Nicolas Cage’s stolen Superman debut comic found in storage locker

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A copy of the valuable Action Comics No. 1, the comic book in which Superman first appeared, has been found in a storage locker. And this isn’t just any Action Comics No. 1 -- it’s Nicolas Cage’s.

KTLA reports that the comic was discovered last month in a storage locker in the San Fernando Valley after the contents of the unit were purchased in an auction. The dealer who sold the comic to Cage was able to identify it.

Top-quality copies of the comic, published in 1938, are so rare that one sold in February 2010 for $1 million. It was the highest price ever garnered for a comic book.

The site ComicConnect.com mediated the deal; its co-owner Stephen Fishler told the Associated Press, “It is still a little stunning to see ‘a comic book’ and ‘$1 million’ in the same sentence.”

Less than a year earlier, another copy of ‘Action Comics No. 1’ made headlines when it was sold in an Internet auction for $317,200. Although that now looks like it wasn’t much, it turned a significant profit -- the seller had purchased it in the 1950s, used, for 35 cents.

Action Comics No. 1’s million-dollar record didn’t hold for long. Just days after it sold, Detective Comics No. 27, which features the first appearance of Batman, sold for $1,075,500.

Cage’s copy of Action Comics No. 1 was stolen more than a decade ago. In the 1990s, Cage had been scheduled to play Superman in a Tim Burton movie.

For the record, 6:46 p.m., April 11: A previous version of this post said Batman’s first appearance was in Detective Comics No. 1. It was Detective Comics No. 27.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg