As we all know as consumers of media and pop culture, Marvel sort of has a chokehold on the film and television industry as we know it. You can feel about that however way you want to, but there’s no denying the cultural impact they’ve made, even before they dominated our screens.
It seems that the world at large agrees, too, as collectors continue to spend immense amounts of money on the history of Marvel comics, like one man who recently spent upwards of $2.4 million on a rare edition of Marvel Comics #1.
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A piece of comic book history was sold in an online auction on March 17.
It was a copy of Marvel Comics #1, the first-ever published Marvel comic. On top of that, it was a rare version of this print called a ‘pay copy’. Pay copies feature handwriting from the publishers noting how much the writers and artists were paid.
Some of that handwriting is visible right on the cover.
Within the title text you can see that, for example, cover artist Frank R. Paul was paid $25 for his artwork that has now officially sold for almost 100,000 times as much. That’s right, the selling price for this comic was $2,427,777.65.
The buyer’s name hasn’t been released.
But chief operating officer of ComicConnect, where the auction tool place, Vincent Zurzolo said that the buyer is “an extremely passionate comic book collector and investor”.
Zurzolo also said that this comic is “arguably one of the top three comic books in the world of comics collecting.”
Originally published in 1939, this comic features the first appearances of Marvel heroes like the Human Torch and Angel.
As ComicConnect’s own listing put it, “This remarkable publication was key to the genesis of Marvel Comics, a worldwide entertainment empire and cultural phenomenon that seems to be unstoppable in today’s media marketplace.”
h/t: Associated Press
