When three Northern California brothers finally forced themselves to clear out their late mother’s house this year, they expected dust, heartbreak and a full day of hauling junk. What they didn’t expect was Superman.
In the attic, in a box of yellowed newspaper clippings, they found something the family had heard about for years but never actually seen: their mother’s long-rumored comic book collection. And among it, astonishingly intact after 86 years, was a copy of Superman No. 1 — the 1939 issue that introduced the Man of Steel in his first solo title. The brothers, who prefer not to reveal their names, were stunned.
“It wasn’t like we said, ‘Let’s go find that comic book,’ ” the youngest, 57, says. “It was more, ‘Let’s get that dumpster and just fill it up.’ “
Even more incredible, the comic they found was nearly pristine — a 9.0 — making it the highest-quality copy known to exist. Early bidding at Heritage Auctions has hit $5 million, putting it within striking distance of the record for any comic book sold, $6 million.
How the comic got there goes back more than a few decades, to Depression-era San Francisco, where their mother — then 9 — and her teenage brother scraped together change to buy a few comics off a newsstand, including that first Superman. They read them endlessly and kept them in good-enough shape, and over the years she’d occasionally insist that she had “rare comics somewhere.” But she could never remember where, and the boys assumed it was just a family legend. She died just before the pandemic, and the house sat untouched until the brothers were ready to go through it — and suddenly the legend was real.
The brothers say they don’t plan on attending the Nov. 20 auction. “I go back and forth,” the youngest says. “It’s once in a lifetime, but honestly, I’m afraid I’ll have a heart attack.” They haven’t even told their kids yet. One wife only realized the stakes after hearing a radio story about the auction and asked her husband, “Wait — that’s our comic?”
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Angelina Jolie visits war-torn Kherson, Ukraine, offering humanitarian aid to children and defying dangers in the frontline city.
Sting’s musical ‘The Last Ship,’ inspired by his British shipbuilding roots, arrives at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera for nine performances in June.
This story appeared in the Nov. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
