very fine.”

Dolmayan said he didn’t buy this copy but he wishes he could have.

“The fact that this book is completely un-restored and still has an 8.0 grade, it’s kind of like a diamond or a precious stone. It’s very rare,” he said.

There are only about 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1 believed to be in existence, and only a handful have been rated so highly. It’s rarer still for those copies to be made available for sale.

“The opportunity to buy an un-restored, high-grade Action One comes along once every two decades,” Fishler said. “It’s certainly a milestone.”

The sticker shock was astounding to Fishler, nevertheless.

“It is still a little stunning to see ‘a comic book’ and ‘$1 million’ in the same sentence,” Fishler said. “There’s only one time a collectible hits the $1 million threshold.”

During a panel at the New York Comic Convention today, Marvel Comics announced that they will be working with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Orson Scott Card to adapt two of his most acclaimed novels, Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, into comic books later this year.

Ender’s Game, a cult-favorite novel about a child prodigy named Ender recruited to help fight an alien army, and Ender’s Shadow, a concurrent book focused on another young soldier, will launch as separate comics in late 2008, with the first Ender’s Game collection due out in summer 2009.

Like Marvel’s other literary crossovers, the Ender’s Game comics aim not only to woo new readers into comic stores, but also to continue the push of graphic novels and trade paperback collections into traditional bookstores and libraries where they can reach a more mainstream audience.

Card, who also currently scripts the Ultimate Iron Man superhero comic with Marvel, says he was eager to pursue a comic book adaptation, but that the rights were previously bound up in film deal for the two novels, which were optioned by Warner Brothers, the parent company of DC Comics.

“The moment I got the comic book and game rights extracted from the movie option deal, I let Marvel and other [publishers] know about the availability,” says Card. “I truly was open-minded about who would end up doing the books, [but] Marvel got there first, with a terrific, ambitious plan for Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.”