Lot 67: SIEGEL, Jerry (1914-1996) and Joe SHUSTER (1914-1992).Superman#2. New York: DC Comics, 1 September 1939.

SIEGEL, Jerry (1914-1996) and Joe SHUSTER (1914-1992). Superman #2. New York: DC Comics, 1 September 1939. 4°. Pencilled and inked by Fred Guardineer, additional inking, editing and pencilling by Paul Cassidy, Vincent Sullivan and Joe Shuster. Original pictorial wrappers, cover art by Joe Shuster. (Complete grading and condition report available on request.) THE SECOND NUMBER OF THE FIRST OF THE GREAT COMIC BOOK SUPERHEROES AND ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE POPULAR CHARACTERS OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Siegel and Shuster met in Cleveland when they were 16 years old and would, before they were 30, create one of the most celebrated cultural figures of the era. In 1938, Action Comics No. 1 included Superman’s first appearance in a short section, prior to receiving his own dedicated comic. Siegel and Shuster sold Superman to DC comics in 1938 for $130, later earning $25,000 a year from it for the rest of their lives. Michael Chabon has contextualized Superman’s cultural import: “The American comic book preëxisted the superhero, but just barely, and with so little distinction that in the cultural mind the medium has always seemed indistinguishable from its first stroke of brilliance. There were costumed crime-fighters before Superman (the Phantom, Zorro), but only as there were pop quartets before the Beatles. Superman invented and exhausted his genre in a single bound. All the tropes, all the clichés and conventions, all the possibilities, all the longings and wishes and neuroses that have driven and fed and burdened the superhero comic during the past seventy years were implied by and contained within that little red rocket ship hurtling toward Earth. That moment—Krypton exploding, Action Comics No. 1—is generally seen to be Minute Zero of the superhero idea” Michael Chabon, “Secret Skin: An essay in unitard theory,” in: The New Yorker, 10 March 2008).

20TH CENTURY