If you enjoyed our December feature on comic book collecting ("Super Prices for Superheroes" by Jonathan Shipley), here's some neat background he wrote about the origins of collectible comic books.

The greatest hero the world has ever known was born in Cleveland. "I hop out of bed," remembered Jerry Siegel. It was 1934. "I hop out of bed and write this down, and then I go back and think some more for about two hours and get up again and write that down. This goes on all night at two hour intervals." The sun came up. He ran over to his pal's house, Joe Shuster. They had been friends since their teen years at Glenville High School. Jerry shows Joe his writings. "We just sat down," Shuster later said, "and I worked straight through." Thus began the life of Superman.

It took years for the two men to find a publisher for their comic strip hero, but they did. In 1938, the editor of National Allied Publications, Vin Sullivan, chose Superman as the cover feature for National's Action Comics #1. It sold for a dime. Fast forward to 2010. Siegel is now dead (he passed away in 1996 in Los Angeles). Shuster is, too (the penciler died in 1992 at the age of 78). Arguably the most famous fictional character ever created, Superman heads to the auction blocks. Action Comics #1 sells for, in March 2010, $1.5 million, making it the most expensive and valuable comic book of all-time.

????In early 1939, the comic book industry was abuzz with Superman and his success at selling comic books. Editors were eager to find the next superhero that would make it big. Again came Vin Sullivan. The editor of National Allied Publications, the future DC Comics, approached Bob Kane on a Friday. He asked Kane to come up with something. Kane agreed to have something back to the editor on Monday. Inspired by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s role as Zorro, Da Vinci's drawings of his omithopter, and an unheralded 1930 film, The Bat Whispers, he came up with a red-dressed hero with mechanical wings. Bird-Man. Kane showed his friend and fellow comic book cohort, Bill Finger. They collaborated and toiled throughout the weekend. What if he was darker? More nocturnal? What if he wasn't in red, but in grays and blacks? What if he had a cape and a cowl and no one would be able to see his eyes? What about Bat-Man? They handed their work to Sullivan. Batman first appeared in "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" in Detective Comics #27 in May, 1939. Batman was a hit. Selling for a dime, Batman received his own solo title in 1940 (his loyal sidekick Robin joined him in April of that year). Fast forward to 2010. In February Detective Comics #27 sold at auction for $1,075,000.

Now it's 1962. The Fantastic Four, the comic book heroes, are extremely popular. Marvel Comics editor and head writer Stan Lee wants to create a character that teenagers can relate to. He wants to combine a powerful hero with deep vulnerabilities. He corrals artist Steve Ditko to come up with something. Lee said once that the hero "would lose out as often as he'd win - in fact, more so." It was unheard of at the time for a superhero not to prevail time and time again. To test his hero out, in the last issue of a science fiction title that was slated for cancellation, Spider-Man appeared. The character quickly became the most influential superhero since Superman. The book, Amazing Fantasy #15, sold at auction recently for $280,000 - the highest auction price at the time for a comic book created in the 1960s. -- Jonathan Shipley

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You might also like Ian McKay's auction report on Batman v. Superman at auction, or Jonathan Shipley's blog on Batman from earlier this year. 

The main Books and Manuscripts sale at Sotheby's New York on Thursday made a total of $2,239,188, with 75 of the 115 lots selling. The top lot was Bob Dylan's lyrics for "The Times They Are A-Changin'", which made $422,500. The first edition presentation copy of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia ([Paris, 1785]) sold for $362,500. An Alberto Giacommetti letter to Marlene Dietrich fetched $266,500 (well over the estimate of $18,000-25,000), while the Second Folio sold for $194,500. The Curtis North American Indian volumes failed to sell, as did the Nuremberg Chronicle, the inscribed copy of A Christmas Carol, and the first edition Book of Mormon.

When it came time for the big single-item sales, however, the bidders were there. "Custer's Last Flag," a guidon from the Little Bighorn battlefield, consigned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, sold for $2,210,500 to an American private collector. Robert F. Kennedy's copy of the Emancipation Proclamation set a new record for a presidential document, fetching $3,778,500. It was purchased by an anonymous telephone bidder.

And then were James Naismith's original typescript rules for the game of basketball, which set a new record for sports memorabilia at auction, making $4,338,500. That lot went to Austin, TX money manager David Booth, a native of Lawrence, KS who hopes to see the rules find a home at the University of Kansas (he says he will challenge the university to "provide a suitable venue"). Proceeds from the sale go to the Naismith International Basketball Foundation, a charity.

To celebrate the indie bookshops that are still alive, today the Huffington Post posted its readers' twelve favorite bookstores. Powell's made the list. So did City Lights and the Strand. Admittedly, I have not been to all twelve of these locations, but I'm surprised not to see the Harvard Bookstore here; it's one of my all-time favorites. Take a look at the top picks and tell us what YOU think, dear readers!

First editions are the word today in the Wall Street Journal, with our very own Nick Basbanes being featured. It's a good basic history, noting the ups and downs of first editions at auction, with great interviews. Here's a snippet:

But while Shakespeare, Audubon and the Gutenberg Bible, which in 1987 netted around $5.4 million, are the top highlights of the trade, prices for most other books are performing reasonably. This may be because "collectors tend to buy the books because they love them, not so much with an eye to investment," Mr. Sellsey says. "Compared to works of art, which can be displayed, books tend to be a solitary pleasure." [Read more]

As if Charles Dickens could use the publicity boost, Oprah announced on Monday that not one but two of his novels have made her coveted list. She picked Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations; odd when one considers the season, for A Christmas Carol is just about everywhere, in any form. Want to see the original manuscript? It's on display now through

January 9 at the Morgan Library & Museum. Want to buy the handsome new Penguin classic edition (seen here, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith)? Perhaps you'd like to catch Gerald Charles Dickens, his great-great-grandson, on stage performing the Christmas classic? Wander the streets of a Victorian-ized San Francisco at the Dickens Fair? Tuck into minced pie at the Charles Dickens Museum? Ponder the V&A Museum's recent plea to save Dickens' rotting manuscripts? Book a stay at Dickens World?!

Of course, you could also read FB&C's neat feature from last December on Dickens' prompt book, "On Stage With Charles Dickens."

It seems Dickens' great expectations have been realized and then some.

Today's sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures at Sotheby's London made £2,897,250, with all but two of the 36 lots selling. The Rochefoucauld Grail shined as expected, selling for £2,393,250 to London dealer Sam Fogg. None of the other lots broke £100,000. The Northern Italian Book of Hours (est. £200,000-250,000) failed to sell.

But the big action of the day came in the Hesketh Sale, Magnificent Books, Manuscripts and Drawings from the Collection of Frederick 2nd Lord Hesketh, which brought in a grand total of £14,971,950, with just 9 of 91 lots failing to sell. The major items from this sale were the complete Audubon Birds of America (which sold for a record-setting £7,321,250/$11,544,553 to London dealer Michael Tollemache, setting a new auction record for a printed book) and the First Folio (which sold for £1,497,250/$2,360,947).

The ~1508 Plutarch illuminated manuscript on vellum, once in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps and the 11th-century commentary on Matthew each made £505,250, while thecollection of letters written to the jailer of Mary, Queen of Scots (including four by Elizabeth I), fetched £349,250. A 1613 Ben Jonson folio sold for £103,250.

The second edition Catesby made £121,500, as did a collection of natural history watercolors ; and all fifty-two of the original watercolor roses for Pierre-Joseph Redouté's Les Roses (sold in separate lots) found buyers, with prices ranging from £25,000 to £265,250. 

'Tis the season for this collection of mystery stories edited by Otto Penzler, editor, collector, and longtime owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop contains seventeen zippy tales by the likes of Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) and Mary Higgins Clark. For lovers of mysteries, or just bookshops, this is a top-notch set of stories. Manuscript dealers are murdered, collectors take hostages, and authors kill for a good story. "The Theft of the Rusty Bookmark" by Edward D. Hoch is a fun read in which a murder weapon is lost when the deceased's personal library is sold. "My Object All Sublime" by Anne Perry is full of tingling tension, as a rejected writer confronts Penzler in his private study. "The 74th Tale" by Jonathan Santlofer is a genuinely creepy account of a loner who buys a mystery and uses it as a manual.

For collectors, there is an interesting backstory to the book. Every holiday season since 1993, Penzler has commissioned an original short story from a leading mystery writer. The only directive: some of the action in the story must take place in the Mysterious Bookshop. Penzler printed each story in pamphlet form, limited to 1,000 copies, and mailed them out as gifts to customers. A hot ticket for mystery collectors today! All of these tales are collected in this volume.

And if you are simply dying for a signed edition, there's a holiday party this Thursday (Dec. 9th) at the Mysterious Bookshop (now located downtown at 58 Warren St.) at which Penzler and many of the authors in this anthology will be present to autograph copies. 

The New York Public Library has animated the first book Frankenstein author Mary Shelley ever worked on. It's a kid's story, published by Shelley's anarchist philosopher dad William Godwin in 1808. Shelley was ten.

My Reading Life, by Pat Conroy; Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 333 pages, $25. One of America's truly great storytellers, the incomparable Pat Conroy, is also a determined bibliophile--indeed one of the first signings of this delightful paean to reading was held last week at the Captain's Bookshelf in Asheville, NC--so it is no big surprise that he has written a number of essays over the years about his particular passion for books and authors. The fifteen pieces gathered here form a whole of Conroy's reading life thus far, and are a joy to pick up at any point. "Books are living things, and their task lies in their vows of silence," he writes in one chapter that will be of particular interest to collectors, his association with the Old New York Book Shop in Atlanta. (He admits to having bought up to five thousand books there.) "I could build a castle from the words I steal from books I cherish," he writes in a tribute to the librarians of his early childhood. Everything this man of the South writes, he writes from the heart. The bookish drawings by Wendell Minor that garnish these lovely ruminations are a pleasant plus to one of the outstanding books about books of the season.

Jazz; photographs by Herman Leonard; Bloomsbury, 303 pages, $65. The black and white jazz photographs of Herman Leonard, shot during the 1940s and '50s have become the stuff of legend. Louis Armstrong, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Kenny Clark, Stan Getz, Modern Jazz Quartet--they're all here in this definitive collection, a veritable feast of musical images. "He was a master of jazz," music historian K. Heather Pinson wrote earlier this year on the occasion of Leonard's death at the age of 87, "except his instrument was a camera."

First Family: Abigail and John Adams, by Joseph J. Ellis; Alfred A. Knopf, 299 pages, $27.95. Give Joseph Ellis all the credit in the world for committing his considerable skills to a fresh evaluation of the correspondence exchanged between John and Abigail Adams over the course of their marriage during what we can all agree were eventful times, and for demonstrating how the 1,200 surviving letters of theirs constitute "a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history." David McCullough made full use of these same letters in his magisterial biography of John Adams a decade ago, though the canvas there was monumental. Here, it is focused strictly on the remarkable relationship as revealed through the letters. The writing, of course, is superb, as always, and a joy to engage.

Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution, by Charles Rappleye; Simon & Schuster, 625 pages, $30. Collectors of Americana know Robert Morris as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and covet examples of his autograph accordingly, but chances are that few know much about the Philadelphia entrepreneur's role in the founding of the Republic. According to historian Charles Rappleye, Morris was unsurpassed in his efforts to fund the rebellion; after the war, he served in the Continental Congress and United States Senate, and was the first Superintendent of Finance, or treasury secretary. His methods were not always above reproach, however, and a dramatic downfall led to a resounding fall from grace. All in all a ripe prospect for a modern biography, which Morris gets in this thorough examination of his life.

Madison and Jefferson, by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg; Random House, 809 pages, $35. Dual biographies can be problematic undertakings, but Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, both respected historians and the authors separately of other books on early America, have combined here to produce a most readable account of a fifty-year friendship, perhaps one of the most consequential acquaintances in American history. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were Virginians who each served as President of the United States, we all know that, but their relationship, as profiled here, was as much symbiosis as it was mentor-protégé. Burstein and Isenberg had made a significant contribution to the literature of our Founding Fathers.

Beetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith, by D. K. R. Crosswell; University Press of Kentucky, 1,008 pages, $39.95. You could almost regard this huge biography as a bookend to the Morris volume cited above in that it looks at a significant player in American history who pretty much excelled away from the spotlight, in this case as Chief of Staff during World War II to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. As the consummate military man, Ike was legendary for delegating authority to key officers, and the aide who rode herd on all of them was Walter Bedell Smith. In 1950, Smith was Harry Truman's choice to head the CIA in 1950; three years later, his former boss, by then president, named him Undersecretary of State, in which capacity he oversaw the partitioning of Vietnam into two nations, and implemented a plan for a coup d'etat in Guatemala. This is the first biography of his life, one long overdue.

Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights, by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins; Nan Talese/Doubleday, 311 pages, $27.95. No big surprise that Jessica Kerwin, writer for Vogue, thanks "legions of librarians" in the acknowledgments she appends to this charmingly eclectic compendium, given the wealth of arcania on subjects ranging from the balloon adventures of the Montgolfier Brothers in the eighteenth century, to the history of women's lingerie, to the tradition of dining outdoors known as alfresco. It is, in short, an encyclopedia of very interesting things, and the documentation is impressive. The writing is elegant, the style accessible; altogether a fun book.