A Piece of Comic History

Just this past weekend, the rare and highly valuable "Action Comics" issue number 1 in which Superman made his debut was sold for $1 million. Now if that doesn't strike you as a stupendous achievement then I don't know what would. What's more astounding is that if you look back in 1938, it was sold for 10 cents. Now that's not to say that every single comic book is ever going to be worth so much or that any of them could be worth anything at all but still, the fact that a comic book of all things, could sell for so much is a testament to the fact that there are those out there who truly value the comic book as a form of art and in some sense, history as well.

I mean think about it. What is so special about this comic book that it is worth so much money? Well think about it. Up until that time, comics dealt with cartoons and never really delved into superhuman characters but for the first time, Superman presented a character who epitomized what has become the archetype of superheroes that you can truly say that his character paved the way for thousands of other characters that fill the pages of comic lore today. But so what? It still doesn't explain why someone (the buyer and seller of this recent copy of Action Comics no.1 refused to be publicly identified) would be willing to spend so much money on what literally cost a fraction of that so many years ago.

There have been numerous reprintings of the comic in question and you can probably go down to the store and pick up a reprint right at this very moment. It would have been infinitely more cheaper but I suppose it ties back into what I was writing about the proposed sale of Abbey Road Studios (which incidentally isn't going to happen). I suppose that some people have a desire to hold onto what can truly be called a piece of history. The way I look at it is that you can look at that piece of history with some degree of reverence but also curiousity. Look at it this way. We've all found a piece of change on the ground from time to time and many of us do take the trouble to pick it up. One thing that I often wonder when I see these pieces of change is what journey brought it to this point?

The older the coin the more my curiousity gets piqued. I once found a coin from the 1960's laying on the sidewalk. I'm sure it had been in circulation from that time and had probably changed as many hands as there are McDonalds in the world and yet it ended up with me at that point in time. Where would it have gone, who would have held it and how could it have affected someone's life? Perhaps this doesn't really have anything to do with the willingness to spend $1 million on a comic book but still, I feel that were it not for someone who wants to hold a piece of history from that time rather than a cheap copy, it's possible that pieces of this history would be lost. Certainly you can never compare a comic book to something like the Declaration of Independence yet I find both to be of importance in their own ways. No one can deny that comics have had impact on literature and art, I guess it's just some see it more clearly than others.