Superman #1

A magazine for one character

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had been trying to sell Superman since 1933, first as a newspaper strip. In March 1938 they sold the rights to Detective Comics, Inc. for $130, and Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 that spring. The character was an immediate hit. From January 1939 a daily Superman strip ran in newspapers through the McClure Syndicate, with a color Sunday page added that November.

The publisher then did something no comic publisher had done: it launched an entirely new magazine built around a single character. That made Superman the first hero to appear in more than one comic magazine at once. In a letter dated March 27, 1939, M. C. Gaines told Siegel and Shuster what new material to create for the issue.

Superman #1 went on sale on May 18, 1939, according to the publisher's copyright filing. It cost ten cents and ran 68 pages. Most of it reprinted Superman stories from Action Comics, but it opened with new pages: a two-page origin and a four-page sequence in which Clark Kent gets his job at the Daily Star.

Krypton, the Kents and a borrowed cover

The two-page origin tells of a rocket carrying an infant away from the exploding planet Krypton to Earth, where a couple named the Kents find and adopt the boy. It was the first version of Superman's origin to mention Krypton and his foster parents. In the new four-page sequence, Clark is turned down for a reporter's job until Superman stops a lynching and Clark phones in the story. Superman wears red boots in the new pages and blue boots in the reprinted ones.

The rest of the issue reprints the early Action Comics adventures, including Superman breaking into the governor's mansion to stop an execution, rescuing Lois Lane from gangsters, and exposing munitions makers stirring up a war in the fictional South American country of San Monte.

The cover, Superman leaping over a city skyline, was reused art. It comes from the opening Shuster panel of the Superman story in Action Comics #10 (March 1939). According to a later account of an interview with editor Vin Sullivan, the production artist Leo O'Mealia photostatted Shuster's figure, cut it out, and drew the ornate detailing around it; the son of O'Mealia later found evidence of his father's work in his records.

What the creators earned

Superman made Siegel and Shuster prosperous for a while. Between 1937 and 1947 they earned more than $400,000 together, and in 1942 alone $63,776.46. In the early 1940s Superman was selling more than a million copies a month, the newspaper strip had about 20 million readers by 1941, a radio series began in 1940, and animated shorts followed from 1941 to 1943.

They did not own the character. In 1947 Siegel and Shuster sued for the rights to Superman and Superboy and accepted a settlement of a little over $94,000. In 1975, as Warner Bros. prepared a Superman film, the studio agreed to pay them a lifetime stipend of $20,000 a year, later raised to $30,000. Siegel died in Los Angeles on January 28, 1996.

The title they started ran without interruption until the mid-1980s, through issue #423, before being relaunched after the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths event.

The copy in the attic

During the 2024 holiday season, three brothers in Northern California were sorting through their late mother's belongings when they found six comics in her attic, surrounded by newspapers. She and her brother had bought them between the Great Depression and World War II, when comics were one of their few luxuries; she was a nine-year-old in San Francisco when she bought them. For decades she had told her sons she owned rare comics somewhere, but she never showed them.

The find included Superman #1 and five early issues of Action Comics, numbers 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21. "My middle brother went and got a mylar sleeve for it," the youngest brother recalled. "We at the time didn't know quite what to do." About three months later they contacted an auction house. The Superman #1 was graded CGC 9.0, the highest grade ever assigned to the issue. An auction executive credited the mild Northern California climate: "If it had been in an attic here in Texas, it would have been ruined."

On November 20, 2025, the copy sold at auction for $9.12 million, including a 20 percent buyer's premium on a $7.6 million hammer price. It was the most ever paid for a comic book at auction, passing the $6 million paid for an Action Comics #1 in April 2024. "This is a testament to memory, family and the unexpected ways the past finds its way back to us," the youngest brother said.

The other great copies

Before the attic copy appeared, the highest grade known for Superman #1 was CGC 8.0, held by a copy from the Edgar Church pedigree. Church (1888 to 1978), an artist who drew telephone-book advertisements for the telephone company in Colorado, kept thousands of periodicals in his home as references for his art. His collection of 18,000 to 22,000 comics, found and bought by a dealer in 1977, is known for the exceptional condition of its books. His Superman #1 sold privately in January 2022 for $5.3 million, a sale announced on April 13, 2022, and at the time the most paid for any comic.

Weeks earlier, on December 16, 2021, a CGC 7.0 copy had sold for $2,604,750, breaking the issue's previous record of $507,500 for a CGC 5.5 in 2017. That 7.0 copy had changed hands only twice: once off the newsstand in 1939, and again more than 40 years before the sale to an owner who kept it in a temperature-controlled safe.

Mid-grade and low-grade copies have followed. A CGC 5.0 brought $720,000 at auction on May 12, 2022, and a qualified CGC 1.0 brought $69,000 in the same sale. A CGC 7.0 sold for $2,340,000 at auction on January 11, 2024. In May 2026 two worn copies, a CGC 1.5 and a CGC 1.0, sold for $109,800 each.

The numbers

Cover price

10 cents

Pages

68; new material is a 2-page origin and a 4-page Clark Kent sequence

Print run

Three 1939 printings of 500,000, 250,000 and 150,000 copies

Census, December 2021

Four copies graded 7.0 or higher

Census, May 2022

167 copies: 71 Universal, 4 qualified

Census, January 2024

179 copies: 75 Universal; two graded above 7.0

Census, November 2025

209 copies, fewer than half Universal; 94 unrestored

Timeline

1. 1933

   Siegel and Shuster begin trying to sell Superman as a newspaper strip.

2. Mar 1938

   Siegel and Shuster sell the rights to Superman to Detective Comics, Inc. for $130.

3. Jan 1939

   The daily Superman newspaper strip begins.

4. Mar 27, 1939

   M. C. Gaines writes to Siegel and Shuster about new material for Superman #1.

5. May 18, 1939

   Superman #1 goes on sale for ten cents.

6. 1939

   The issue goes through three printings: 500,000, 250,000 and 150,000 copies.

7. 1947

   Siegel and Shuster's lawsuit ends in a settlement of a little over $94,000.

8. 1975

   Warner Bros. agrees to pay the creators a lifetime stipend.

9. 1977

   A dealer buys the Edgar Church collection, including the future CGC 8.0 Superman #1.

10. 2017

    A CGC 5.5 copy sells for $507,500, then the issue record.

11. Dec 16, 2021

    A CGC 7.0 copy sells for $2,604,750.

12. Jan 2022

    The Edgar Church CGC 8.0 copy sells privately for $5.3 million, announced April 13.

13. May 12, 2022

    A CGC 5.0 copy sells at auction for $720,000.

14. Jan 11, 2024

    A CGC 7.0 copy sells at auction for $2,340,000.

15. Dec 2024

    Three brothers find the CGC 9.0 copy in their late mother's Northern California attic.

16. Nov 20, 2025

    The attic copy sells at auction for $9.12 million, a record for any comic at auction.

17. May 2026

    CGC 1.5 and CGC 1.0 copies sell at auction for $109,800 each.

The world in 1939

• Mar 2, 1939

  Cardinal Pacelli is elected Pope Pius XII.

• Apr 30, 1939

  The New York World's Fair opens.

• Jul 4, 1939

  Lou Gehrig gives his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium.

• Aug 2, 1939

  Albert Einstein signs the letter warning President Roosevelt about the atomic bomb.

• Aug 23, 1939

  Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

• Aug 27, 1939

  The Heinkel He 178, the first turbojet aircraft, flies for the first time.

• Sep 1, 1939

  Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II.

• Dec 15, 1939

  Gone with the Wind premieres in Atlanta.

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, Superman #1 is number 2 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 (4 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Superman #1 was the first comic book devoted entirely to a single superhero.
• The cover art was recycled from a panel in Action Comics #10.
• Superman wears red boots in the new pages of the issue and blue boots in the reprinted ones.
• The record copy was bought by a nine-year-old girl in San Francisco and kept in an attic among newspapers for decades.
• The same attic held five early Action Comics issues, one of them graded CGC 9.4.
• One CGC 7.0 copy changed hands only twice between 1939 and its 2021 sale.
• Edgar Church, whose pedigree produced a CGC 8.0 copy, kept thousands of periodicals in his Colorado home as references for his commercial art.