Action Comics #1 (1938): the birth of Superman and the superhero genre
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Action Comics #1, put on sale on April 18, 1938 under a cover dated June, is the comic book that invented the superhero genre by introducing Superman for the first time. Priced at ten cents and printed in some 200,000 copies by Detective Comics, Inc. — the future DC Comics — it contains thirteen pages signed by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, paid at ten dollars a page. In this article you will discover: the publishing context of 1938, the path taken by the two creators and what the 130 dollars really covered, the full contents of the issue, what Superman actually does in those thirteen pages, how the publisher took months to understand its own success, the title's current value — a world record of 15 million dollars in January 2026 — and the fate of the hundred or so surviving copies. By the end, you will know precisely why this ten-cent pamphlet remains the most precious document in all of modern popular culture.
L’essentiel
- On sale : April 18, 1938 (cover dated June 1938)
- Publisher : Detective Comics, Inc., the future DC Comics
- Creators : Jerry Siegel (script) and Joe Shuster (art), both 23 years old
- Original price and print run : 10 cents, some 200,000 copies
- Superman's share : 13 pages, paid at 10 dollars a page
- World record : 15 million dollars (CGC 9.0, private sale, January 2026)
📋 Contents
The publishing context of 1938
Before Action Comics #1 (June 1938), the American comic book market was dominated by adventure anthologies and funny pages reprinted from newspapers. The concept of the superhero in the modern sense did not yet exist. This historic issue would literally invent a genre.
Publishing characteristics of the era:
- Anthology comics made up of several short stories
- Target audience of children and teenagers
- Cover price: 10 cents
- Variable print runs (often tens of thousands)
- Main publishers: Detective Comics, Inc. (the future DC), Eastern Color, Centaur
Action Comics was launched in April 1938 by Detective Comics, Inc., the house of Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz that would later give DC Comics its initials, as a new anthology title. Issue #1 contains several short stories, but it is the first story (Superman) that would change everything. To explore Superman's entire publishing history, our complete guide to the history of Superman retraces the evolution.
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
Action Comics #1 is the work of two young creators: Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), both 23 years old in 1938.
Their background:
- Both Jewish Americans, sons of European immigrants
- High school classmates in Cleveland, Ohio
- Passionate about science fiction and pulp fiction
- Developed the Superman concept between 1932 and 1938
- Endured several rejections from publishers before their success
- Assigned the Superman rights for 130 dollars to Detective Comics, Inc., the standard rate of 10 dollars a page for the 13 pages delivered
This last clause (the sale of the rights) would become one of the most famous and controversial cases in the history of the comics industry. Siegel and Shuster would spend decades trying to recover a fair share of the Superman rights, without ever winning their case in court. This tragic dimension is part of the legacy of Action Comics #1.
Five years of rejection before the first page
The name "Superman" first appears from Jerry Siegel's pen in 1933, in a fanzine titled Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, which Siegel published himself. The character is no hero there: Bill Dunn is a vagrant endowed with telepathic powers that he uses to enslave the world, and Shuster draws him bald.
The costumed Superman is born out of the failure of that first version. The two friends rework him into a hero from another planet and pitch him, year after year, as a daily strip to the American newspaper syndicates. They all refuse. It is those rejected strips that would end up, cut apart and reassembled, in the first issue of Action Comics.
The two authors would never win their case in court. It was a press campaign — led by artist Neal Adams and by Jerry Robinson, then president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists — together with Warner's announcement of a Superman film that made the studio give way in 1975: an annual pension of 20,000 dollars, medical coverage, and above all the return of their credit on the character's stories, starting with Superman #302 dated August 1976.
From typewriter to newsstand: Superman in nine dates
The contents of Action Comics #1
Action Comics #1 is a 64-page anthology comic containing several stories:
- Superman (13 pages, by Siegel and Shuster) - cover and lead story
- Chuck Dawson (cowboy Western)
- Zatara, the Master Magician (Zatanna's father)
- Sticky-Mitt Stimson (humor)
- The Adventures of Marco Polo (historical adventure)
- Pep Morgan (sports)
- Scoop Scanlon, Five Star Reporter (journalism)
- Tex Thompson (future secret agent)
- Stardust, a single page signed "The Star-Gazer"
All these stories are presented together in the classic anthology format of the era. But it is the cover (Superman lifting a car) and the Superman story that immediately grab attention. The print run sold fast. But the publisher would take months to realize that Superman was what was selling: Harry Donenfeld thought the character was ridiculous and at first kept him off the following covers.
Thirteen pages patched together in a hurry
The most important story in the medium owes its existence to a difficult deadline. Vin Sullivan, the editor of the new title, was looking for a lead story; it was Sheldon Mayer who dug out the Superman strips the newspapers had rejected. Sullivan then set a condition on the purchase: that Siegel and Shuster cut those strips apart and reassemble them into thirteen comic book pages. It was for that work that they were paid 10 dollars a page, the famous 130 dollars.
Two entries in the contents almost always escape the lists: "South Sea Strategy," a text story credited to Captain Frank Thomas, and "Odds 'N Ends," a drawing by Sheldon Moldoff placed on the inside back cover.
Superman's first appearance
In Action Comics #1, the Superman story takes up the first 13 pages. It is a compressed introduction that already contains all the character's iconic elements:
- Kryptonian origin with a planet Krypton that explodes
- Baby sent to Earth in a space capsule
- Taken in by the Kents (adoptive parents)
- Grows up with superpowers (strength, prodigious leaps, speed)
- Secret identity: Clark Kent, reporter
- Fights crime and injustice
- First heroic act: saving an innocent woman from a wrongful execution
Notable characteristic: in Action Comics #1, Superman leaps rather than truly flying. Flight would not come to him until 1941, when the Fleischer studio animators, who found his leaps ridiculous on screen, asked the publisher for permission to make him fly and got it; the comics would not adopt flight until 1943. His strength is presented as the "ability to lift tremendous weights" and his speed as "able to run faster than an express train." These powers would evolve considerably over the decades.
What Superman actually does in those thirteen pages
The plot amounts to very little, and that is what makes it effective. Superman first snatches an innocent woman from death row: he gets his hands on the real murderer and drops her, bound and gagged, at the governor's residence, obtaining a stay of execution at the last moment. In short order he steps in against a husband beating his wife, follows the trail of a corrupt senator to Washington, and pulls Lois Lane — who also makes her debut in this issue — out of the hands of a thug: that is the exact scene the cover shows, the gangsters' car smashed against a rock.
The opening page lists his abilities in a surprisingly measured register: lifting enormous weights, leaping over a twenty-story building, jumping an eighth of a mile, running faster than a train, and a skin that nothing less than an artillery shell could pierce. No flight, no heat vision, no freezing breath: all of that would come later, over the decades.
The immediate worldwide cultural impact
The shockwave from Action Comics #1 is measured over the years that followed:
- The issue sells quickly (estimated initial print run: 200,000 copies)
- Superman settles permanently onto the title's cover from issue #19 onward
- Superman gets his own comic series (Superman #1) in 1939
- Radio (1940), Fleischer cartoons (1941), film serial (1948) and TV series (1952) adaptations
- Massive literary influence on all the comics that followed
- Official birth of the superhero genre
Before 1938, there was no superhero in the modern sense. After Action Comics #1, the comics industry would never be the same. All the later Marvel and DC heroes (Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Spider-Man, etc.) are, in one way or another, the heirs of this unique publication.
A success the publisher took months to understand
The copies sell. But nobody at the publisher knows why. Harry Donenfeld even considers the character ridiculous and gives instructions to keep him off the cover: the following issues therefore hand the front page back to the other series in the contents.
It would take tracing the sales figures to establish what readers were really buying. Once the case was made, the strategy changed: from issue #19 onward, Superman settles permanently onto the cover of Action Comics, and never leaves it again.
The record collector value ($15M)
Action Comics #1 is today the most valuable comic book in the world. Its record prices:
- August 2014 : 3.2 million dollars (CGC 9.0, eBay sale)
- April 2021 : 3.25 million dollars (CGC 8.5, private sale)
- April 2024 : 6 million dollars (CGC 8.5, "Kansas City" copy, Heritage Auctions) - the title's auction record
- January 2026 : 15 million dollars (CGC 9.0, private sale) - world record
These astronomical prices are explained by several factors:
- Historical importance beyond compare (the first superhero)
- Rarity : fewer than 100 confirmed copies still exist
- Condition of surviving copies is generally degraded
- Demand from international collectors is very high
- Commitment cultural heritage recognized
January 2026 raised that ceiling to 15 million dollars: a copy graded CGC 9.0 — the very one stolen from Nicolas Cage in 2000 — changed hands in a private transaction brokered by Metropolis Collectibles and ComicConnect. Action Comics #1 thus becomes once again the most expensive comic book ever sold, ahead of the 9.12 million dollars paid for a Superman #1 in November 2025, which remains the public auction record. This value makes Action Comics #1 one of the most precious collectibles in all of modern popular culture.
Why the CGC grade is worth millions
Since the early 2000s, a serious copy goes through a certification lab: it is examined, graded on a scale from 0.5 to 10, then sealed in a tamper-proof transparent holder that guarantees the buyer that the recorded condition will not change. An 8.5 and a 9.0 of Action Comics #1 look alike to the naked eye; on the market, they do not play in the same league — and no copy graded better than 9.0 has ever been recorded.
What the grade rewards is almost always an accident of preservation. The 9.0 copy sold in 2014 had been bought off a newsstand back in 1938 by its first owner, then stored at altitude in West Virginia, in a cool, dry, dark place: eighty years of ideal conditions, achieved without meaning to.
| Date | CGC grade | Price | What set the sale apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 22, 2010 | 8.0 | $1M | First comic book in history to break one million dollars |
| March 29, 2010 | 8.5 | $1.5M | The record falls again five weeks later |
| November 30, 2011 | 9.0 | $2.16M | The copy stolen from Nicolas Cage, recovered that same year, sold through ComicConnect |
| August 24, 2014 | 9.0 | $3.21M | Sold on eBay by dealer Darren Adams; first comic above $3M |
| April 6, 2021 | 8.5 | $3.25M | Private sale, outside the auction room |
| April 4, 2024 | 8.5 | $6M | "Kansas City" copy, brokered by Heritage Auctions; the title's auction record |
| January 2026 | 9.0 | $15M | The Cage copy again; private sale, world record for a comic book |
The surviving copies
Very few copies of Action Comics #1 have survived to this day:
- Estimate: fewer than 100 copies confirmed to exist
- Even fewer copies in collector condition (CGC 8.0+)
- The known ceiling is the CGC 9.0 grade: no better-graded copy has ever been recorded
- Most copies are in private collections
- The Comics Buyer's Guide put the number of survivors at 50 to 100 in 2012
- The finest ones carry a provenance name, like the "Kansas City" copy
This extreme rarity is explained by the fact that comics were considered disposable items in the 1940s and 1950s. Most were thrown away or recycled during the war effort. The surviving copies were generally preserved by chance or by visionary early collectors.
The journey of a single copy, all the way to 15 million dollars
One copy sums up that rarity better than any statistic. Owned by actor Nicolas Cage, it was stolen from him in 2000 and vanished for eleven years. It turned up in March 2011 in a storage locker in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles. Resold a few months later for 2.16 million dollars, graded CGC 9.0, it finally changed hands for 15 million in January 2026.
For the rest, we are reduced to estimates: the Comics Buyer's Guide put the surviving copies at between fifty and one hundred in 2012. None of them has ever exceeded the CGC 9.0 grade.
Four misconceptions about Action Comics #1
- "Siegel and Shuster sold Superman off for 130 dollars." The 130 dollars is the standard rate of the period: 10 dollars a page for the thirteen pages delivered. They were paying for the story, not the character. The assignment of the copyright, for its part, was written into the contract signed in March 1938 and gave rise to no additional payment — which is harsher still than the legend.
- "The issue was recognized as a triumph the moment it came out." The print run sold out, but for months the publisher had no idea Superman was the reason. Harry Donenfeld thought the character was ridiculous and had given instructions to keep him off the following covers. It took sales figures to establish that he was what readers were coming for: Superman only settles permanently onto the front cover from issue #19 onward.
- "Superman has been flying since 1938." In Action Comics #1 he leaps: an eighth of a mile, or over a twenty-story building. Flight was given to him in 1941 by the animators at the Fleischer studio, who found those bounds ridiculous to watch and asked for — then obtained — permission to make him fly on screen. The comics only adopted flight in 1943.
- "An Action Comics #1 found in an attic is necessarily worth a fortune." Almost all of those that resurface are reprints. The most common is the Famous First Edition published by DC in 1974: a facsimile roughly twice the size of the original, with a cardstock cover. A second facsimile edition came out in 2022. The format alone is almost always enough to settle the matter.
Publishing and cultural legacy
The legacy of Action Comics #1 is multiple and profound:
Publishing legacy :
- Official launch of the superhero genre
- Business model for all the comics that followed
- Direct inspiration for Batman (1939) and Wonder Woman (1941), both DC
- Influence on Timely Comics, the future Marvel (Captain America, 1941)
- Anthology model that would dominate the industry for decades
Cultural legacy :
- Birth of a new modern mythology
- Influence on film, television and video games
- Recognition as a heritage document scientific genius
- Blockbuster film adaptation (Superman 1978, etc.)
- Impact on worldwide popular culture
To explore all the comics sagas that followed this founding publication, our complete guide to the must-read Superman comic books retraces all the essential references. To understand the hero's general iconography, our complete analysis of the Superman logo retraces the visual evolution since 1938.
To celebrate this historic dimension every day, our store offers a complete selection of Superman comics figures, Superman decorations with classic aesthetics and Superman clothing.
To retrace the character's 85 years of evolution, see Superman through the eras.
FAQ — Frequently asked questions
What is Action Comics #1?
It is the first comic book featuring Superman, published on April 18, 1938, under a cover dated June, by Detective Comics, Inc. (the future DC Comics). Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, this issue is considered the official birth certificate of the modern superhero genre.
How much is an Action Comics #1 worth?
The world record is 15 million dollars: a copy graded CGC 9.0 sold privately in January 2026. At public auction, the title's best result remains 6 million dollars (Heritage Auctions, April 2024, CGC 8.5). Copies in average condition still trade from 100,000 to several hundred thousand dollars. It is officially the most valuable comic book in the world, without equal in the history of the medium.
Who created Superman in Action Comics #1?
Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), two young Jewish American creators aged 23 in 1938. High school classmates in Cleveland, they developed the Superman concept between 1932 and 1938 before publication.
How many copies of Action Comics #1 exist?
Estimated at fewer than 100 confirmed surviving copies, of which only a tiny fraction are in collector condition (CGC 8.0+). Most were thrown away or recycled during the war effort. The surviving copies are essentially in private collections and a few museums.
What are the other stories in Action Comics #1?
Besides Superman (13 pages), the issue contains: Chuck Dawson, Zatara the Master Magician, Sticky-Mitt Stimson, The Adventures of Marco Polo, Pep Morgan, Scoop Scanlon, Tex Thompson, and Stardust the Super Wizard. The classic anthology format of the era.
Why did Siegel and Shuster sell the Superman rights for 130 dollars?
Common practice in the 1938 comics industry: publishers bought the complete rights from creators for modest sums. Siegel and Shuster would spend decades trying to recover a fair share of the rights, generating one of the most controversial cases in the history of the comics industry.
Does Action Comics still exist today?
Yes. The title celebrated its eightieth anniversary with Action Comics #1000, put on sale on April 18, 2018 — to the day, the anniversary of issue #1 going on sale. Retailers ordered more than half a million copies of it, a figure that has become rare for a comic book.
Where can you read Action Comics #1 today?
Without spending millions, through the reprints. DC published an oversized version in 1974 in the Famous First Edition line, then, in 2022, a facsimile edition that reproduces the issue in full for the price of an ordinary comic book.
What is the most expensive comic book in the world?
Action Comics #1, with 15 million dollars paid in January 2026 for a copy graded CGC 9.0, in a private sale. At public auction, however, the record belongs to Superman #1, which sold for 9.12 million dollars in November 2025. Action Comics #1's best auction result remains the 6 million dollars of April 2024.
Conclusion
Action Comics #1 (1938) is, without a doubt, the most important comic book in the entire history of the medium. This simple anthology issue literally invented the superhero genre and gave birth to a modern mythology that continues to shape worldwide popular culture almost 90 years later.
To understand Action Comics #1 is to understand the very origins of everything that makes up today's comics and superhero film industry. Without this unique publication, neither Marvel nor modern DC would exist in their current form.
To explore all the Superman comics that followed this founding publication, our complete guide to Superman comic books and our complete guide to the history of Superman retrace the hero's entire publishing evolution since 1938.