Cage Comic Sets Record

A final note on the story run here last month about the auction of Nicholas Cage’s top-graded copy of Action Comics #1 – it ultimately fetched a record bid of $2,160,000.

This eclipsed the record for a single comic book set only last year when a slightly less perfect copy of the same comic went for $1,500,000.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

3 thoughts on “Cage Comic Sets Record

  1. You know… if I was worth a *billion dollars,* I still doubt I’d pay over $2 million for a comic book. Now, I like comic books… I really do. But $2 million is just too much, even for my favourite titles… and Superman was never one of them. But would I spent that kind of money on a first edition Uncle Scrooge #1? Never! Among other things, you can buy a copy for a lot less than that. For reasons I can only explain as popular bad taste, a lot more people want the first Superman comic rather than the better drawn and better written commodity by Carl Barks. But even if there were only one copy of Uncle Scrooge #1, I doubt I’d spend 1/1000 of my total worth on it. I’d rather spend a small fraction of that amount and reprint the damn thing so that everyone could enjoy it! But I gather Nicholas Cage is a nut when it comes to Superman. In the past, he’s pulled strings to play the role in a full length movie, despite being just about the second-last person I’d ever cast for the role. (Rosanne Barr is first-last.) Action Comics has taken on a life of its own, regardless of Cage. I’ve been watching it’s value go up since the 1970s. I recall when it was well under $5,000 — a sum more in keeping with its worth. I have to assume that someday the fascination with this particular comic — and perhaps a half dozen others — will go by the wayside, and as merely another old and rare comic book, it may only be worth a few thousand dollars again. I just hope that I’m not the guy who last paid millions of dollars for it when that happens.

  2. I agree with all that. Maybe Cage has a Superman obsession. Or maybe he anticipated it would be a great investment (and didn’t expect it to get stolen.)

  3. Cage (when his surname was still the same as his uncle, Francis Ford) made silent 8 mm films as a kid with himself as Superman and lobbied hard for the role for himself as an adult, even though he doesn’t have the face for it. We saw he could have the muscular body for it without padding in CON AIR, but would require a wig due to his receding hairline and his face just doesn’t look like any version of Superman ever drawn. Of course, neither did George Reeves’ on the other hand. I think it’s possible that he wanted the role so much for emotional reasons that it scared producers and directors on a sub-conscious level — here was a guy who wanted the role just a bit too much, more so that just as a major acting role or for money but for obsession with Superman. After all, he did name his son Kalel, which is definitely over the top.

    He’s a good enough actor that if he got it he could carry the role, but he’ll never get it. Former hairdresser and reputed bully Jon Peters wants to redesign the character because he can (not for any good reason, just for his inflated ego) and his and Cage’s ideas are diametrically opposed.

Comments are closed.