December 21, 2022 • 46 mins
Nic Cage’s recovered copy of Action Comics #1 leaves a series of unanswered questions and prompts a reexamination of what really happened the night it went missing. Plus, we meet the billionaire Superman superfan who has the comic today.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Love and Las Vegas. Las Vegas, home of cheesy, magic,
ultimate fighting, and people mortgaging their homes to let it ride.
It's a playground for adults, a disneyland of decadence. And
on this day in June, something even more remarkable than
(00:31):
disappearing elephants is happening. I say remarkable because it might
be one of the few wholesome things going on in
the city. It's the Las Vegas Comic Con. Thousands of
fans are streaming into the building to get autographs from
artists and pick up titles for their collections. Some are
(00:52):
browsing comic books that are a dollar or less. Some
are picking up titles worth a few hundred and one man,
one very recognizable man, is spending a lot more than that.
Nicholas Cage, once a disenfranchised comic fan, is back in
the game. As fans gawk and ask for his autograph,
(01:16):
Cage admires big ticket books like X Men Number one
and Fantastic Four number one, titles worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars, titles he used to own before ditching his
entire collection. Surrounded by tables full of books, it's like
the world's most expensive flea market. He holds them up
(01:38):
for scrutiny, squinting to make out the pencil lines through
their protective plastic casing. Some sixteen years after losing four
of the most valuable comics in the world, Cage is
seemingly ready to rejoin the ranks of the comics faithful.
(02:00):
It's also been five years since his most treasured book,
Action Comics Number One, surfaced in a storage locker. No arrests,
no real suspects, just a story, one pretty much impossible
to prove or disprove, but one worth examining to see
(02:22):
if there's any clue or trace of how a multimillion
dollar comic wound up in a storage unit, the place
where people store old rugs and broken chairs. Two men,
Mark Ballo, and a man known only as Sylvester, presented
it for sale, not knowing one of their potential buyers
(02:45):
was an undercover police officer. But just who are Mark
and Sylvester and why does one of them seem to
have an unlikely connection to Cage. It's a page turner,
and we are at the last page for I Heart Radio.
(03:12):
This is Stealing Superman. I'm your host Danis Schwartz and
This is the final episode special farewell issue a quick recap.
Nick Cage's copy of Action Comics Number one was stolen,
along with three other comics from his bell Air home
(03:35):
around two thousand. After several leads failed to materialize, Action
number one was finally discovered in April two thousand eleven,
when a storage unit liquidator named Mark Palelo emailed comic
dealer Stephen Fishler and told him he had a copy
for sale. Fishler was the same dealer who sold the
(03:57):
book to Cage. Unfortunately for Ballelo, he was able to
positively identify it as cages copy. Fishler and l ap
D detective Donald Harresk went to Ballelo's warehouse to see
it in person. There they met Ballelo and a man
named Sylvester, who claimed to have found the comic in
(04:19):
a storage locker he had bought at auction. But here's
the twist, he couldn't remember which one. With nothing tying
either Ballelo or Sylvester to the original theft, and without
a storage locker owner to question, the case went cold.
Cage got his comic back from the insurance company and
(04:42):
sold it for two point one six one million dollars.
Mark Ballelo seemed to relish the attention, immediately notifying the
press about the controversy. He even hosted auctions in a
Superman costume Sylvester all but disappeared for the storage locker
scene as quickly as he had entered it. The next
(05:05):
steps seemed obvious enough. Reach out to both men and
see what they have to say. In the case of Mark,
that's unfortunately impossible, and we'll get to why in a moment.
But we did speak to several people who knew him
and worked for him, and this is where things get
(05:26):
well more interesting. He seemed fun. He seemed like a
fun guy. Like I said, from what I saw the
way he treated his family that would come from Brazil.
He was very generous with them. I could tell he
loved them a lot. That's Liz. Liz worked for Mark
for a few years, overseeing his online sales division. She
(05:50):
got to know Mark fairly well, and while he was nice,
there were dimensions to him that could be unsettling. Drug
habits and stuff that he didn't really care to hide
from anybody. But he was fun to talk to. I
enjoyed having conversations with him. Yeah, No, he was he
had his moments. You know, because of his drug case,
(06:13):
he would get a little aggravated. But I mean, other
than that, I enjoyed working for him while things were good.
At the time Mark popped up with the action number one,
he was actually on probation. Mark had been arrested back
in December two thousand seven on three felony charges, possession
(06:34):
of the controlled substance, possession with intend to sell or distribute,
and sale or transport of a controlled substance. Mark denied
any wrongdoing and said friends had been using drugs in
a hotel room registered in his name. He pled guilty
to the last charge in two thousand nine and was
sentenced to sixty days in jail along with three years probation.
(06:57):
That's an important detail for a cup of reasons. If
Mark somehow knew the comic book was stolen before attempting
to sell it, it would be colossally silly for him
to get involved while on probation. The last thing you
want to do when you're being monitored for good behavior
is be in possession of stolen property. On the other hand, well,
(07:20):
Mark wasn't exactly being overly careful. In June two thousand eleven,
two months after trying to sell the comic, Mark was
in violation of his parole for possessing a firearm. Mark's
story was that he had found it in a storage
unit and was simply transporting it, but not long after,
he left California without approval, another parole violation that landed
(07:45):
him forty five days in jail. It's hard to know
to what degree Mark was involved in, well, let's say,
alternative businesses. A report from Radar in two thousand thirteen
stated that Mark was sometimes high on the set of
Storage Wars, the A and E reality show about storage
locker auctions, and that he bragged he could get large
(08:08):
quantities of drugs from connections in Tijuana. But Liz isn't
so sure about that. I think he was just using it.
I don't think he sold it. Mark could be erratic.
He would make very rash decisions and not think them
out thoroughly. And so he fired his manager, who was
(08:30):
oh my gosh, she was there for him anytime he
needed her, and he decided to fire her. I can't
remember what it was for. And then her husband also
worked for him as well, and he fired him too,
And then he fired me shortly after that. Yeah, there
were other employees that he would get into arguments with,
(08:50):
and I don't think he took his employees very seriously
or he cared to have like a good relationship with us.
There were other aspects of Mark's life that didn't quite
add up. Before becoming a storage unit magnate, he had
declared bankruptcy back in two thousand eight. Mark's bankruptcy documents
(09:12):
also revealed that two people filed to oppose his debts
to them being discharged because they were owed money for
new cars he had failed to deliver. Prior to getting
into the storage unit business, Mark owned a car dealership.
According to the two customers, he had accepted their orders
for cars with a value of over forty dollars each.
(09:35):
Then Mark later admitted he had used that money to
pay down other debts. Despite offering excuse after excuse that
the cars were stuck in transit or that their registration
needed more paperwork, he had never actually obtained the cars.
There's something else we learned to Prior to owning his dealership,
(09:59):
Mark worked Beverly Hills as a car salesman, and according
to an employee of his, we spoke with Mark had
sold at least one car to none other than Nicholas Cage.
Maybe that's just a coincidence. After all, Cage used to
buy cars like other people buy socks, so there was
(10:21):
a decent chance any salesman in Los Angeles could have
eventually crossed paths with him. And there's no evidence Mark
new Cage or was ever at his house in bel Air.
In fact, we are reasonably confident we can place Mark
firmly in Arizona at the time of the theft. But
it is interesting that Mark called Stephen Fishler, the one
(10:44):
dealer who could positively identify the comic as Cages. That's
another weird coincidence. Stephen believes it's because he brokered other
high dollar comic sales, and that's probably why Mark called him.
There are plenty of mysteries surrounding Mark that would make
for an interesting conversation with him. But Mark had problems
(11:09):
that ran deep. In February, he was arrested again for
drug possession for Math. The repeated offenses were piling up
and things didn't look good for him. That same month,
an employee of Marks walked into the warehouse, the same
(11:29):
warehouse where he tried to sell the Action number one
and found Mark dead by suicide, his car engine idling
in the garage. It was carbon monoxide poisoning. He was
just forty years old. He just seemed like a fun guy.
I don't know. I would have never in a million
years thought that he would kill himself the way he did.
(11:50):
I would have never thought that. We're left with so
many questions and so few answers. But remember fell auctioneer
Dan Dotson said he'd been approached by the man who
found the comic book and gave him Mark's information. Mark
didn't volunteer. So what about the man who had handed
(12:14):
Mark the comic and said he found it in a
storage locker. The man known only as Sylvester, the man
who said he bought in the story junits that he purchased.
So he's asking everyone to believe a multi million dollars
said the main comics stolen from Nicholas Cage ends up
(12:37):
in the storage locker, that this man just hast bide.
That's Paul Hendry, you probably remember Paul, reformed art thief
turned consultant for art crime investigations. Paul has seen and
heard it all, and he has an opinion on the
storage locker story, the one where Sylvester claimed he bought
(12:59):
a number of lockers and then found the action number
one among their contents, but he couldn't remember which one.
Number one is. Watched the odds you're going to find
a multimillion dollar comics in a storage locker? Best the
first one. The second one is, what's the odds is
someone who buys multiple storage lockers, not one single one?
(13:19):
And the third thing is, watch the odds they can't
remember which storage locker it came in, so that there's
so many red flames. I think we can just dismiss
the storage locker story as just a fake, fabricated story.
I have the luxury, but just us him my forty
years of experience and analyzing the situation and coming up
(13:40):
with what my considered opinion is highly valuable items have
turned up in some very unlikely places, including storage lockers,
but when they do, there's always a chance that their
discovery could have been orchestrated. Why one part sable motive
(14:00):
for stolen art servicing isn't to sell it, it's to
get a reward for it. Well, let me tell you, right,
if a private art detective was on this case, he
would charge the insurance company twenty class fact of the
insurance claim, which would have been if we assume it's
a hundred fifty tho and he would have wanted a
(14:21):
hundred fifty thou dollars per insurance claim. He would have
wanted thirty six thousand dollars as his fee for being
a private art detective who recovered this comic, the fact
that it's worth and sold the two point one million.
Some art detectives would also sign a contract to say
that they want ten or twenty if it's sold within
(14:42):
a period of time. So on two point one million,
that would have been a lot of money. Okay, So
that would be private art detectives. And I criticized them
sometimes when they do that because that doesn't look to
be transparent. But these people who recovered it, I would
have assumed that they wouldn't have gone away quietly. Is
especially if they are not being in dieted on any
criminal charges. They may have a claim for a finder's fee.
(15:08):
So is that why Mark Balelo called Stephen Fishler not
as a coincidence, but to prove it was Cage's comic.
To pursue some kind of reward. That's Paul's theory, and
it doesn't mean either Mark or Sylvester had anything to
do with the book being stolen, just that some research
(15:30):
could have led Mark to believe this book found in
a storage unit could be worth a finder's fee. Here's
Paul's possible scenario. They were prepared for it to be identified,
but wanted to portray themselves Sylvester as being honest and
above board. That was the intention, was to filter into
(15:51):
Nicolas Cages Deana via a third party file wall, which
is Mark, and then that's a plain. So then when
the dealer comes out and says this is the one,
then they may not have thought Donald would be cop
would have been there, but that the next thing would
have been if they hadn't have had it confiscated off
of them, then there might have been a legal dispute
and they would have still had possession of it. Maybe
(16:13):
they didn't account for the fact that Donald was going
to be there and confiscate it, but even if that happened,
their whole intention was to monetize it and claim my
finder's fee or a reward. So they knew at some
stage that they was going to have to be declared
that this was the sole a month from Nicolas Cage.
Maybe the initial plan was to have the dealer look
(16:34):
at it and go, yes, that's the original I wanted back.
And then the person go well, no, ang and speak
to my lawyer and maybe getting to litigation over it
or something, and declared they want to find this thing.
And then when Donald turned up and dis confiscated it,
they went, well, we can still go down the same
road and claim the finders feel again. That's Paul's theory.
(16:54):
And for Paul, the most intriguing part of the story
is that of all the commock dealers in the country,
Mark could have called he called Stephen Fishler literally the
only person on earth who could positively identify the action
number one as cages. This Mark person, right, why would
(17:16):
he focus in on the one avenue that's going to
lead straight back to Nicolas Cage. Why not take a
local estimate, right, He's part of a plane. It was
a plane, it's a scan, it was a sting. It's
a thing to monetize the Superman comic. And then they
tried to make it so confusing that the police wouldn't
be able to pin it on anyone. But yes, of course,
(17:37):
because this is such a small world. It's got to
go through Nicolas Cage stealer in New York, and he's
going to be made aware of it. Yes again, it's
I mean their story. He's like a Swiss change. It's
for the holes. Cages comic sold for two point one
six one million dollars just a few months after it
was found, making even a percentage of that a very valuable.
(18:00):
But Stephen Fishler, who was there when the l a
p d. Sees the comic from Mark and Sylvester, doesn't
think that's what happened. Here's Stephen. No, there was a trip.
They wanted to sell it and it was a stolen book.
When y've gone, all right, we want a million dollars. Oh,
by the way, this book stolen, it's a little hard
while the police is there to go, hey, how about
(18:21):
a reward now? You know, I think if they had
said we think this book is the stolen book, you know,
I could see giving them a reward for the recovery
of it. But it just wasn't in the cards. There's
a real mystique surrounding Sylvester. For one thing. Stephen remembers
that he introduced himself as Arthur, and Mark Ballelo told
(18:44):
people that Sylvester only went by his first name. Mark
said he didn't even know Sylvester's last name, which is
very strange. If you were planning to split the profits
from a multimillion dollar comic with someone, wouldn't you want
to know their last name. Few people did, and maybe
(19:05):
that was by design, but at some point his full
name did leak out, which allowed us to try and
get a better understanding of the man at the crux
of all this, the person who found Cages comic after
it had been missing eleven years. Sylvester doesn't have much
(19:26):
in the way of a social media presence, but we
can tell you he is or was a contractor by
trade and no longer living in California. He's into cars,
as so many of the people in this story seemed
to be. We reached a former employer of his who
said he was a nice guy who wound up quitting.
(19:47):
The employer thought it might have been because of the comic,
because he expected to come into a windfall. Despite his
lack of an online presence, and after a lot of
trial and error, we did manage to find Sylvester we
wanted to ask about finding the comic, but within minutes
(20:07):
of messaging him, he deleted his social media profile. So
we tried email and got no response. Then we reached
out to some friends of his to see what else
we might be able to learn or to find out
how we could contact him. That's when Sylvester asked for
our reporter's number and then sent a text saying he
(20:31):
did not want to talk about finding the comic. We
asked again and again, as much as we'd like to
hear from Sylvester. He apparently said all he wanted to
say to Detective Horresik on the day the comic was seized.
The story he told the detective is certainly intriguing. According
(20:52):
to people we spoke with who have knowledge of the
storage locker liquidation market, taking the contents from a bunch
of lockers and pulling it all together to sort through
later isn't unheard of. With storage auctions, you're given only
a limited amount of time to clear out the unit,
after all, that's why the locker company wants stuff gone
(21:13):
so they can rent it out to someone else. You
might have just twenty four or forty eight hours, so
piling everything into a truck to sort through later. If
you've bought several units, might be wise. Here's Liz again.
There's just so much stuff there to look through. It's
hard to keep track of it, especially when you're just
(21:33):
looking through everything and everything just kind of gets bunched
into one place. But the opposite is also true. Some
locker storage buyers keep a strict inventory of where items
came from in case something stolen or illegal like drugs,
are ever discovered. They don't want to be the ones
suspected of possessing them. The other consideration is whether anyone
(21:58):
really would leave a rare and delicate comic in a
storage locker and then neglect to pay the bill. Hey,
it's possible. Sometimes lockers are abandoned because the person renting
it dies or goes to prison. If a storage locker
owner was storing the comic there, then it would be
a matter of inquiring to the owner whether they knew
(22:21):
anything about the comic. But the problem the storage facility had,
and the reason they put the lockers up for public sale,
is that their owners weren't easily reached and couldn't pay
the bill. Because Sylvester couldn't remember which locker the comic
came from. There wouldn't be much use in trying to
(22:41):
contact them. You could never prove it was theirs to
begin with. I think as we've gone through the whole story,
it really is a Russian dole. You know, you're only
more and more layers. You're peeling back the onion and
every kind of stop. There is something there that doesn't
smell right, It doesn't taste right, and doesn't look right.
And in the normal world of things, this is not
(23:03):
normally what would happen, from the theft of it, to
the handling of it, to the surfacing of Chiu of
the comics. But knowing who put the comic in the
storage locker would still only tell just part of the story.
Art theft is one giant game of hot potato. The
more hands the stolen art passes through, the more convincing
(23:24):
someone is when they say they have no idea where
it came from, because they probably don't. And every time
it changes hands, someone is sold on the fantasy that
for just a few thousand dollars they can take possession
of something worth millions. It's almost like a criminal lottery.
(23:45):
If they can just figure out how to unload it
and then well they can't, so they sell the dream
to someone else. There's no evidence Mark Ballelo or Sylvester
knew anything about the Action Number one being stolen. There's
no evidence the storage locker story was fabricated. There are
(24:06):
just questions which one man can't answer and another man won't,
and that is his prerogative. It doesn't invalidate his story
that he found the comic. Maybe the reason he doesn't
want to talk about it is because watching two million
dollars slip through your hands is too painful to revisit. However,
(24:27):
cages comic made its way to Mark Balleto and Sylvester.
It's a minor miracle it's surfaced at all. Cage, of
course sold it for a handsome profit. But there's still
one act left untold in this story. Where is the
Action Number one? Now? Just a couple of months before
(24:54):
Nicholas Cage popped up at the Las Vegas Comic Con
is now very notor his comic book was on display
in London, but it wasn't for public viewing. This was
a private, invitation only affair at a hotel in the city.
Five years after being discovered in the storage locker. One
(25:15):
of the best copies of Action comics. Number one was
inside a glass case and surrounded by security, just in
case anyone had any ideas The comic was part of
a collection being displayed courtesy of a man named Aman Harreary.
A man is a very big Superman fan, though not
(25:37):
for the reasons you may think. Here's a man. Superman
was always part of me growing up. I guess it
was a character that I used to watch on cartoons,
and obviously, like every other kid, that captures your imagination.
To imagine a person who can fly and be invulnerable
to you know, being shot at or any kind of danger,
(26:00):
it just sparks the imagination of all kinds of stories
you build in your head and you imagine all the
things that he can do. Even back then. I mean
at the time it was, you know, faster than a
speeding train and can leap tall buildings into you know,
the modern version of what he can do these days.
But I was living in Saudi at the time, so
(26:21):
the only way that I was exposed to Superman was
on VHS tapes that would be made available to us
by people from living abroad and sending them to us
or receiving a copy of a comic book. Well, I
think when you're younger, things are less granular. You think
(26:42):
about doing the right thing. What does it mean as
an adult, and what does it mean as a child.
It probably lacks granularity when you're a child, and you
start to understand the nuances of doing the right thing
as you get older. I would say that being a
hero was what I would imagine. What I remember thinking
(27:05):
of this character and what he would do, and if
you put together any kind of scenario and he saw
somebody in danger, that he would do anything and everything
to save that person, he would save the day and
be a hero. It's not uncommon to grow up with
Superman and then want to own a piece of his legend.
(27:26):
After all, that's what Nicolas Cage did. But a man
is in a slightly different category. He's a fan, sure,
but he's also a billionaire and the son of Lebanon's
one time prime minister, Rafi careery Eman idolized his father, Rafiq,
who was celebrated in Lebanon for his work helping to
(27:47):
end the fifteen year Lebanese Civil War. He also used
his considerable wealth to provide educational opportunities for the less fortunate.
According to Amon, his father put third two thousand young
adults through college. Then in two thousand five, tragedy struck,
(28:07):
a tragedy that in some ways echoes the loss suffered
by Superman's co creator Jerry Siegel, who lost his father
to a violent crime. Rafiq died in Beirut after someone
detonated a bomb hidden in a car near Rafique's motorcade.
Along with Rafique, twenty one others were killed. Members of
(28:30):
his Bola were convicted. According to Reuter's, judges said the
attack was quote clearly a politically motivated act of terrorism
end quote. Aman was just twenty six years old when
his father was murdered, and as you probably gathered, it
was a galvanizing experience for him. He has always been
(28:53):
my hero. He's somebody who had sacrificed so much of
his life for his country, for people in need, and
ended up paying the ultimate price. But during his life,
and when I would think of Superman and I would
think of my father, there was always yes this connection
between them, and I didn't really put them together until
(29:14):
I visited my family home after many years of being
away in school abroad and university in the US. When
I came back home, I saw this picture hanging on
my bedroom wall of him represented a superman carrying buildings
in his arms. The buildings were universities and schools and
hospitals above a destroyed city underneath him. And it was
(29:39):
a cartoon that was drawn by you know the cartoons
that used to be in the back of newspapers. This
was from a local newspaper in Lebanon, and it was
an artist that had depicted my father a superman. And
obviously that's really on the nose that can ingrain itself
and you completely forget about where things originate from. But
at the end of the day, it was depicted by
(30:00):
somebody else, and he was regarded as a hero and
still is by his country. I actually in his life
when I started to buy comic books and collect them,
the original comic books, you know, graded and I work
with I think, you know, the Metropolis out of New
York to collect these looks. I remember that I couldn't
(30:24):
get myself to buy a single Superman book. That I
felt like I hadn't reached that level yet, And I
always would think of Batman is more sort of where
I was and the Superman where I want to be
aspiration Lee. And when my father passed, that's when I
(30:45):
started buying every Superman comic book that I could get
my hands on. For Aman, Superman and his father had
become linked. The character was emblematic of how he perceived
her fik as benevolent, kind and generous with his own superpower,
which was wealth. He was always one of my favorite characters,
(31:05):
don't get me wrong. I mean when I buy statues
or if I could watch a movie or or anything,
I was into the character. But yes, at that point,
you know, I guess the floodgates opened and I needed
to I mean, obviously I missed my father and it
was the most horrible day of my life when he
was taken from us, and I wanted to be connected
(31:26):
to him even more in the way that I imagined him.
And so you know, buying these books was a way
of me doing that. It's always been there. I mean,
certainly Superman has played a big role in my life,
just in the back of my mind. Like a lot
of people, you grow up with these characters in your
life in one form or fashion, and you either grow
(31:47):
out of them, they become a memory or they they
stick with you in some form or fashion. And so
a Man began to gather what's become one of the
most valuable and expansive comic book collections in the world.
Issue after issue of number one titles Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman.
(32:07):
He worked with Stephen Fishler Cages Comic Dealer, and in
two thousand eleven he had the rare opportunity to acquire
an Action number one Cages Action Number one. Yeah, I mean,
I'm made aware of the opportunity, and I was obviously
excited and did my best to get the book and
(32:28):
ultimately got it, which was one of the major thrill
because again, you look at the significance of Action one,
I mean Action one. Before Action one, the day or
the morning or the hour before those stores opened and
people entered to see that book and start reading them.
(32:48):
There was no Superman, there was no Superhero, and it
was the first. He was the first superhero. The significance
of that is amazing to me when you even think
about that, Like, we can't even imagine without the idea
of Superman or any of these characters. For amen, The
fact that this comic had its own story to tell
(33:08):
is part of the appeal. Absolutely, yeah, anything that has
a history, and certainly when it goes through certain circumstances
like this one has. You're right, it does develop a character.
Amen put the Action Number One, along with many other
valuable books on display in two thousand sixteen. There's even
(33:30):
a chance, he says, that his collection may go on
public display, bringing comics one step closer to the vaunted
esteem people hold for fine art. Imagine going into a
museum and seeing an Action Number one on display in
one room and a monet in another. I'm not worrying
(33:51):
about how do you display them, and how do you
keep them safe? And where would you do it and
what kind of an experience would people have that With
all the things that I got pulled into in life,
it got really hard to focus on that and execute
that project. It is in the back of my mind.
I'd love to do it in one form or fashion.
Maybe there's a digital version that could be done, you know,
(34:12):
something with VR or a R or something. But you
could say we'll just display two or three books. But
I think it would be cool to display as many
as I could. I haven't really figured out a way
to do it, whether that happens or not, it seems
as though this comics journey has come to an end.
Though he could almost certainly sell it for far more
(34:33):
than the two point one six one million dollars that
he paid in two thousand eleven, he won't ever. I mean,
my whole planning of this is I would never sell
these books. It would have to be my kids that
would decide to sell them if they would want to.
One day, when I'm gone wherever this book might have
been in the eleven years it was missing in a
(34:55):
basement attic storage locker glove compartment. It's probably as safe
as it's ever going to be. And if Cage ever
wants to take another look at it, he probably just
needs to ask. I'm a fan of him as an actor,
and I would love to to meet him and and
geek out on comic books, and you know, maybe we
(35:17):
can look at this stuff together. But no, I haven't.
I haven't had that that experience. And in the incredibly
unlikely event something happened to this action Number one, well
Amen is prepared. In two thousand fourteen, he bought a
second copy. Yeah, that's right before I own a nine
(35:37):
point oh graded copy. And when another nine point oh
came onto the market. It's like, Okay, this is an
interesting situation because, on the one hand, from like an
emotional standpoint, I felt it would be phenomenal to be
able to have two of these books if I was
(35:57):
able to buy it. So, just in terms of being
able to have in one collection two books of that
level and everything that I said about how did they
survive and all of that, I mean, to have two
of them in a single collection was something very very
exciting to me, And so I bought the second one
for that reason. And I was really really fortunate to
(36:19):
be in a position to be able to, you know,
one afford it, and second have the opportunity even to
be aware of it and be able to buy it.
This book shouldn't exist. Not only shouldn't it not exist,
but it shouldn't be able to to find it, let
alone find it. In the state that it's in. It's
almost a superman in and of itself. How does it exist?
(36:42):
Amid a volatile economy turned upside down by a pandemic,
there's been one pretty reliable investment collectibles. Comic book values
have skyrocketed in recent years. A comic selling for millions
is no longer a seismic event, but the norm the
(37:03):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars Nicolas Cage paid for his
copy of Action number one back in was if you'll
forgive the pun In absolute steal, Action number one is
so desired that even a single loose page from it
can sell for thousands of dollars. Brittle shavings of pages
(37:25):
from a nearly ruined version were sold in a baggy.
Maybe someday someone will offer a loan. Staple they insist
is from an Action number one, and if their story
is good enough, it'll probably find a buyer. In September
two thousand twenty two, a copy graded six point oh
(37:47):
that's a good amount below the nine given to cages
copy sold for a staggering three point four million dollars.
A higher grade copy coming up for sale could fetch five, six,
maybe seven million dollars. That figure would have been impossible
for the thief or thieves who took Cage's book to
(38:09):
conceive of. It was an audacious heist, taking four high
profile comics from an A list actor's home. It was
almost certainly done for profit, as indicated by one of
the comics popping up for sale on eBay months later.
A crime of opportunity inflicted by someone on the periphery
(38:30):
of Cage's life, someone who couldn't resist the temptation of
stealing a small piece of history that was there for
the taking, unlocked and unguarded. That it was stolen. Isn't surprising.
Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe someone will come clean one day,
(38:53):
Maybe someone already has. Though if Cage knows, he's not talking.
Of course, we wanted to ask about it, but his
manager politely declined. That's easy to understand unless it was
a transient worker, someone there to deliver booze or set
up one of Cage's oversized nutcrackers for a holiday party.
(39:14):
The person who took the books was known to him,
considered a friend, or at least trustworthy enough to be
let into his house, and having that trust betrayed is disillusioning.
Two of the four books taken are still at large,
still filed in the FBI's database of Stolen art, A
(39:36):
Detective Comics Number twenty seven, the first appearance of Batman,
and A Detective Comics Number one. It's possible they were
sold in a private transaction, but remember that cages dealer
Stephen Fishler is often a conduit for big comics sales.
It would be hard to sell the books without him
hearing about it eventually, and he hasn't not yet. And
(40:01):
if they did surface, Stephen says he could identify them
just as he did Cages Action number one. So maybe
they've been destroyed, or maybe they're still out there somewhere
their handler in a kind of paralysis. Selling them is risky,
so is keeping them. Maybe they're in another country, maybe
(40:24):
they were altered in a way that makes them undetectable.
Here's Paul Hendry again, sixty and seventy pages. Okay, Well,
they could take off the first tem page. They could
sell probably pages right as just being discovered in a
yard sale or something like that. Or they could find
a half of the book right, or just the middle
(40:47):
section of the comic had been discovered, and so the
backpages and all the front pages have been raised it out,
and then maybe stores separately they just sell the actual
in between the middle bits, and then it will be
virtually impossible to distinguish whether this actually was the one
style an off a Nicolas page, unless, of course, there's
something that could distinguish it on each page, or you
(41:09):
could see different pages, because I'm sure that the collectors
will buy a page from that for obviously a lot less,
but a page of it should certainly be worth a
few thousand dollars, maybe ten thousand dollars. While those books
are valuable, the public interest in their recovery probably won't
equal the discovery of an Action number one. Superman's status
(41:33):
as a defender of justice, his earnestness will always make
someone pufferring his first appearance a strange juxtaposition. It's like
stealing a boy Scout, Marra badge or a Norman Rockwell painting.
And while you might be able to swipe a material
depiction of Superman, you can't really take his symbolism. More
(41:55):
than any cultural character, Superman has come to embody oh
many things. He's the ultimate immigrant, a savior, the zenith
of patriotism, truth, justice, and the American way. Steal his
material form, but you can't steal what he stands for.
(42:15):
No one can take what Superman means to you, or
to aim and her Reary or Nicholas Cage. It's possible,
even probable, that Action Comics Number one will enter the
public domain on January one, two thousand thirty four, that's
(42:35):
when the year limit un copyrighted materials will expire. That
doesn't mean all of Superman's mythology will be up for grabs,
as much of it, like Kryptonite or even flying, was
introduced later, and trademark lawyers may have something to say
about all this, But the basic premise of an alien
(42:57):
from another planet with superhuman gifts and red boots could
soon belong to everyone, and who knows, maybe by then
we'll know the secret identity of the person who stole him.
And if it's an arch deitective who gets a lead
on them, trust me, they will be demanding of their
(43:17):
current value, not of the insurance value. The current value,
because on paper it's no longer a theft where the
insurance company owns them. They paid out originally, But I
would imagine Nicholas Cage has paid the whole claim back
and so he now not only has two back in
his possession. If the other two were recovered, he gets
them back as well, and they're worth millions of dollars.
(43:40):
So yes, I mean to be honest with you, it's
a chase on right to see who can monetize these comics,
and that's why the situation that we're in at the
moment cagees flying higher again. His recent meta comedy The
Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where he plays an exaggerated
version of himself, was critically praised. He's playing Dracula in
(44:02):
a movie titled Renfield, about the vampires faithful sidekick. There
was even talk he was being considered to play Bizarro,
the slightly off kilter version of Superman, for an HBO
Max anthology series based on d C comics, and one
day maybe he'll be reunited with the two missing comics.
(44:23):
For now, the most remarkable book the Action Comics, Number
one is with a Man and you look at where
you know movies have gone. All movies are pretty much
superhero movies. Every TV show is somebody has powers of
some sort. And it all started from I believe that book,
and it sparked the imagination of generations to come after
(44:45):
that and now shaped industries and ways of thinking and
what are ideals and just storytelling in general. I absolutely
love that, And it feels like by owning a book
like that, to you owning a not only a piece
of history, but something that represents a moment in time
(45:05):
that then had a significant impact on everything to come
after that. Maybe that's what the thief was after, not money,
not reward, but the chance for a moment to feel
history in their hands. This has been Stealing Superman for
(45:27):
I Heart Radio. I'm Danish Wartz. Thanks for listening. Stealing
Superman is written by Jake Rawson, sound design, scoring and
mixing by Josh Fisher, additional editing by Jonathan Washington. Original
music by Aaron Kaufman, mixing and mastering by Baheed Fraser.
(45:51):
Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson,
with production support from Lulu Philip. Show logo by Lucy Continia.
Our executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host
Danish Sports. If you're interested in more from me, I
host the weekly history podcast Noble Blood, available every Tuesday.
(46:14):
I also hosted the eight part mini series Haileywood, about
Bruce Willis's mysterious business dealings in a town in Idaho.
I wrote a novel called Anatomy a Love Story, and
its sequel, Immortality a Love Story, which is available for
pre order now coming out February. If you're enjoying this show,
(46:35):
give us a nice review. Stealing Superman is a production
of I Heart Radio
Love and Las Vegas. Las Vegas, home of cheesy, magic,
ultimate fighting, and people mortgaging their homes to let it ride.
It's a playground for adults, a disneyland of decadence. And
on this day in June, something even more remarkable than
(00:31):
disappearing elephants is happening. I say remarkable because it might
be one of the few wholesome things going on in
the city. It's the Las Vegas Comic Con. Thousands of
fans are streaming into the building to get autographs from
artists and pick up titles for their collections. Some are
(00:52):
browsing comic books that are a dollar or less. Some
are picking up titles worth a few hundred and one man,
one very recognizable man, is spending a lot more than that.
Nicholas Cage, once a disenfranchised comic fan, is back in
the game. As fans gawk and ask for his autograph,
(01:16):
Cage admires big ticket books like X Men Number one
and Fantastic Four number one, titles worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars, titles he used to own before ditching his
entire collection. Surrounded by tables full of books, it's like
the world's most expensive flea market. He holds them up
(01:38):
for scrutiny, squinting to make out the pencil lines through
their protective plastic casing. Some sixteen years after losing four
of the most valuable comics in the world, Cage is
seemingly ready to rejoin the ranks of the comics faithful.
(02:00):
It's also been five years since his most treasured book,
Action Comics Number One, surfaced in a storage locker. No arrests,
no real suspects, just a story, one pretty much impossible
to prove or disprove, but one worth examining to see
(02:22):
if there's any clue or trace of how a multimillion
dollar comic wound up in a storage unit, the place
where people store old rugs and broken chairs. Two men,
Mark Ballo, and a man known only as Sylvester, presented
it for sale, not knowing one of their potential buyers
(02:45):
was an undercover police officer. But just who are Mark
and Sylvester and why does one of them seem to
have an unlikely connection to Cage. It's a page turner,
and we are at the last page for I Heart Radio.
(03:12):
This is Stealing Superman. I'm your host Danis Schwartz and
This is the final episode special farewell issue a quick recap.
Nick Cage's copy of Action Comics Number one was stolen,
along with three other comics from his bell Air home
(03:35):
around two thousand. After several leads failed to materialize, Action
number one was finally discovered in April two thousand eleven,
when a storage unit liquidator named Mark Palelo emailed comic
dealer Stephen Fishler and told him he had a copy
for sale. Fishler was the same dealer who sold the
(03:57):
book to Cage. Unfortunately for Ballelo, he was able to
positively identify it as cages copy. Fishler and l ap
D detective Donald Harresk went to Ballelo's warehouse to see
it in person. There they met Ballelo and a man
named Sylvester, who claimed to have found the comic in
(04:19):
a storage locker he had bought at auction. But here's
the twist, he couldn't remember which one. With nothing tying
either Ballelo or Sylvester to the original theft, and without
a storage locker owner to question, the case went cold.
Cage got his comic back from the insurance company and
(04:42):
sold it for two point one six one million dollars.
Mark Ballelo seemed to relish the attention, immediately notifying the
press about the controversy. He even hosted auctions in a
Superman costume Sylvester all but disappeared for the storage locker
scene as quickly as he had entered it. The next
(05:05):
steps seemed obvious enough. Reach out to both men and
see what they have to say. In the case of Mark,
that's unfortunately impossible, and we'll get to why in a moment.
But we did speak to several people who knew him
and worked for him, and this is where things get
(05:26):
well more interesting. He seemed fun. He seemed like a
fun guy. Like I said, from what I saw the
way he treated his family that would come from Brazil.
He was very generous with them. I could tell he
loved them a lot. That's Liz. Liz worked for Mark
for a few years, overseeing his online sales division. She
(05:50):
got to know Mark fairly well, and while he was nice,
there were dimensions to him that could be unsettling. Drug
habits and stuff that he didn't really care to hide
from anybody. But he was fun to talk to. I
enjoyed having conversations with him. Yeah, No, he was he
had his moments. You know, because of his drug case,
(06:13):
he would get a little aggravated. But I mean, other
than that, I enjoyed working for him while things were good.
At the time Mark popped up with the action number one,
he was actually on probation. Mark had been arrested back
in December two thousand seven on three felony charges, possession
(06:34):
of the controlled substance, possession with intend to sell or distribute,
and sale or transport of a controlled substance. Mark denied
any wrongdoing and said friends had been using drugs in
a hotel room registered in his name. He pled guilty
to the last charge in two thousand nine and was
sentenced to sixty days in jail along with three years probation.
(06:57):
That's an important detail for a cup of reasons. If
Mark somehow knew the comic book was stolen before attempting
to sell it, it would be colossally silly for him
to get involved while on probation. The last thing you
want to do when you're being monitored for good behavior
is be in possession of stolen property. On the other hand, well,
(07:20):
Mark wasn't exactly being overly careful. In June two thousand eleven,
two months after trying to sell the comic, Mark was
in violation of his parole for possessing a firearm. Mark's
story was that he had found it in a storage
unit and was simply transporting it, but not long after,
he left California without approval, another parole violation that landed
(07:45):
him forty five days in jail. It's hard to know
to what degree Mark was involved in, well, let's say,
alternative businesses. A report from Radar in two thousand thirteen
stated that Mark was sometimes high on the set of
Storage Wars, the A and E reality show about storage
locker auctions, and that he bragged he could get large
(08:08):
quantities of drugs from connections in Tijuana. But Liz isn't
so sure about that. I think he was just using it.
I don't think he sold it. Mark could be erratic.
He would make very rash decisions and not think them
out thoroughly. And so he fired his manager, who was
(08:30):
oh my gosh, she was there for him anytime he
needed her, and he decided to fire her. I can't
remember what it was for. And then her husband also
worked for him as well, and he fired him too,
And then he fired me shortly after that. Yeah, there
were other employees that he would get into arguments with,
(08:50):
and I don't think he took his employees very seriously
or he cared to have like a good relationship with us.
There were other aspects of Mark's life that didn't quite
add up. Before becoming a storage unit magnate, he had
declared bankruptcy back in two thousand eight. Mark's bankruptcy documents
(09:12):
also revealed that two people filed to oppose his debts
to them being discharged because they were owed money for
new cars he had failed to deliver. Prior to getting
into the storage unit business, Mark owned a car dealership.
According to the two customers, he had accepted their orders
for cars with a value of over forty dollars each.
(09:35):
Then Mark later admitted he had used that money to
pay down other debts. Despite offering excuse after excuse that
the cars were stuck in transit or that their registration
needed more paperwork, he had never actually obtained the cars.
There's something else we learned to Prior to owning his dealership,
(09:59):
Mark worked Beverly Hills as a car salesman, and according
to an employee of his, we spoke with Mark had
sold at least one car to none other than Nicholas Cage.
Maybe that's just a coincidence. After all, Cage used to
buy cars like other people buy socks, so there was
(10:21):
a decent chance any salesman in Los Angeles could have
eventually crossed paths with him. And there's no evidence Mark
new Cage or was ever at his house in bel Air.
In fact, we are reasonably confident we can place Mark
firmly in Arizona at the time of the theft. But
it is interesting that Mark called Stephen Fishler, the one
(10:44):
dealer who could positively identify the comic as Cages. That's
another weird coincidence. Stephen believes it's because he brokered other
high dollar comic sales, and that's probably why Mark called him.
There are plenty of mysteries surrounding Mark that would make
for an interesting conversation with him. But Mark had problems
(11:09):
that ran deep. In February, he was arrested again for
drug possession for Math. The repeated offenses were piling up
and things didn't look good for him. That same month,
an employee of Marks walked into the warehouse, the same
(11:29):
warehouse where he tried to sell the Action number one
and found Mark dead by suicide, his car engine idling
in the garage. It was carbon monoxide poisoning. He was
just forty years old. He just seemed like a fun guy.
I don't know. I would have never in a million
years thought that he would kill himself the way he did.
(11:50):
I would have never thought that. We're left with so
many questions and so few answers. But remember fell auctioneer
Dan Dotson said he'd been approached by the man who
found the comic book and gave him Mark's information. Mark
didn't volunteer. So what about the man who had handed
(12:14):
Mark the comic and said he found it in a
storage locker. The man known only as Sylvester, the man
who said he bought in the story junits that he purchased.
So he's asking everyone to believe a multi million dollars
said the main comics stolen from Nicholas Cage ends up
(12:37):
in the storage locker, that this man just hast bide.
That's Paul Hendry, you probably remember Paul, reformed art thief
turned consultant for art crime investigations. Paul has seen and
heard it all, and he has an opinion on the
storage locker story, the one where Sylvester claimed he bought
(12:59):
a number of lockers and then found the action number
one among their contents, but he couldn't remember which one.
Number one is. Watched the odds you're going to find
a multimillion dollar comics in a storage locker? Best the
first one. The second one is, what's the odds is
someone who buys multiple storage lockers, not one single one?
(13:19):
And the third thing is, watch the odds they can't
remember which storage locker it came in, so that there's
so many red flames. I think we can just dismiss
the storage locker story as just a fake, fabricated story.
I have the luxury, but just us him my forty
years of experience and analyzing the situation and coming up
(13:40):
with what my considered opinion is highly valuable items have
turned up in some very unlikely places, including storage lockers,
but when they do, there's always a chance that their
discovery could have been orchestrated. Why one part sable motive
(14:00):
for stolen art servicing isn't to sell it, it's to
get a reward for it. Well, let me tell you, right,
if a private art detective was on this case, he
would charge the insurance company twenty class fact of the
insurance claim, which would have been if we assume it's
a hundred fifty tho and he would have wanted a
(14:21):
hundred fifty thou dollars per insurance claim. He would have
wanted thirty six thousand dollars as his fee for being
a private art detective who recovered this comic, the fact
that it's worth and sold the two point one million.
Some art detectives would also sign a contract to say
that they want ten or twenty if it's sold within
(14:42):
a period of time. So on two point one million,
that would have been a lot of money. Okay, So
that would be private art detectives. And I criticized them
sometimes when they do that because that doesn't look to
be transparent. But these people who recovered it, I would
have assumed that they wouldn't have gone away quietly. Is
especially if they are not being in dieted on any
criminal charges. They may have a claim for a finder's fee.
(15:08):
So is that why Mark Balelo called Stephen Fishler not
as a coincidence, but to prove it was Cage's comic.
To pursue some kind of reward. That's Paul's theory, and
it doesn't mean either Mark or Sylvester had anything to
do with the book being stolen, just that some research
(15:30):
could have led Mark to believe this book found in
a storage unit could be worth a finder's fee. Here's
Paul's possible scenario. They were prepared for it to be identified,
but wanted to portray themselves Sylvester as being honest and
above board. That was the intention, was to filter into
(15:51):
Nicolas Cages Deana via a third party file wall, which
is Mark, and then that's a plain. So then when
the dealer comes out and says this is the one,
then they may not have thought Donald would be cop
would have been there, but that the next thing would
have been if they hadn't have had it confiscated off
of them, then there might have been a legal dispute
and they would have still had possession of it. Maybe
(16:13):
they didn't account for the fact that Donald was going
to be there and confiscate it, but even if that happened,
their whole intention was to monetize it and claim my
finder's fee or a reward. So they knew at some
stage that they was going to have to be declared
that this was the sole a month from Nicolas Cage.
Maybe the initial plan was to have the dealer look
(16:34):
at it and go, yes, that's the original I wanted back.
And then the person go well, no, ang and speak
to my lawyer and maybe getting to litigation over it
or something, and declared they want to find this thing.
And then when Donald turned up and dis confiscated it,
they went, well, we can still go down the same
road and claim the finders feel again. That's Paul's theory.
(16:54):
And for Paul, the most intriguing part of the story
is that of all the commock dealers in the country,
Mark could have called he called Stephen Fishler literally the
only person on earth who could positively identify the action
number one as cages. This Mark person, right, why would
(17:16):
he focus in on the one avenue that's going to
lead straight back to Nicolas Cage. Why not take a
local estimate, right, He's part of a plane. It was
a plane, it's a scan, it was a sting. It's
a thing to monetize the Superman comic. And then they
tried to make it so confusing that the police wouldn't
be able to pin it on anyone. But yes, of course,
(17:37):
because this is such a small world. It's got to
go through Nicolas Cage stealer in New York, and he's
going to be made aware of it. Yes again, it's
I mean their story. He's like a Swiss change. It's
for the holes. Cages comic sold for two point one
six one million dollars just a few months after it
was found, making even a percentage of that a very valuable.
(18:00):
But Stephen Fishler, who was there when the l a
p d. Sees the comic from Mark and Sylvester, doesn't
think that's what happened. Here's Stephen. No, there was a trip.
They wanted to sell it and it was a stolen book.
When y've gone, all right, we want a million dollars. Oh,
by the way, this book stolen, it's a little hard
while the police is there to go, hey, how about
(18:21):
a reward now? You know, I think if they had
said we think this book is the stolen book, you know,
I could see giving them a reward for the recovery
of it. But it just wasn't in the cards. There's
a real mystique surrounding Sylvester. For one thing. Stephen remembers
that he introduced himself as Arthur, and Mark Ballelo told
(18:44):
people that Sylvester only went by his first name. Mark
said he didn't even know Sylvester's last name, which is
very strange. If you were planning to split the profits
from a multimillion dollar comic with someone, wouldn't you want
to know their last name. Few people did, and maybe
(19:05):
that was by design, but at some point his full
name did leak out, which allowed us to try and
get a better understanding of the man at the crux
of all this, the person who found Cages comic after
it had been missing eleven years. Sylvester doesn't have much
(19:26):
in the way of a social media presence, but we
can tell you he is or was a contractor by
trade and no longer living in California. He's into cars,
as so many of the people in this story seemed
to be. We reached a former employer of his who
said he was a nice guy who wound up quitting.
(19:47):
The employer thought it might have been because of the comic,
because he expected to come into a windfall. Despite his
lack of an online presence, and after a lot of
trial and error, we did manage to find Sylvester we
wanted to ask about finding the comic, but within minutes
(20:07):
of messaging him, he deleted his social media profile. So
we tried email and got no response. Then we reached
out to some friends of his to see what else
we might be able to learn or to find out
how we could contact him. That's when Sylvester asked for
our reporter's number and then sent a text saying he
(20:31):
did not want to talk about finding the comic. We
asked again and again, as much as we'd like to
hear from Sylvester. He apparently said all he wanted to
say to Detective Horresik on the day the comic was seized.
The story he told the detective is certainly intriguing. According
(20:52):
to people we spoke with who have knowledge of the
storage locker liquidation market, taking the contents from a bunch
of lockers and pulling it all together to sort through
later isn't unheard of. With storage auctions, you're given only
a limited amount of time to clear out the unit,
after all, that's why the locker company wants stuff gone
(21:13):
so they can rent it out to someone else. You
might have just twenty four or forty eight hours, so
piling everything into a truck to sort through later. If
you've bought several units, might be wise. Here's Liz again.
There's just so much stuff there to look through. It's
hard to keep track of it, especially when you're just
(21:33):
looking through everything and everything just kind of gets bunched
into one place. But the opposite is also true. Some
locker storage buyers keep a strict inventory of where items
came from in case something stolen or illegal like drugs,
are ever discovered. They don't want to be the ones
suspected of possessing them. The other consideration is whether anyone
(21:58):
really would leave a rare and delicate comic in a
storage locker and then neglect to pay the bill. Hey,
it's possible. Sometimes lockers are abandoned because the person renting
it dies or goes to prison. If a storage locker
owner was storing the comic there, then it would be
a matter of inquiring to the owner whether they knew
(22:21):
anything about the comic. But the problem the storage facility had,
and the reason they put the lockers up for public sale,
is that their owners weren't easily reached and couldn't pay
the bill. Because Sylvester couldn't remember which locker the comic
came from. There wouldn't be much use in trying to
(22:41):
contact them. You could never prove it was theirs to
begin with. I think as we've gone through the whole story,
it really is a Russian dole. You know, you're only
more and more layers. You're peeling back the onion and
every kind of stop. There is something there that doesn't
smell right, It doesn't taste right, and doesn't look right.
And in the normal world of things, this is not
(23:03):
normally what would happen, from the theft of it, to
the handling of it, to the surfacing of Chiu of
the comics. But knowing who put the comic in the
storage locker would still only tell just part of the story.
Art theft is one giant game of hot potato. The
more hands the stolen art passes through, the more convincing
(23:24):
someone is when they say they have no idea where
it came from, because they probably don't. And every time
it changes hands, someone is sold on the fantasy that
for just a few thousand dollars they can take possession
of something worth millions. It's almost like a criminal lottery.
(23:45):
If they can just figure out how to unload it
and then well they can't, so they sell the dream
to someone else. There's no evidence Mark Ballelo or Sylvester
knew anything about the Action Number one being stolen. There's
no evidence the storage locker story was fabricated. There are
(24:06):
just questions which one man can't answer and another man won't,
and that is his prerogative. It doesn't invalidate his story
that he found the comic. Maybe the reason he doesn't
want to talk about it is because watching two million
dollars slip through your hands is too painful to revisit. However,
(24:27):
cages comic made its way to Mark Balleto and Sylvester.
It's a minor miracle it's surfaced at all. Cage, of
course sold it for a handsome profit. But there's still
one act left untold in this story. Where is the
Action Number one? Now? Just a couple of months before
(24:54):
Nicholas Cage popped up at the Las Vegas Comic Con
is now very notor his comic book was on display
in London, but it wasn't for public viewing. This was
a private, invitation only affair at a hotel in the city.
Five years after being discovered in the storage locker. One
(25:15):
of the best copies of Action comics. Number one was
inside a glass case and surrounded by security, just in
case anyone had any ideas The comic was part of
a collection being displayed courtesy of a man named Aman Harreary.
A man is a very big Superman fan, though not
(25:37):
for the reasons you may think. Here's a man. Superman
was always part of me growing up. I guess it
was a character that I used to watch on cartoons,
and obviously, like every other kid, that captures your imagination.
To imagine a person who can fly and be invulnerable
to you know, being shot at or any kind of danger,
(26:00):
it just sparks the imagination of all kinds of stories
you build in your head and you imagine all the
things that he can do. Even back then. I mean
at the time it was, you know, faster than a
speeding train and can leap tall buildings into you know,
the modern version of what he can do these days.
But I was living in Saudi at the time, so
(26:21):
the only way that I was exposed to Superman was
on VHS tapes that would be made available to us
by people from living abroad and sending them to us
or receiving a copy of a comic book. Well, I
think when you're younger, things are less granular. You think
(26:42):
about doing the right thing. What does it mean as
an adult, and what does it mean as a child.
It probably lacks granularity when you're a child, and you
start to understand the nuances of doing the right thing
as you get older. I would say that being a
hero was what I would imagine. What I remember thinking
(27:05):
of this character and what he would do, and if
you put together any kind of scenario and he saw
somebody in danger, that he would do anything and everything
to save that person, he would save the day and
be a hero. It's not uncommon to grow up with
Superman and then want to own a piece of his legend.
(27:26):
After all, that's what Nicolas Cage did. But a man
is in a slightly different category. He's a fan, sure,
but he's also a billionaire and the son of Lebanon's
one time prime minister, Rafi careery Eman idolized his father, Rafiq,
who was celebrated in Lebanon for his work helping to
(27:47):
end the fifteen year Lebanese Civil War. He also used
his considerable wealth to provide educational opportunities for the less fortunate.
According to Amon, his father put third two thousand young
adults through college. Then in two thousand five, tragedy struck,
(28:07):
a tragedy that in some ways echoes the loss suffered
by Superman's co creator Jerry Siegel, who lost his father
to a violent crime. Rafiq died in Beirut after someone
detonated a bomb hidden in a car near Rafique's motorcade.
Along with Rafique, twenty one others were killed. Members of
(28:30):
his Bola were convicted. According to Reuter's, judges said the
attack was quote clearly a politically motivated act of terrorism
end quote. Aman was just twenty six years old when
his father was murdered, and as you probably gathered, it
was a galvanizing experience for him. He has always been
(28:53):
my hero. He's somebody who had sacrificed so much of
his life for his country, for people in need, and
ended up paying the ultimate price. But during his life,
and when I would think of Superman and I would
think of my father, there was always yes this connection
between them, and I didn't really put them together until
(29:14):
I visited my family home after many years of being
away in school abroad and university in the US. When
I came back home, I saw this picture hanging on
my bedroom wall of him represented a superman carrying buildings
in his arms. The buildings were universities and schools and
hospitals above a destroyed city underneath him. And it was
(29:39):
a cartoon that was drawn by you know the cartoons
that used to be in the back of newspapers. This
was from a local newspaper in Lebanon, and it was
an artist that had depicted my father a superman. And
obviously that's really on the nose that can ingrain itself
and you completely forget about where things originate from. But
at the end of the day, it was depicted by
(30:00):
somebody else, and he was regarded as a hero and
still is by his country. I actually in his life
when I started to buy comic books and collect them,
the original comic books, you know, graded and I work
with I think, you know, the Metropolis out of New
York to collect these looks. I remember that I couldn't
(30:24):
get myself to buy a single Superman book. That I
felt like I hadn't reached that level yet, And I
always would think of Batman is more sort of where
I was and the Superman where I want to be
aspiration Lee. And when my father passed, that's when I
(30:45):
started buying every Superman comic book that I could get
my hands on. For Aman, Superman and his father had
become linked. The character was emblematic of how he perceived
her fik as benevolent, kind and generous with his own superpower,
which was wealth. He was always one of my favorite characters,
(31:05):
don't get me wrong. I mean when I buy statues
or if I could watch a movie or or anything,
I was into the character. But yes, at that point,
you know, I guess the floodgates opened and I needed
to I mean, obviously I missed my father and it
was the most horrible day of my life when he
was taken from us, and I wanted to be connected
(31:26):
to him even more in the way that I imagined him.
And so you know, buying these books was a way
of me doing that. It's always been there. I mean,
certainly Superman has played a big role in my life,
just in the back of my mind. Like a lot
of people, you grow up with these characters in your
life in one form or fashion, and you either grow
(31:47):
out of them, they become a memory or they they
stick with you in some form or fashion. And so
a Man began to gather what's become one of the
most valuable and expansive comic book collections in the world.
Issue after issue of number one titles Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman.
(32:07):
He worked with Stephen Fishler Cages Comic Dealer, and in
two thousand eleven he had the rare opportunity to acquire
an Action number one Cages Action Number one. Yeah, I mean,
I'm made aware of the opportunity, and I was obviously
excited and did my best to get the book and
(32:28):
ultimately got it, which was one of the major thrill
because again, you look at the significance of Action one,
I mean Action one. Before Action one, the day or
the morning or the hour before those stores opened and
people entered to see that book and start reading them.
(32:48):
There was no Superman, there was no Superhero, and it
was the first. He was the first superhero. The significance
of that is amazing to me when you even think
about that, Like, we can't even imagine without the idea
of Superman or any of these characters. For amen, The
fact that this comic had its own story to tell
(33:08):
is part of the appeal. Absolutely, yeah, anything that has
a history, and certainly when it goes through certain circumstances
like this one has. You're right, it does develop a character.
Amen put the Action Number One, along with many other
valuable books on display in two thousand sixteen. There's even
(33:30):
a chance, he says, that his collection may go on
public display, bringing comics one step closer to the vaunted
esteem people hold for fine art. Imagine going into a
museum and seeing an Action Number one on display in
one room and a monet in another. I'm not worrying
(33:51):
about how do you display them, and how do you
keep them safe? And where would you do it and
what kind of an experience would people have that With
all the things that I got pulled into in life,
it got really hard to focus on that and execute
that project. It is in the back of my mind.
I'd love to do it in one form or fashion.
Maybe there's a digital version that could be done, you know,
(34:12):
something with VR or a R or something. But you
could say we'll just display two or three books. But
I think it would be cool to display as many
as I could. I haven't really figured out a way
to do it, whether that happens or not, it seems
as though this comics journey has come to an end.
Though he could almost certainly sell it for far more
(34:33):
than the two point one six one million dollars that
he paid in two thousand eleven, he won't ever. I mean,
my whole planning of this is I would never sell
these books. It would have to be my kids that
would decide to sell them if they would want to.
One day, when I'm gone wherever this book might have
been in the eleven years it was missing in a
(34:55):
basement attic storage locker glove compartment. It's probably as safe
as it's ever going to be. And if Cage ever
wants to take another look at it, he probably just
needs to ask. I'm a fan of him as an actor,
and I would love to to meet him and and
geek out on comic books, and you know, maybe we
(35:17):
can look at this stuff together. But no, I haven't.
I haven't had that that experience. And in the incredibly
unlikely event something happened to this action Number one, well
Amen is prepared. In two thousand fourteen, he bought a
second copy. Yeah, that's right before I own a nine
(35:37):
point oh graded copy. And when another nine point oh
came onto the market. It's like, Okay, this is an
interesting situation because, on the one hand, from like an
emotional standpoint, I felt it would be phenomenal to be
able to have two of these books if I was
(35:57):
able to buy it. So, just in terms of being
able to have in one collection two books of that
level and everything that I said about how did they
survive and all of that, I mean, to have two
of them in a single collection was something very very
exciting to me, And so I bought the second one
for that reason. And I was really really fortunate to
(36:19):
be in a position to be able to, you know,
one afford it, and second have the opportunity even to
be aware of it and be able to buy it.
This book shouldn't exist. Not only shouldn't it not exist,
but it shouldn't be able to to find it, let
alone find it. In the state that it's in. It's
almost a superman in and of itself. How does it exist?
(36:42):
Amid a volatile economy turned upside down by a pandemic,
there's been one pretty reliable investment collectibles. Comic book values
have skyrocketed in recent years. A comic selling for millions
is no longer a seismic event, but the norm the
(37:03):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars Nicolas Cage paid for his
copy of Action number one back in was if you'll
forgive the pun In absolute steal, Action number one is
so desired that even a single loose page from it
can sell for thousands of dollars. Brittle shavings of pages
(37:25):
from a nearly ruined version were sold in a baggy.
Maybe someday someone will offer a loan. Staple they insist
is from an Action number one, and if their story
is good enough, it'll probably find a buyer. In September
two thousand twenty two, a copy graded six point oh
(37:47):
that's a good amount below the nine given to cages
copy sold for a staggering three point four million dollars.
A higher grade copy coming up for sale could fetch five, six,
maybe seven million dollars. That figure would have been impossible
for the thief or thieves who took Cage's book to
(38:09):
conceive of. It was an audacious heist, taking four high
profile comics from an A list actor's home. It was
almost certainly done for profit, as indicated by one of
the comics popping up for sale on eBay months later.
A crime of opportunity inflicted by someone on the periphery
(38:30):
of Cage's life, someone who couldn't resist the temptation of
stealing a small piece of history that was there for
the taking, unlocked and unguarded. That it was stolen. Isn't surprising.
Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe someone will come clean one day,
(38:53):
Maybe someone already has. Though if Cage knows, he's not talking.
Of course, we wanted to ask about it, but his
manager politely declined. That's easy to understand unless it was
a transient worker, someone there to deliver booze or set
up one of Cage's oversized nutcrackers for a holiday party.
(39:14):
The person who took the books was known to him,
considered a friend, or at least trustworthy enough to be
let into his house, and having that trust betrayed is disillusioning.
Two of the four books taken are still at large,
still filed in the FBI's database of Stolen art, A
(39:36):
Detective Comics Number twenty seven, the first appearance of Batman,
and A Detective Comics Number one. It's possible they were
sold in a private transaction, but remember that cages dealer
Stephen Fishler is often a conduit for big comics sales.
It would be hard to sell the books without him
hearing about it eventually, and he hasn't not yet. And
(40:01):
if they did surface, Stephen says he could identify them
just as he did Cages Action number one. So maybe
they've been destroyed, or maybe they're still out there somewhere
their handler in a kind of paralysis. Selling them is risky,
so is keeping them. Maybe they're in another country, maybe
(40:24):
they were altered in a way that makes them undetectable.
Here's Paul Hendry again, sixty and seventy pages. Okay, Well,
they could take off the first tem page. They could
sell probably pages right as just being discovered in a
yard sale or something like that. Or they could find
a half of the book right, or just the middle
(40:47):
section of the comic had been discovered, and so the
backpages and all the front pages have been raised it out,
and then maybe stores separately they just sell the actual
in between the middle bits, and then it will be
virtually impossible to distinguish whether this actually was the one
style an off a Nicolas page, unless, of course, there's
something that could distinguish it on each page, or you
(41:09):
could see different pages, because I'm sure that the collectors
will buy a page from that for obviously a lot less,
but a page of it should certainly be worth a
few thousand dollars, maybe ten thousand dollars. While those books
are valuable, the public interest in their recovery probably won't
equal the discovery of an Action number one. Superman's status
(41:33):
as a defender of justice, his earnestness will always make
someone pufferring his first appearance a strange juxtaposition. It's like
stealing a boy Scout, Marra badge or a Norman Rockwell painting.
And while you might be able to swipe a material
depiction of Superman, you can't really take his symbolism. More
(41:55):
than any cultural character, Superman has come to embody oh
many things. He's the ultimate immigrant, a savior, the zenith
of patriotism, truth, justice, and the American way. Steal his
material form, but you can't steal what he stands for.
(42:15):
No one can take what Superman means to you, or
to aim and her Reary or Nicholas Cage. It's possible,
even probable, that Action Comics Number one will enter the
public domain on January one, two thousand thirty four, that's
(42:35):
when the year limit un copyrighted materials will expire. That
doesn't mean all of Superman's mythology will be up for grabs,
as much of it, like Kryptonite or even flying, was
introduced later, and trademark lawyers may have something to say
about all this, But the basic premise of an alien
(42:57):
from another planet with superhuman gifts and red boots could
soon belong to everyone, and who knows, maybe by then
we'll know the secret identity of the person who stole him.
And if it's an arch deitective who gets a lead
on them, trust me, they will be demanding of their
(43:17):
current value, not of the insurance value. The current value,
because on paper it's no longer a theft where the
insurance company owns them. They paid out originally, But I
would imagine Nicholas Cage has paid the whole claim back
and so he now not only has two back in
his possession. If the other two were recovered, he gets
them back as well, and they're worth millions of dollars.
(43:40):
So yes, I mean to be honest with you, it's
a chase on right to see who can monetize these comics,
and that's why the situation that we're in at the
moment cagees flying higher again. His recent meta comedy The
Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where he plays an exaggerated
version of himself, was critically praised. He's playing Dracula in
(44:02):
a movie titled Renfield, about the vampires faithful sidekick. There
was even talk he was being considered to play Bizarro,
the slightly off kilter version of Superman, for an HBO
Max anthology series based on d C comics, and one
day maybe he'll be reunited with the two missing comics.
(44:23):
For now, the most remarkable book the Action Comics, Number
one is with a Man and you look at where
you know movies have gone. All movies are pretty much
superhero movies. Every TV show is somebody has powers of
some sort. And it all started from I believe that book,
and it sparked the imagination of generations to come after
(44:45):
that and now shaped industries and ways of thinking and
what are ideals and just storytelling in general. I absolutely
love that, And it feels like by owning a book
like that, to you owning a not only a piece
of history, but something that represents a moment in time
(45:05):
that then had a significant impact on everything to come
after that. Maybe that's what the thief was after, not money,
not reward, but the chance for a moment to feel
history in their hands. This has been Stealing Superman for
(45:27):
I Heart Radio. I'm Danish Wartz. Thanks for listening. Stealing
Superman is written by Jake Rawson, sound design, scoring and
mixing by Josh Fisher, additional editing by Jonathan Washington. Original
music by Aaron Kaufman, mixing and mastering by Baheed Fraser.
(45:51):
Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson,
with production support from Lulu Philip. Show logo by Lucy Continia.
Our executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host
Danish Sports. If you're interested in more from me, I
host the weekly history podcast Noble Blood, available every Tuesday.
(46:14):
I also hosted the eight part mini series Haileywood, about
Bruce Willis's mysterious business dealings in a town in Idaho.
I wrote a novel called Anatomy a Love Story, and
its sequel, Immortality a Love Story, which is available for
pre order now coming out February. If you're enjoying this show,
(46:35):
give us a nice review. Stealing Superman is a production
of I Heart Radio
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.