The $130 Check that Gave Us Superman Sold at an Auction for $160,000

In 1938, two cartoonists sold their rights to Superman for $130. On Monday, that paycheck went for $160,000 in an online auction. The auction comes just months after someone paid $2.16 million for the comic book issue that first revealed Superman to the world.

Two sons of Jewish immigrants, Siegel and Shuster, created Superman in their 20s and offered the character around before they sold it to DC comics. Their agreement to sell their rights came back to haunt them. When the first Superman movie came out, Shuster was working as a deliveryman – broke and aging. Siegel died in 1996 and Shuster died in 1992. 

The $130 check led to a billion-dollar industry as other superheros followed, and movies and comic books were made out of the superhero galaxy. If the check was never written, we would not have a Superman, and we wouldn’t have the same comic-book industry, if we even had one at all.

See Barbara Goldberg, Check that Bought Superman Rights for $130 Sells for $160,000, Yahoo! News, Apr. 16, 2012. 

Special thanks to David S. Luber (Attorney at law, Florida Probate Attorney Wills and Estates Law Firm) for bringing this article to my attention.