Nic Cage’s Action Comics Recovered, Not Yet Returned

Way back, when I was just a little bitty boy living in a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the street from Jerry’s —

Woah, sorry, had an interlude, there. Way back in the year TWO THOUSAND Nicolas Cage (stage name inspired partially by Luke Cage) was a die hard comic fan with a die hard comic fan’s dream collection: a well-preserved copy each of Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 the first appearances of Superman and Batman.

And then some jerk stole them and got away with it, and Cage was so disheartened by the whole thing that he sold his entire collection. But now, it appears that Cage’s lost copy of Action #1 has been found in an abandoned San Fernando Valley storage space.

A man who has so far declined to identify himself to the media, purchased the abandoned space and its contents and turned to Mark Balelo, a collectibles expert, who turned to Stephen Fishler, the guy who sold the copy of Action #1 to Cage in the first place. Last week, Fishler flew out to California and positively identified the found copy as the one that was stolen from Cage a decade ago.

Perhaps the sadder part of this story is that after all this time Cage might not even get it back.

[Detective Donald] Hrycyk said it is his understanding that Cage, an avid comic book collector who was once cast to play Superman in a movie that never got off the ground, previously received an insurance payout for the theft.

“So whether he will regain legal title or not, is between Cage and the insurance company,” Hrycyk said.

The comic has been placed in police evidence, as authorities try to use this new information to figure out who stole it in the first place.

(via Bleeding Cool.)