Captain America Comics #1

A punch thrown before the war

Captain America Comics #1 went on sale on December 20, 1940, the publication date recorded in the U.S. Copyright Office filing, under a cover date of March 1941. It cost 10 cents for 68 pages. The indicia names Timely Publications of Meriden, Connecticut, with offices at 330 West 42nd Street in New York, and numbers the book Vol. 2, No. 1, with a yearly subscription offered for $1.00.

The cover is the reason the book is famous. Captain America smashes through a room of Nazi soldiers and lands a right hand on Adolf Hitler's jaw, a soldier's bullet glancing off his shield, while Hitler falls onto a map of the United States and a document reading 'Sabotage plans for U.S.A.' The first line of the cover caption reads 'Smashing thru, Captain America came face to face with Hitler.' The United States was not at war with Germany. Before this book, comic book heroes had mostly stayed silent on the war or fought generic stand-ins.

Inside, the first story, 'Meet Captain America,' sets the template. The Army, looking for an answer to the Axis threat, backs a super-soldier serum meant to build an army. Only one man receives it before the serum and its creator, Professor Reinstein, are destroyed: the frail Steve Rogers. The issue also introduces Bucky, Cap's teenage partner, and the Red Skull in 'The Riddle of the Red Skull,' along with backup features starring Hurricane and Tuk, Caveboy, and a half-page promotion for Captain America's Sentinels of Liberty.

Two kids from Rochester and the Lower East Side

Joe Simon was born Hymie Simon in Rochester, New York, on October 11, 1913. He worked on newspapers in Rochester and Syracuse, moved to New York at 23, retouched publicity photos for Paramount and illustrated magazines before Lloyd Jacquet of Funnies, Inc. sent him to Timely's publisher, Martin Goodman. Goodman, who had launched Timely in 1939 with Marvel Comics #1, hired Simon as the company's first editor in late 1939.

Jack Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants, and was largely self-taught. The two men met at Fox Feature Syndicate. Simon later recalled that he loved Kirby's work: 'the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing.' Kirby remembered the mood that produced Captain America: 'It was a time of deep passion. Hitler was grabbing all of Europe, we had Nazis in America, Nazis holding mass meetings in Madison Square Garden.'

Sources split the credits finely. Simon is credited with inks and pencils on the cover and Kirby with pencils; Al Liederman is credited with inks on the opening story and Howard Ferguson with letters. Simon named Bucky after a friend: 'The boy companion was simply named Bucky, after my friend Bucky Pierson, a star on our high school basketball team.'

The partnership did not last at Timely. Simon believed Goodman was not paying the promised share of profits, and the pair quietly arranged a move to National Comics, the future DC, at $500 a week between them, against Timely salaries of $75 and $85. They stayed on Captain America through issue #10, and after they left in 1941, Goodman's young relative Stan Lee, hired as an assistant at 16, was made interim editor just short of his 19th birthday.

Hate mail, a police guard and a call from the mayor

The book landed between two of the defining speeches of the prewar years. Franklin Roosevelt had won a third term on November 5, 1940; nine days after the comic went on sale, he told the country in a fireside chat that it must become 'the great Arsenal of Democracy.' The first peacetime draft in American history had been signed into law that September, and the Lend-Lease Act followed on March 11, 1941, the same month printed on the cover.

Not every reader welcomed a hero punching Hitler. Simon recalled, 'When the first issue came out we got a lot of threatening letters and hate mail. Some people really opposed what Cap stood for.' Timely received threatening letters and phone calls attributed to the German American Bund. Police protection was posted outside the office, and New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia personally contacted Simon and Kirby to offer his support.

Readers bought it anyway. The issue is reported to have sold nearly one million copies and to have sold out within days, and circulation stayed close to a million copies a month afterward, which outstripped news magazines such as Time. Captain America became Timely's most popular character, with an official fan club, the Sentinels of Liberty.

The San Francisco copy and the million-dollar club

The most famous surviving copy is the San Francisco pedigree, identified by distributor markings and a 'Tom Reilly' stamp in the middle of the back cover. The collection is said to have belonged to Tom Reilly, who began collecting comics in the late 1930s and asked his parents to keep buying them after he was drafted. He was reportedly killed in action near the end of World War II, and the collection stops there. It surfaced at a comic show in Berkeley, California, in 1973.

Graded CGC 9.4 with off-white to white pages, that copy sold at auction on August 1, 2019, for $915,000, then a record for the title, when it was one of only three known copies graded 9.4 or higher. It returned to auction in Dallas on April 7, 2022, offered without a reserve. Bidding had reached $837,500, or $1.005 million with the buyer's premium, two weeks before the sale; on the night it opened at about $1.8 million, jumped quickly to $2.2 million and closed at $3,120,000, to applause in the room.

At that moment Captain America became the third character, after Superman and Spider-Man, whose debut had sold for more than $3 million, and the result was reported as the fourth-highest price paid for a comic book. The same session set a record for Jack Kirby original art when the splash page of Captain America's first solo Silver Age story, from Tales of Suspense #59, sold for $630,000.

Lower grades trade at a different level. A CGC 5.5 copy realized $172,221 at auction on July 31, 2024, and a CGC 9.0 copy from the Merrimack Valley Collection sold at auction on September 24, 2026, for $716,750.

How many there are and how the best ones rank

No source gives a printed quantity, only the report that the issue sold nearly one million copies. Accounts differ on the figure: one places 'over one million' on the print run of the second issue rather than the first, so this page repeats only the sales report.

CGC's census is the practical measure of survivors. In February 2022 it listed two copies at 9.4 and one higher. By August 2026 CGC had certified 216 copies, slightly fewer than half of them in Universal grades, the rest restored or otherwise qualified, and only eight graded 9.0 or better: two at 9.0 and six higher. Census counts include every certification, so they are not a count of distinct physical books.

The top of the census is dominated by pedigrees. The single highest graded copy is the CGC 9.8 from the Allentown pedigree. The San Francisco 9.4 and the Denver 9.4 follow. The Mile High copy, from the Edgar Church collection, grades a couple of steps lower and is restored. The 9.0 sold in 2026 ties the Kansas City copy and outranks the Windy City and Promise Collection copies.

Collectors look first at the back cover. Copies of this issue almost always show smudging or darkening there, which is one reason the San Francisco copy's clean back cover counted for so much. Pages from incomplete copies are also certified individually, so a holder reading 'page only' or 'cover only' is a fragment, not the book.

From a wartime sensation to the screen

Captain America stayed popular through World War II, but sales fell away by the mid-1950s. Kirby, by then back at the company now known as Marvel, and Stan Lee revived the character in The Avengers #4, cover-dated March 1964, which explained that the original Captain America and Bucky had gone missing near the end of the war. Writer Ed Brubaker later brought Bucky back as the Winter Soldier in 2005.

The cover itself has become one of the most reproduced images in comics. It has been reprinted or recreated dozens of times, including in a 1995 Marvel Milestone Edition, 70th and 75th anniversary editions and a Penguin Classics collection in 2022, and it was recreated in the 2011 Captain America film. Kirby, who served in the infantry and landed on Omaha Beach in 1944, became known to fans as 'The King.'

The numbers

Cover price

10 cents

Pages

68

Print run

Not stated by any source; the issue is reported to have sold nearly one million copies

Opening story

'Meet Captain America,' 7.5 pages

CGC census, February 2022

Two copies at 9.4, one higher (9.8)

CGC census, August 2026

216 certified, slightly under half in Universal grades; two at 9.0, six higher

Highest graded

CGC 9.8, Allentown pedigree, the only one at that grade

Timeline

1. 1939

   Martin Goodman founds Timely Publications and publishes Marvel Comics #1.

2. 1939

   Goodman hires Joe Simon as Timely's first editor, late in the year.

3. Dec 20, 1940

   Captain America Comics #1 goes on sale, cover-dated March 1941, at 10 cents.

4. 1941

   Simon and Kirby leave Timely for National Comics after issue #10; Stan Lee becomes interim editor.

5. Mar 1964

   Captain America is revived in The Avengers #4 (cover date).

6. 1973

   The San Francisco pedigree collection surfaces at a comic show in Berkeley, California.

7. Mar 1995

   Marvel reprints the issue as a Marvel Milestone Edition.

8. May 2005

   Bucky returns as the Winter Soldier in Captain America vol. 5, #6.

9. 2011

   The film Captain America: The First Avenger recreates the Hitler-punch cover.

10. Aug 1, 2019

    The San Francisco CGC 9.4 sells at auction for $915,000, a record for the title.

11. Feb 2022

    CGC census lists two copies at 9.4 and one higher.

12. Apr 7, 2022

    The same San Francisco copy sells at auction in Dallas for $3,120,000.

13. Jul 31, 2024

    A CGC 5.5 copy realizes $172,221 at auction.

14. Aug 2026

    CGC census reaches 216 certified copies, eight at 9.0 or better.

15. Sep 24, 2026

    A CGC 9.0 from the Merrimack Valley Collection sells at auction for $716,750.

The world in 1940

• Sep 16, 1940

  The Selective Training and Service Act creates the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.

• Nov 5, 1940

  Franklin D. Roosevelt wins a third term as president.

• Nov 13, 1940

  Walt Disney's Fantasia premieres.

• Dec 29, 1940

  In a fireside chat Roosevelt says the U.S. must become 'the great Arsenal of Democracy.'

• Jan 6, 1941

  Roosevelt sets out the Four Freedoms in his State of the Union address.

• Mar 11, 1941

  The Lend-Lease Act is signed into law.

• May 1, 1941

  Citizen Kane premieres in New York City.

• Dec 7, 1941

  Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; Germany and the U.S. are at war by December 11.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Captain America Comics #1 is number 4 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (11 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The comic went on sale nearly a year before Pearl Harbor, while the United States was still officially neutral.
• Threats against Timely were serious enough that police guarded the office, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Simon and Kirby to back them.
• Bucky was named after Bucky Pierson, a star of Joe Simon's high school basketball team.
• The indicia numbers the first issue Vol. 2, No. 1.
• The record copy belonged to a collection reportedly started by Tom Reilly, who was killed in World War II; his name is stamped on its back cover.
• The same copy sold for $915,000 in 2019 and $3,120,000 less than three years later.
• Simon and Kirby left Timely in 1941 after only ten issues of the title they created.