We've officially run out of stuff to collect.

Check that bought Superman rights for $130 sells for $160,000

Decades after two young cartoonists from Cleveland sold the rights to Superman for $130, their 1938 paycheck fetched $160,000 on Monday in an online auction.

From MSNBC.com

The house where Superman lived...

Yes, I’m more Spider-Man than Superman, but I wanted to share this one with you all. I found it today and, well, this is truly where we all started.

The story of Superman started on June 2, 1932, when Michel Siegel was robbed in his second-hand clothing store not far from his home. He died later that night of a heart attack.

The youngest of his six children, a gangly, 16-year-old comic-book fan and budding artist named Jerry, began to fantasize about how his father might have been saved, said Bradley Ricca, who teaches a Superman course at Case Western Reserve University.

The next year, in a cramped bedroom, the young Mr. Siegel imagined a bulletproof "Man of Steel" whose superpowers were cloaked under the mild-mannered guise of a bumbling alter-ego. According to lore, Mr. Siegel sprinted nine and a half blocks to the apartment of his friend, Joe Shuster, to describe his vision. Mr. Shuster began to draw the first renditions of the square-jawed hero.

In 1938 the first Superman comic strip was published. It sold out immediately.

For more on this story read it in the Wall St. Journal.

The Secret Life of Joe Schuster

While the unfortunate image to the left may make it appear otherwise, Superman is a mythic, fictional figure that inspires trust, and safety in us (unlike Batman, for instance), we all feel pretty comfortable with the history of Superman.

We all know that Joe Schuster is one half of the most famous duo of comicbook creators (he and Jerry Siegel created Superman, and essentially created this entire genre). Well, comics historian Craig Yoe recently made an incredible find when he unearthed a rare find of an underground comic produced by Schuster back in the early 1950s when the artist was down on his luck, because he had been repudiated by DC. The comic, titled Nights of Horror — crude in form — is actually a group of stapled pamphlets of erotic horror art that were sold under the counter at drugstores for $3.00 each.

According to a published report:

Yoe, who found the complete 16-issue run of the crude publication at a used-book store: “There are some who say I should have left this stuff buried and not ruin Joe’s reputation. But this is a major body of work by the creator of the superhero. Some of the drawings are beautiful, showing the great craftsman that he was. There's even an innocence.

“I can’t say I'd frame it and put it above my mantel, but it’s a very important find for comic-book history and cultural history.”

Yoe reproduced the work in a new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts, $24.95). Personally, I’m thinking of picking up this book myself, just for it’s historical value, in the ever-unfolding “secret history” of the early days of comics.

For whom the Bell Tolls

Hey, did you folk hear about the suit against DC comics by the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster? If not, check this out. A buddy of mine turned me on to it yesterday. Meanwhile a local author named Marc Tyler Nobleman with whom I’ve been chatting recently, has authored a children’s book on these two comicbook creators. He has bloged about this a couple of times (at least once over here).

Personally, I’m looking forward to reading his book, (Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman), is due out later this year.

Further, you can only wonder how this will shake out for guys like Steve Ditko, the heirs of Jack Kirby, and other comicbook creators who developed now-hot properties under “work for hire” contracts. This looks interesting, to say the least.