The first comic book to feature Spider-Man has been sold for $1.1m (£679,000) at a US auction, nearly half a century after it was published.

The 1962 copy of the Marvel comic book, in near-mint condition, shows Spidey swinging from a high building with a man under his right arm.

Five decades ago, the comic was sold for just 12 cents.

The sale, to an undisclosed buyer, comes a year after Superman's debut comic book from 1938 sold for $1.5m (£926,000)

The late 1950s and early 1960s are considered the Silver Age for comic books," saidComicConnect.com founder Stephen Fishler.

He added: "People have often wondered how much this near-perfect condition book would sell for, and today we found out."

My son has a very fine copy of the UK first edition of Spider Man! Doubt it would be that much though.

Probably no more than a couple of quid. The UK reprints aren't very collectable unfortunately.

I wonder who bought the Amazing Fantasy #15? I wouldn't be surprised if it was Jonathan Ross and he'll spend the next few months trying to get Steve Ditko to autograph it.

Well a couple of quid is fine because he bought it at a jumble sale for 5p!

Wossy already has a copy, though I 'think' he sold it not so long ago... unless he had more than one...


Most of the UK reprint editions are up for about 99p on Ebay, there's really not much value in the Marvel UK or Panini reprints...

Issue 1 can go for over £20 if its in good condition.


While they are not as collectible as the US comics the UK ones have still become very collectible , especially the early issues of Spiderman Comics Weekly and Mighty World of Marvel with the paper covers before they switched to glossy.

Apart from the early issues individual ones don't go for a great deal but if you have a reasonable run you can get a few quid for them.

I collected UK Marvel from 1972 but sold them many years ago.
Bought a few again and sold them again more recently.

Certainly in the early to mid 70's I found the UK comics far preferable to the US ones.
The American issues were in full colour but they were spoilt by having 2 pages of ads after every 2 pages of comics and being printed on paper so cheap that the UK ones seemed like luxury paper.

I still enjoyed Marvel UK product until around 1978 when Dez Skinn took it over and ruined it forever by making the comics a very cheaply made product and carving up full US pages into small chunks for the UK comics.

Nowadays I have more than 45 years of US Spiderman comics on a single dvd- far more convenient

Depends on which version as there have been so many different UK "Spider Man" comics from the old weekly ones (yes, could be worth something) up to the modern reprints which there are several versions of still released regularly.... unfortunately, the odds are that it's one of the more recent versions but I'd be interested to find out

Remember when we moved house my mum ditching all my comics...earliest I had was Amazing Spiderman 6--which probably wouldn't be worth much..but it was the Enforcers, Green Goblin and Incredible Hulk if I remember rightly---gosh they knew how to do entertaining stories back then !!!

Sorry you didn't enjoy the somewhat drastic changes Stan hired me to make, Mr Foolery, but the 1970s wasn't a good decade for Marvel. In fact, by the end of it the company was on the brink of going completely out of business on both sides of the pond. Had the somewhat oddly named Super Spider-Man not been radically revamped to boost sales by looking more traditionally British, it would have ceased completely. (It was a certain George Lucas property which dramatically turned around Marvel's fortunes, of course).

If you'd like more info, the full story is at my shiny new website... here

Thanks for the chance to slip in a sneaky plug!

Wow! We are not worthy, Mr Skinn.

This is completely OT, but have Marvel approached you over the use of Big Ben in any Marvelman reprints yet?

Nada on the BB front (or to others about their ancillaries apparently, Evelyn Cream, Warpsmiths, new KM costume, even the actual balloon lettering - 'cos letterers always sell world rights when commissioned, obviously). Marvel needs all this stuff cleared to reprint our old 1980s material but the last I saw Joey da Q about MM was way back in around 1998 when he was in London. Not even a single email since then. I think they're as confused as we are, "Be More"!

Oh well, I guess there's no shortage of Mick Anglo stuff to reprint. However, with all due respect to Mr Anglo, I'm not convinced Marvel will be able to flog obscure kids' comics from the 1950s for much longer.

I hope they get in touch with you and the other rights-holders soon. Otherwise, they'll be stuck with a pig in a poke. (I wonder if Joe Quesada would like to buy some of my magic beans?)

Is that something commercially available Tom? I used to collect Spidy in the 70s and 80s, but it became to expensive to keep going when they kept bringing out about 4 different comics every month. Would be interested to buy something convenient like a DVD.

Issue #6 was the first Lizard story. Still worth a few hundred quid.

From a purely creative POV Dez, I'd argue that the 70s were a great time for Marvel. Starlin on Warlock, Wolfman and Colan on Dracula, Steve Gerber on pretty much anything-I don't think much of their output since can better any of that. Certainly not since about 1986.

Agreed (and let's not overlook the wonderful Conan, Master of Kung Fu, Doctor Strange, New X-Men and anything Mike Ploog or Gil Kane drew!) I personally adored some of the b&w titles they brought out too. A creative peak.
But unfortunately, creativity isn't bankable and doesn't necessarily equate to sales (Deadman, Kirby's Fourth Wolrd or Silver Surfer, anybody?). Marvel was in a mess in the 1970s, countless editorial changes, writers editing their own work, newsstand rejection because of the deluge of confusing titles, reprints interrupting serials... a mess.
And to top it off dear old Stan really didn't like firing people, even if they were inept. Hence the arrival of Jim "Trouble" Shooter (as he was originally nicknamed) to sort the mess out.
Remember, back then comics fans weren't the main market. Ironically, had they been such Star Wars probably wouldn't have worked! It was newsstand sales of that title which turned Marvel's fortunes around, albeit for the first six issues it was nothing more than a comics adaptation (something fans generally have sneered at, unless it was done by Dark Horse or me come to think of it with House of Hammer's Bolland, Gibbons, Bolton et al!).

Moench's Master of Kung Fu was amazing stuff. It deserves to be a lot better known than it is. Then again, you could say that about a lot of Doug's work-he's one of the underappreciated greats, just look at what he did with Batman in the eighties.
That sounds to me like the same kind of mess they're in now. DC, too. Just chucking out dozens of titles at random to see what catches on, when readers are already dropping titles for financial reasons, seems to me a very strange strategy. No wonder sales are plummeting. Surely cutting back to a few core titles and making sure they feature characters the readers are interested in is more of a recipe for success?
You forgot Doctor Who. That has to be the longest running TV/film adaptation in comics. The Marvel/Panini strip alone has now been running longer than the TV show.

Ah, yes. Silly me, and here I am with a Guinness World Record Certificate on the wall for that one. True, it IS the world's longest running TV tie-in (hence the award), but more an extension than an adaptation, I'd say!

Hmm, probably got a point, there. In fact, some of the new Doctor Who stuff on TV seems to be a loose adaptation of the strip, if anything; Russell T Davies' 'Utopia' seemed to me curiously similar to Steve Parkhouse's 'End of the Line'...

Amazing Fantasy #15
I has two bagged up!