“The asking price was $1million”: Nicolas Cage’s unwitting role in the comic book heist of the century
Though he’s one of the few actors alive not to have appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (yet), Nicolas Cage has strong connections to the world of superheroes.
He starred in the two Ghost Rider movies, somehow managing to overplay a character with a flaming skull for a head. He voiced Spider-Man Noir in Into the Spider-Verse, which spawned its own spin-off series, and played Big Daddy in the first Kick-Ass. Then there’s his relationship with Superman.
Cage is such a big fan of DC’s flagship hero that he named his son Kal-El, which is Superman’s name on his native planet. He was famously tapped to don the famous blue suit in a movie directed by Tim Burton, but this never came to pass. He did voice the ‘Man of Steel’ in Teen Titans Go! to the Movies and appeared as the character via CGI in The Flash, although he wasn’t too pleased with this cameo.
At one point in time, Cage owned a pivotal piece of Superman history. In 1997, he paid $110,000 for a copy of Action Comics #1, the comic book in which Clark Kent made his debut. This must have been a dream come true for the self-professed superhero nut, but his bliss wouldn’t last for long. Just two years later, a number of comics were stolen from Cage’s private collection, including Action Comics #1. One of the most valuable and important comics in history was now missing, never to be seen again…or was it?
Vincent Zurzolo, President of Metropolis Comics and Comic Connect and the man who sold the issue to Cage in the first place, warned the actor to keep an eye out.
It’s unlikely that whoever pinched the comic did so because they were a fan; they stole it to sell it, so all they had to do was wait. Sure enough, in 2011, Zurzolo and his partner Steve Fischler stumbled across a seller flogging what looked suspiciously like Cage’s copy of Action Comics #1.
“They went to do a meet to buy the book,” Zurzolo told Comics Beat, “The asking price was $1million. The story was that somebody found it in a storage unit… The representative for the book is a guy named Mark Balelo, who was part of a television show called Storage Wars.”
He explained how the situation panned out, “The guy who bought it in the storage unit was there, and he thought he was, you know, looking at this massive payday. And when the detective handed his business card over and explained the situation, the guy was very distraught and very sad.”
There is nothing to indicate that Balelo was involved in the original theft of the comic, for the issue was stolen during a New Year’s Eve party at Cage’s home, so it’s likely that it was somebody the actor knew who stole it. The comic was returned to him, but he didn’t hold on to it for long, as in an attempt to pay off his various debts, the Oscar winner sold the comic book at an auction later that same year for a record-breaking fee of £2.16m.
