$1.4M in comics stolen from collector

Fire up the Bat-Signal — this diabolical theft is a case for the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder.

ZAP! A collection of Batman comic valued at $1.4 million is nabbed from an indoor, air-conditioned, double-locked storage unit in West Boca.

BOOM! A wire is left hanging from the ceiling, so Randy Lawrence, the owner of the comics, thinks the villain came in through the roof.

KAPOW! Collectors around the globe should be on the lookout in case anyone tries to sell them any of the nearly 450 purloined publications.

“For me this is a first and on such a high level it’s been devastating,” Lawrence said in a letter posted on social media sites. “This collection was my nest egg, and I had worked so hard and done without for so long to put this together that it being taken away from me this way has left me in a very bad way.”

“I … really need you all to be aware and keep your eyes open,” Lawrence urged fellow collectors. “They will probably be offered to some of you sooner than later.”

The break-in happened sometime between Nov. 28 and Jan. 8 at a public storage unit in the 19000 block of N. State Road 7, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office.

Lawrence told detectives the only person who may have seen him loading boxes in the unit was a con-

tractor who struck up a conversation about comics while fixing a leak in the facility sometime in July.

Lawrence said the locks were not broken but he noticed some boxes had been moved around — and that’s when he saw the wire hanging from the ceiling, according to the theft report.

The storage facility management was reviewing surveillance videos, the report said.

Lawrence gave investigators a list of the missing Batman and Detective comic books and posted a list online with the certification numbers and pedigree names so they could be identified.

“The whole world’s gotten back to me,” he said Thursday. “People in Paris, people in Rome, people all over the country, it’s all over the place, so everyone’s on the lookout.”

Some online commenters debated the extent of the security measures taken to protect the valuable comics but others expressed sympathy and support.

Now word yet on whether the sheriff’s office is calling in the dynamic duo.

DC COMICS COURTESY About 450 Batman and Detective comics, similar to this first edition from 1939, were stolen from a West Boca collector, investigators said.