Detective Comics #27

An anthology looking for a second Superman

Detective Comics began in March 1937 as an anthology of hard-boiled crime stories, launched by the entrepreneur Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson with the printing-plant owner Harry Donenfeld and the accountant Jack Liebowitz. Early issues ran rotating detectives such as Slam Bradley and Speed Saunders rather than a single star. The title would later give its initials to the company itself: DC.

Superman's success changed what the company wanted. In early 1939, with editors asking for more superheroes, the cartoonist Bob Kane worked up a character he called the Bat-Man. Kane's first design had red tights, bat wings and a domino mask.

Detective Comics #27 went on sale on March 30, 1939, with a May cover date. It cost ten cents and ran 68 pages. The Bat-Man had the lead story, six pages long, alongside features including Speed Saunders, Buck Marshall, the Crimson Avenger, a Bart Regan spy strip written by Jerry Siegel, and a text story by Gardner Fox.

Two graduates of DeWitt Clinton High

Bob Kane was born Robert Kahn in New York City on October 24, 1915. He studied art at Cooper Union, trained as an animator at the Max Fleischer Studio in 1934, and began freelancing in comics in 1936. Bill Finger was born Milton Finger in Denver on February 8, 1914; his family moved to the Bronx, where his father's tailor shop closed during the Depression. Both men went to DeWitt Clinton High School, and Finger, then an aspiring writer and part-time shoe salesman, joined Kane's studio in 1938 after the two met at a party.

Finger reshaped Kane's sketch. He suggested a cowl with pointed ears instead of the domino mask, a cape instead of wings, gloves, and a darker gray-and-black costume. He named the hero's alter ego Bruce Wayne, after Robert the Bruce and "Mad Anthony" Wayne, wrote the debut story, and later created Gotham City and helped develop Robin and the Joker.

Kane held the contract with the publisher and negotiated a sole byline on every Batman story, leaving Finger a ghostwriter. In his 1989 autobiography Kane wrote that Finger "was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning." Finger died in Manhattan around January 18, 1974, and his son scattered his ashes in the shape of a bat on an Oregon beach. Kane died in Los Angeles on November 3, 1998. In 2015, after years of effort by Finger's family, DC began crediting Finger as Batman's co-creator.

The Case of the Chemical Syndicate

The story opens at the home of Commissioner Gordon, "who at the moment is entertaining his young socialite friend, Bruce Wayne." A chemical executive named Lambert has been murdered, and his business partners are being picked off. A masked figure called the Bat-Man intervenes, and the killer turns out to be the partner Alfred Stryker, who wanted sole control of the Apex Chemical Corporation. Stryker ends up knocked into a tank of acid, and only at the end is the Bat-Man revealed to be Bruce Wayne.

The plot owed a debt to the pulps. The historians Will Murray and Anthony Tollin identified the November 1, 1936, Shadow novel Partners in Peril, by Theodore Tinsley, as Finger's inspiration. One researcher traced a Bat-Man pose to a panel of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon Sunday page for January 17, 1937.

Much of what readers now take for granted was missing. The hero's name was hyphenated, his city went unnamed until a later issue called it New York, and the name Gotham City did not appear until Batman #4. Robin arrived in Detective Comics #38, cover-dated April 1940, and Batman got his own title that spring.

How many are left

No print run for the issue appears in the sources consulted here. What the grading census shows is scarcity. In November 2020 it listed 32 copies with unrestored, or Universal, grades: one CGC 9.2, two 8.0, two 7.5 and two 7.0. Another 36 had been restored and one carried a qualified grade.

By March 2024 the census held 77 copies, with only eight in Universal grades above 6.5. In February 2026 a report counted roughly 77 copies in all grades; above CGC 7.0 it listed two 8.0s, two 7.5s and the lone 9.2, which has never appeared at public auction.

Some copies sat untouched for decades. The CGC 8.0 copy that sold in 2010 had belonged to a collector who bought it more than 40 years earlier for about $100. Another went missing in January 2000, when the actor Nicolas Cage reported three framed comics stolen from his home: Action Comics #1, Marvel Mystery Comics #71 and Detective Comics #27. The other two were later recovered. His Detective #27 never was, and no culprit has been identified.

Seven figures, again and again

On February 25, 2010, the CGC 8.0 copy sold at auction in Dallas for $1,075,500. The auction's comics director called it "a world's record price for any comic book." The previous comics record, set the year before, had been about $317,000 for an Action Comics #1.

A CGC 7.0 copy sold at auction on November 19, 2020, for $1.5 million, then the highest price for any Batman comic. A CGC 5.0 sold for $1.125 million in June 2021. A CGC 6.5 sold for $1.74 million on May 21, 2022, and the same copy resold on March 19, 2024, for $1,825,088. By then Detective #27 was one of only 11 comic books ever to sell for more than $1 million.

On February 28, 2026, the CGC 7.0 copy from the 2020 sale returned to auction and brought $2,318,000, the issue's record. In May 2026 another CGC 6.5 sold for $1,525,000, at the same auction where an Action Comics #1 also passed $1 million. Between them, those two books had produced 15 seven-figure auction results.

The title that named a company

Detective Comics ran 881 issues between 1937 and 2011, making it the longest-running comic book series in the United States, and issue #1000 went on sale on March 27, 2019. The first Batman story has been retold many times: Roy Thomas expanded it in 1986, and later versions came from Mike Friedrich, Marv Wolfman and Alan Grant, and Brad Meltzer.

Finger's role became a public story in the 21st century. Marc Tyler Nobleman's biography Bill the Boy Wonder and the 2017 documentary Batman & Bill traced his work, and since 2015 the credit on Batman stories has carried his name.

The numbers

Cover price

10 cents

Pages

68; Batman's story is 6

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census, November 2020

32 Universal (one 9.2, two 8.0, two 7.5, two 7.0); 36 restored; 1 qualified

Census, March 2024

77 copies; eight Universal copies graded above 6.5

Census, February 2026

About 77 copies; above CGC 7.0, two 8.0, two 7.5 and a single 9.2

Million-dollar club

One of 11 comic books with a copy sold above $1 million at auction (May 2026)

Timeline

1. Mar 1937

   Detective Comics #1 launches as a crime anthology.

2. 1938

   Bill Finger joins Bob Kane's studio.

3. Mar 30, 1939

   Detective Comics #27 goes on sale for ten cents, introducing the Bat-Man and Commissioner Gordon.

4. Apr 1940

   Robin debuts in Detective Comics #38.

5. Jan 1974

   Bill Finger dies in Manhattan, still uncredited for Batman.

6. Nov 3, 1998

   Bob Kane dies in Los Angeles.

7. Jan 2000

   Nicolas Cage's copy is stolen from his home; it has never been recovered.

8. Feb 25, 2010

   A CGC 8.0 copy sells at auction for $1,075,500, a record for any comic at the time.

9. 2015

   DC begins crediting Bill Finger as Batman's co-creator.

10. Mar 27, 2019

    Detective Comics #1000 goes on sale.

11. Nov 19, 2020

    A CGC 7.0 copy sells at auction for $1.5 million.

12. May 21, 2022

    A CGC 6.5 copy sells for $1.74 million.

13. Mar 19, 2024

    The same CGC 6.5 copy sells for $1,825,088.

14. Feb 28, 2026

    The 2020 CGC 7.0 copy sells again at auction for $2,318,000, the issue record.

15. May 2026

    Another CGC 6.5 copy sells at auction for $1,525,000.

The world in 1939

• Mar 15, 1939

  German troops occupy the rest of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.

• Apr 1, 1939

  The Spanish Civil War ends with the surrender of the last Republican forces.

• Apr 9, 1939

  Marian Anderson sings to about 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial.

• Apr 14, 1939

  John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is published.

• Apr 30, 1939

  The New York World's Fair opens.

• Jul 4, 1939

  Lou Gehrig calls himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth" at Yankee Stadium.

• Aug 15, 1939

  The Wizard of Oz premieres in Hollywood.

• Sep 1, 1939

  Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II.

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, Detective Comics #27 is number 8 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 (2 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The CGC 8.0 copy that sold for $1,075,500 in 2010 had been bought more than 40 years earlier for about $100.
• Bill Finger's ashes were scattered in the shape of a bat on an Oregon beach.
• Batman's city goes unnamed in his first story; it was called New York in Detective #33, and Gotham City only from Batman #4.
• The first Bat-Man plot is traced to a 1936 Shadow novel, Partners in Peril.
• Nicolas Cage's copy was stolen in 2000 along with his Action Comics #1; the Superman book was found, the Batman book never was.
• The only CGC 9.2 copy on the census has never appeared at public auction.
• Bruce Wayne was named for Robert the Bruce and the Revolutionary War general "Mad Anthony" Wayne.