Action Comics 1

Action Comics #1
Cover of Action Comics 1 (June, 1938). Art by Joe Shuster.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
Genre	Superhero
Publication date	June 1938 (cover date) and September 2011 (cover date)

Action Comics #1 (June 1938) is the first issue of the original run of the comic book series Action Comics. It features the first appearance of several comic book heroes—most notably the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster creation, Superman. For this reason it is widely considered both the beginning of the superhero genre and the most valuable comic book of all time.

On August 24, 2014, a copy graded 9.0 by CGC was sold on eBay for US$3,207,852. It is the only comic book to have sold for more than $3 million for a single original copy.Action Comics would go on to run for 904 numbered issues (plus additional out-of-sequence special issues) before it restarted its numbering in the fall of 2011. It returned to its original numbering with issue #957, published on June 8, 2016 (cover-dated August).

It is not to be confused with the first issue of the second series (or "volume") of Action Comics which was launched as part of DC Comics' New 52 revamp in the fall of 2011.

Action Comics #1 was an anthology, and contained eleven features:

Published on April 18, 1938 (cover-dated June), by National Allied Publications, a corporate predecessor of DC Comics, it is considered the first true superhero comic; and though today Action Comics is a monthly title devoted to Superman, it began, like many early comics, as an anthology.

Action Comics was started by publisher Jack Liebowitz. The first issue had a print run of 200,000 copies, which promptly sold out, although it took some time for National to realize that the "Superman" strip was responsible for sales of the series that would soon approach 1,000,000 a month. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were paid $10 per page, for a total of $130 for their work on this issue. Liebowitz would later say that selecting Superman to run in Action Comics #1 was "pure accident" based on deadline pressure and that he selected a "thrilling" cover, depicting Superman lifting a car over his head.Christopher Knowles, author of Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes, compared the cover to Hercules Clubs the Hydra by Antonio del Pollaiolo. The issue's cover also bears a resemblance to the Polish comic cover released in 1932 "Rotmistrz i przyjaciele" which told a story of a heroic captain.