BAM! POW! ‘SCRATCH!’

$2.2M record for Batman comic

Holy collector’s item, Batman! A vintage issue of “Batman No. 1” (inset) was bought for more than $2.2 million, breaking the record for the priciest Caped Crusader comic book ever sold.

The high-grade 1940 issue, scripted by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, was sold at Heritage Auctions: Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction, which is held from Thursday until Sunday. It went for a cool $2,220,000, including the buyer’s premium fee, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“Batman No. 1” isn’t the first comic to feature the superhero — that honor goes to “Detective Comics No. 27” from the previous year (which held the previous record for the most expensive Batman comic ever sold, when it went for $1.5 million in November). However, Issue No. 1 does mark the debuts of the iconic Batman villains the Joker and Catwoman.

The price can be attributed to the story’s 9.4 CGC designation, meaning that it is one of the rare high-quality holdovers — with white pages, no less — from the Golden Age of comics. The highest rating is 10. Prior to the record sale, the copy was owned by collector Billy T. Gates, who bought it in 1979 at a comic store in Houston for $3,000. When he died in 2019, he passed the exalted item on to his son. With the purchase, the “Batman No. 1” issue joins an elite fraternity of graphic artworks that have sold for more than $2 million. The two other members are the legendary Nicolas Cage-owned “Action Comics No. 1,” featuring Superman’s debut, which sold for more than $2 million in 2011, and another “Action Comics No. 1” that reportedly went for an eye-popping $2,052,000 in 2018. A different copy of that Superman debut also holds the distinction of being the most expensive comic book ever sold — switching hands for $3.2 million in 2014.