$130 cheque that bought Superman

[samurainoir]

Deal Of The Century: The Check That DC Comics Used To Buy Superman Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

Also, you can buy Jerry Seigel's hair
ComicConnect :: Buy, Sell & Appraise Jerry Siegel's HairMemorabilia Comic Books

[Figuremod73]

i wonder how much $130 dollars back then is worth today after you think of inflation. That was alot at the time....
(but was even that enough when you think about it)

[samurainoir]

It's less than a third of the full amount of the cheque itself. If we're assuming that the other line items are for 8 pagers etc they contributed to Detective Comics, More Fun and adventure.

Do you guys think that the $32 line items for "fun" and "adv" are for story and art for 8 pagers?

[sprytel]

i wonder how much $130 dollars back then is worth today after you think of inflation. That was alot at the time....
(but was even that enough when you think about it)

Depends on how you measure it, somewhere between $2k and $5k. So it's still a steal...

[Figuremod73]

i think some of the cheque was there month pay for workload. so, other than supes, did they sell the rights of slam bradley and what ever eles they created?
Superman I dont think was a known hit when this check was written...

[Figuremod73]

How long did the newspaper feature go before it was published in Action?

[clemso]

Its a very cool bit of comic book history but to be honest, i'm not even sure I would bid $130 for the check.

[clemso]

Eh... wait whats this? They have the highest graded example of Action Comics 1 for sale Yikes. 9.0 !!!!

ComicConnect :: Buy, Sell & Appraise Action Comics 1938 # 1 Comic Books

[samurainoir]

[QUOTE=samurainoir;823489]

How long did the newspaper feature go before it was published in Action?

Seigel and Shuster never managed to sell it as a newspaper feature despite shopping it around to everyone else in the syndicated newspaper market and comic books. Will Eisner even admits to rejecting it.

Supposedly the only reason it made it into Action #1 was because they needed to rush it out to the newsstands and took whatever they could to fill up the allotted pages.

They reworked the comic strip panels into comic book format.

I think most historians agree that the major sticking point was the fact that there was not much in the way of paperwork around this transfer, and that there was some kind of verbal agreement over profit sharing which was ill defined in terms of what constituted a "fair share".

Keep in mind that profit sharing did have a precedence in the newspaper strips, as well as merchandising and exploitation in other media (although not to the crazy extent we have today).

Bob Kane for example managed to negotiate a very generous contract from DC. (although his subcontractors, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson didn't fare as well).

[toys2cool]

wow

[MEMEGO]

in the words of classic real Spock Facinating!

[Adam West]

$400 would be worth roughly $6K in today's dollars. If that money were placed in some type of investment compounding at 8% per year then it's roughly $1.8M in today's dollars.

[Figuremod73]

So if there was an verbal agreement between supes creators and the National heads, what had kelpt them from receiving their "fair share", if the agreement was similiar to Kanes? I wonder exactly when National decided they wanted to keep it all for themselves.
I remember talking awhile back about the superman tribute in Action 544. The artist a few years after the creation of superman entered the 2 WWar. Once he had returned he discovered his services were no longer wanted on Action/Superman. I think he did do occasional Superboy stories, but that was it. He later left the comics field and struggled for many years. In the superman tribute he talked about what little he had gotten from the character and was almost blind. I think the Superman movie was when they finally recieved royalties again. If im not mistaken if was Neal Adams and a few others fighting with WB that even made that possible. Ugh!

[samurainoir]

required reading...


I think it's fair to say that Shuster and Seigel could be considered the sub-titular "Geeks"... as for "Gangsters", keep in mind that many in Newsstand distribution and publishing were pretty much one step away from their organized crime roots in pornography and bootlegging. So imagine their surprise when these funny books for kids really took off.

I've been watching Boardwalk Empire, and I think it paints an interesting picture of how "business" worked back then, hand and hand both in legitimate, not so legitimate, and that gray area in between. It really was a culture of "why should you share if you don't HAVE to?".

Although it was the accountant partner in National from that time period... Leibowitz (IIRC?) who also later became head of Warner communications and gave Seigel and Shuster their pensions in the seventies after Seigel's infamous multi page diatribe and threat to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of DC's headquarters dressed in a Superman costume.

fascinating over the top gross-out meta-fictionalized account by Rick Vietch in his graphic novel Maximortal...

[Nostalgiabuff]

okay, whoever buys that hair is just plain creepy