How does an auction house follow up the sale of the worlds most expensive comic book? By holding one featuring the worlds most important comic book. From Thursday to Sunday, Nov. 18 to 21, Heritage Auctions will hold its latest Comics and Comic Art Signature Auction, which features among its myriad highlights a copy of the 1938 Action Comics No. 1, which marked the debut appearance of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shusters Superman. Copies of the landmark scarcity seldom surface. Heritage has offered only three complete copies of Action Comics No. 1 over the last five years, which makes the appearance of this restored CGC Apparent Fine+ 6.5 copy notable. There are 72 copies of comicdoms most coveted and collected story in CGCs Census Report, in any condition. Superman is joined in this auction by the other half of DCs worlds finest duo, Batman, whose 1940 bow in his own title is among the extraordinary 354 offerings from the Promise Collection, a collection of Golden Age comic books in pristine condition assembled by a young boy who grew up, went to fight the war in Korea and never returned. This auction has 57 Golden Age books graded 9.8 and another 82 Golden Age books graded 9.6, said Heritage Auctions vice president Barry Sandoval. Those are almost unfathomable numbers for 1940s comics, when very few made an effort to preserve comics in pristine condition, if they kept them at all. Batmans solo-title debut is also featured in an extraordinary collection the likes of which has been seldom seen at Heritage. The auction features three bound volumes of Batman comics beginning with 1940s very first issue, itself one of the hobbys most significant and treasured titles, where Joker and Catwoman make their first appearances. The professionally bound set features Batman Nos. 1-36, six years worth of momentous backstory and iconic covers (and advertisements) meant to be pulled from the shelf and read, appreciated, admired. And the titles do show some wear, especially the first few issues, as the online catalog notes, The remaining issues appear to be in fine or better, with page quality averaging white to off-white in other words, very nice copies presenting impressively. Here, for the first time, is what Sandoval calls a fascinating trove of material relating to Judge Charles Murphy and the Comics Code Authority, the vast majority of which the world has never seen. In the spring of 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic books had become violent, causing a rise in juvenile delinquency. His book was later disparaged and discredited. In her 2012 piece, Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications That Helped Condemn Comics, comics scholar Carol Tilley wrote that Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence, for rhetorical gain. Yet Werthams attacks on comics led, in part, to the infamous Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearing. In October 1954, Murphy stepped down from his job as New York City magistrate to become the so-called czar of the comics industry, enforcing the code intended to ban horror and terror titles and force publishers to sterilize their books. Rather than face government regulation, publishers hired Murphy to implement the Comics Code. In this auction one will find how that played out, privately. Here, for the first time, is a Folio of Antagonistic Inter-Office Correspondence, or as the catalog calls it, dirty laundry from the Comics Codes headquarters. Contained in these documents are unfriendly exchanges between Murphy and Comics Magazine Association president John Goldwater, then in charge of the Archie Comics line. Here, too, is Murphys letter of resignation. The auction also features a cache of correspondence between Murphy and the FBIs then-director J. Edgar Hoover, who told the Comics Code administrator he was most interested in (your) work to eliminate offensive material aimed at our young people. Hoover vowed that Murphy would get everything he wanted. Hoover wasnt the only one keenly interested in Murphys work. This auction offers typewritten missives to Murphy from a wide range of political figures, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Sen. Estes Kefauver, the man whose subcommittee hearings led to the creation of the Comics Code, New York City Parks Department head Robert Moses (the subject of Robert Caros landmark book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York), and others. And finally, here collectors and historians will find 1954s Comics Code Fact Kit Folder and Contents, which contains a reproduction of the Code seal and five staple-bound pamphlets, among them one titled On Dangerous Ground, which makes the case for the Code acting as censor. Whats found here would shape, and sanitize, the industry for decades. To learn more, visit www.HA.com.