Stealing Superman: Episode Four – The Memphis Affair

different songs. Pressley, Cage said, was his hero, and whether you want to call it coincidence, fate, or something else, in two thousand two, Cage announced he had fallen in love with Pressley Lisa Marie Pressley, Elvis's only daughter. We don't get much into Cage's private life here. It's his private life, after all, and we're mostly preoccupied with the theft of four rare comics from his home in bel Air in two thousand, like any reasonable person would be.

But all of this figures into it, not just Pressley, but Chrissley's town of Memphis, Tennessee. And in another bit of divine providence, this soulful city wasn't just where Elvis was reared, it was where his most prized possession Action Comics Number one was said to be lurking in a safety deposit box. Memphis would be the place where Cage's love of comics would either be rekindled or perhaps lost forever.

For I Heart Radio, this is Steel in Superman. I'm your host, Danish Wartz, and this is episode for the Memphis Affair. We go back and forth in time here, and I know it can be a little jarring, but so do comics. Heroes and villains chase one another, backward and forward through dimensions, through different decades, trying to write

past wrongs. In the original nineteen seventy eight Superman film starring Christopher Eve, Superman sees the Lowis Lane die and he's so angry that he flies so fast around the earth he literally reverses the clock and brings Lows back to life. Anyway, we're not going far back, just to nineteen ninety one. That's when the most prestigious auction house

in America, Sotheby's, decided to take a bold step. They were going to legitimize the comic book collecting hobby by offering rare and vintage comics up for auction for the very first time in the company's storied history. Sotheby's was best own for auctions involving fine art or iconic sports cards or movie memorabilia. As a matter of fact, they may have inadvertently ushered in the modern era of art theft when one of their art auctions in eight drew

a lot of publicity over the staggering prices. It alerted thieves to the potential gold mines hanging on walls. Now, people have always stolen art, but getting itemized lists of what would be best to steal certainly motivated some people. But comics comics were different. This was the early nine nineties. The industry had gotten some respectability with eighties hits like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchman, but we weren't yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe era.

James Cameron's Spider Man was tangled in a web of rights issues. A Fantastic Four movie was filmed but never released. B movie King row Dger Corman made a no budget schlockfest just to avoid losing his rights to the characters. Newspapers still started comic stories with bam, zap and pop and homage to the old Adam West Batman series that

hadn't aired in over twenty years. In the art world, only graffiti had less of a reputation than comics, so Yes Southeby's deigning to offer comics was perceived as a big deal, and the star of their second show in New York was Action Comics Number one, the first appearance of Superman, now and forever the most desired comic in the world, the same copy that would eventually wind up in cages hands and then in the hands of a thief, but today, in September, it could wind up with anyone,

so long as they were the highest bidder. Keep in mind that there simply weren't as many hi collectors of comics then as there are now, nor were there million dollar price tags attached to rare books to entice people to part with theirs. Seeing an Action Number one for sale was a rare occurrence, like seeing J. D. Salinger in the Frozen Food Aisle. Rare, so people took lots of photographs, So did South Bees, which printed an entire

catalog of all their comic book treasures. The fact that they took a very detailed, very precise series of photos of this Action number one will make all the difference in the world later in this story, and yeah, I will remind you when it's time. But in the moment, people were simply amazed the comic was here at all, not only because it was an Action number one, but an Action number one in excellent condition, bone white pages, a bright cover. A number of collectors and dealers were

there in person. If you couldn't make it imp person, you could bid over the phone, but you'd come if you could, if only to get a glimpse of comic book history. I was very excited, but I was sick as a dog, and I sat in the back row, and I had dark shades on and wasn't feeling well at all. I had the flu, and I was just excited to get it and get it over with and get half of there. That's Bill Hughes. Bill has been a collector and dealer for over four decades. He owns

Vintage Collectibles, a business based in Texas. In Southabies, he saw the hobby changing. More money coming in the books being sold through auction houses meant more attention, more press attention, and with more attention came more demand. The financial component of comics collecting was about to take a huge leap forward, and Bill believed he could see a quick return on his investment for an Action number one, even if he needed to make a major play. Oh yeah, I mean

at that time, it wasn't like I was wealthy. Usually I would get into one big item at a time. You know, I didn't have the money to inventory and hang on to numerous six figure items at once. So it was a big deal for me. I mean, I kind of put that money together. I was prepared by the way to go to a d at the time. That was my limit. Now, not all auctions build up to the item that's getting the most attention. Some might

even put up lots in alphabetical order. Bill's memory isn't perfect, but he thinks that's what happened with the Action number one, that it was one of the first comics upt forbid rather than the last. No, because I bought the Action Comics number seven after that as well, and some other lots.

So no, I'm trying to think if it was alphabetical, because I know I bought some lots that were later on in the option for So the Action number one came up early and that was fined by Bill since he had the flu and just wanted to get out as quickly as possible. Here's how Southerby has described it in their catalog Action Comics number one comic book June d C Comics, featuring the very first appearance of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster's legendary character Superman, arguably the most

imitated character of all time. Near mint condition, this copy has interior pages with slight tanning on the edges, with the center portion of interior pages creamy white minor vertical printers ink tracing lines on three interior pages, with a handcraft a lacquered custom fitbox. Historically, this is the most important comic book ever printed. It was like getting a sales pitch from a waiter on an expensive bottle of wine?

Who wouldn't spend a bundle on that? When the comic was ushered out, it drew a lot of attention right away. A lot of people wanted that comic, but only a handful of people could afford to want the comic. There were several bidders. Obviously, with most options, you'll see a lot of spirited bidding at the beginning, and then you know when the numbers start getting a little more intense, you know, then it dwindles and becomes a lot of times, you know, just headbutting between two people. On and on

it went. Remember at the time, and even now, it's not coming to see an Action number one come up for sale. Bill didn't know the next time he'd see one, or what its condition might be, so he kept bidding and bidding until the amount reached seventy five thousand dollars. Adrenaline was coursing through his aching bo and then Bill waited for the other better to pipe up, but he didn't. Just like that, Bill had set a world record for buying a comic book with the ten percent buyer's premium.

It came to eight two thousand, five hundred dollars, and normally Bill would have loved the inevitable press attention, but not today. I was sitting with a friend of mine and I just remember we high five, and like I said, we were in the very back row and that was that. And I was feeling too poorly to even respond to media requests. There were people there that wanted to interview me, and I just said, I gotta I gotta go. I

just wasn't feeling good. Well, maybe not with all the congestion, but in terms of doing what he had set out to do, Bill was feeling pretty good. He now owned an Action number one in fantastic condition, which fewer than ten people in the world can say. The question was what happens when you're in New York and need to return home, which at the time was in Las Vegas, with the world's most expensive comic. You don't check it

as part of your luggage, do you. I just stick it in my little briefcase and take it with me. I mean, that's how I've always done it. I just took that little handful of comics with me on the plane and flew back. He didn't look for a buyer right away. This was a kind of holy grail. It was something to baskin. He wanted to let it appreciate in value. I was letting it appreciate, and I was enjoying having it, and took pictures and had some fun

with it. A few years later Bill found a buyer, a fellow dealer who got it into the hands of Stephen Fishler, Cages comic book dealer. The whole story really starts right here in a South Abyes bid room where Bill Hughes Who's got the flu, grabs the action number one, which eventually finds its way to Nicolas Cage. Bill, by the way, didn't know about cages stolen comics at the time it happened in two thousand, that was still on the hush hush, But when he eventually did find out,

he wasn't too surprised. It's not surprising that they were stolen from these wealthy gentlemen because these are people that like to use their highlights from their collections as conversation pieces and you know, particularly at parties and whatnot, kind of show them off. When you you know, go out of your way to share the value and show the actual item to numerous people, you know, you almost invite trouble.

But Bill, who's been in the collecting game a long time, can conceive a one way they could have found their way back into the market, Like why would someone not sell it? You could deface it and change the appearance of it so it doesn't appear to be the same comic, and just sell it for a ton of money, even though a lot less than it was worth at the time,

but still a lot of money. Easily and probably no one would think twice if it was defaced in some way to where it appeared to be a totally different because obviously there's quite a few copies out there altered. That's interesting. In two thousand two, Los Angeles art detective Donald Harrisik had a cold trail. He had interviewed at Cages employees and party guests. He'd spoken to dealers and kept an eye out for any sign of the books.

Others had sworn they knew someone who knew something, who knew someone who had seen the Action number one, But even if they had, there was no telling whether it was cages copy. People wanted to be helpful, but the books were gone with the wind. The only thing Harresa had to go on was the fact that the sale of an Action number one would almost definitely make noise in the collector's market. You couldn't really sell a comic like that without a buyer asking a lot of questions,

where did it come from, why are you selling? Who owned it before you did. It's all the stuff a seller like Southebys didn't have to worry about because their reputation preceded them by and large. You know what you're getting from a major auction house, they'll stand behind their items. That's also why it was highly unlikely cages Copy would ever find its way back to Sotheby's. The thief would be asked too many questions. If you really wanted to sell a stolen Action Number one, you try to do

it as quietly as you possibly could. But being quiet can make a lot of noise. HARRESI got another tip, and this one felt different. Someone in Memphis was offering a copy of Action Comics Number one on the sly. This person wasn't looking to go through the normal channels of a Southebies or eBay. They wanted a cash transaction. How suspicious. If Sothebes represented the ideal way to legitimately sell the comic, a random dude in Memphis offering it

to cash buyers represented the most bizarre. It was too peculiar to ignore. So Harresa hopped on a plane from Los Angeles to Memphis. If this was cages Copy, it made a certain amount of sense. You would never want to steal a book in California and try to sell it there. You'd want to go somewhere anywhere else. When he arrived in Memphis, Horre Sik met with detectives of the Memphis Police Department. They had a suspect in mind,

who will refer to as Lex, because why not. Lex had been peddling Action Number one and other rare comics around town and via online classified sections. It certainly looked as though he had the real thing. Police had also been able to establish Lex had a safety deposit box at a local bank. This was where he had possibly shown the rare books to prospective customers. It was a very clean operation here. Sick and the Memphis p D

requested a search warrant for the safety deposit box. He believed this could conceivably be cages copy and a chance to solve a theft for one of the most famous people in the country. It would mean more attention for the l a p d s Art detail, which was always criminally understaffed. Horresik had perhaps one partner at a time, and if this was the Action Number one, then Lex

could possibly lead them to the others. The Detective number twenty seven and Detective number one get him in a room and sweat him out under the lamp with the adjustable arm. Maybe Lex would even get a break for telling them what he knew. Here, Sick and the Memphis p D believed they had enough probable cause to get the search warrant, and a judge agreed it was another

step closer to figuring all of this out. On this fine day in Memphis, here Sick and Memphis police walked into the bank and produced a search warrant and were then led into a secure room. And while these boxes usually need two keys, the bank manager typically has a master set the whole let's open it together things, kind of theatrics. Inside of the privacy room, the key was slipped into the lock and the lid swung on a hinge. It was sort of like the briefcase in pulp fiction. Here,

Sick the others peered inside. This could be it the end, and this would be a good time for a fake out that the box turned out to be empty and that the cops would be dejected. But that's not what happened. What stared back at them was in Action Comics number

one case closed. Harrisik had solved plenty of art thefts, had recovered more than thirty one million dollars in art over the past several years, had found some Peanuts animation cells stolen from animator Bill Melendez seven thousand, five hundred cells taken from his offices by the company handyman. He'd even found the Scarecrow's tap shoes from the Wizard of Oz, but this was something else, a whole new level of cultural archaeology. The cops gently picked up the book to

get a closer look. It was as most rare comics, were wrapped in a plastic comic bag to protect it from dust and fingerprints. They examined the cover. It was all there, Superman hoisting a car directly over his head, people fleeing the scene. In the lower left was the infamous hysterical man, hands clasped at his temples like Kevin McAlister and home alone, beads of sweat ran down his forehead. He sure was scared, and wait, where were the beads

of sweat? Now? It's possible Harrisik and the others didn't notice this right away. It might not have been until later. But if you knew action number one backward and forward, you'd be able to spot inconsistencies, like the fact the manic screaming man running away from Superman on the cover. It wasn't sweating, he was always sweating since the issue was first printed in night he had been sweating. He was afraid er Man was going to toss a car

at him. It would make anyone hysterical, but not this guy, at least not this version of this guy. So had someone damaged the comic or had someone done something even more sinister alter it so it couldn't be positively identified as Cages? Why erase beads of sweat? That seemed more like a printing error than any subterfuge. Alright, so maybe

this copy was a little bit of an anomaly. If anything, something as distinctive as lacking those sweatbeats would mean that if Cage or Fishler could prove his copy had the same defect, then they'd have a match. The cops opted to gently remove the comic from its protective bag. To their eyes, it still looked okay. They exchanged glances. Maybe this was the one, maybe the bus that would land here sick back in pages of the Los Angeles Times as the country's only art coup the case that the

Memphis p D could share some of the glory. But then they began turning the pages and they didn't see Superman, not anywhere. Granted he was only in twelve pages of the comic sharing space with stories no one remembers, but he wasn't anywhere. There weren't any illustrations. Instead, the cops saw photographs of women clad in lingerie. The entire interior was a lingerie catalog, and if the inside was a lingerie catalog, that meant the cover was something else Entirely.

They quickly figured it out. Lex had found an image of Action Number one online, saved it and printed it out as a color copy, and it was a good copy. But in the process, the beads of sweat on the guide freaking out didn't register on the printer. They were lost in the translation from digital image to hard copy.

Lex was busted. The scam was too simple. When he found an interested party, he told them to never ever remove the comic from its protective bag, since exposing it to air might cause the ancient pages to turn brittle. If it worked, that might have bought Lex enough time to take off before being found out. This Action Number One was inside a Frederick's of Hollywood or Victoria's Secret Catalog.

Harrisak had seen this before, a collector in bel Air Cage's Neck of the Woods once bought a painting by artist Andrew Zorne for five hundred thousand dollars. Someone stole it, but left something behind, a giant photograph of the painting, which the family didn't detect for some time, not until one of them touched it and realized it had no texture. In this case, the collector's butler did it, swiped the real thing for one he had blown up in a photo lab. Clever enough, but it turns out that it's

exceptionally difficult to counterfeit a comic book. This wasn't the first time someone tried. The mafia, which loved to traffic and Alyssa Goods, floated the idea. We know because the FBI once put wire taps on the phones of mobster Paul Castellano and his associates in the nineteen eighties. Castellano was the boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. They speculated that counterfeiting comics would be brilliant because no one else was doing it. But Castellano didn't

get a chance to test his idea out. Big Paul, as he was known, was executed in the stream by other monsters in to do it convincingly would be a nearly impossible task. This isn't one image on canvas like a painting. This is sixty four pages, each one having to be identical in size, color, ink, and paper quality to the one produced in Now these scams persist even today in an arrow where comics are graded and sealed.

Kick around on Facebook long enough and you might come across a copy of Action number one, Superman number one, or others that look very convincing, but they're not the real deal. They're usually reprints or what DC Comics called Famous First editions in the nineteen seventies. The outer cover indicates it's a modern book, but if a scammer takes that off, the inside more or less looks like the real thing. But they were also oversized by a few inches,

both vertically and horizontally. So it wasn't cages copy, just a small time on from a small time command. And so Harrisik returned to Los Angeles. But that wasn't the end of the Memphis story, not exactly. Even though what was looking to be a promising lead for the Action Comics Number one was a bust, two thousand two was still a very eventful year. For Nicolas Cage. There had been a second break in the comic thefts case a former employee who was arrested for stealing from the actor.

But when that shook out, all the men had taken were some watches, albeit some very expensive watches, and some booze. Not only didn't he take any comics, he wasn't under Cage's employee when the comics were stolen. In a separate incident, Cage had a porsteous stolen that one was found at the bottom of a lake in the Ozars a hundred thousand dollars down the drain. In light of the other incidents, maybe he wondered if the same fate would greet his

comics someone panicking and getting rid of them permanently. That was two dead ends in the comic world. But professionally Cage was doing well. He started in Adaptation and a Reverend, comedy about twin brothers and screenwriters trying to adapt The Orchid Thief, a true story about a horticulturist who steals rare and valuable orchids. The film is fictional, but Cage got a lot of positive attention for his dual roles. He was even nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award.

He was going to start shooting Gone in sixty Seconds, a car theft movie with Angelina Jolie. Heists were apparently not something he could get away from, or crimes for that matter. One movie he was set to make but never did was called Back Up, about a cop who comes back from the dead to solve his own murder. He was even getting set to direct his first feature film, Sonny, about a male hustler, with James Franco. The last big professional shift was departing from his longtime manager, a man

named Jerry Harrington. While Cage was doing well, he hadn't been doing face off and conairwell and maybe wanted a fresh pair of eyes looking at his choices. The split may not have been amicable because Jerry believed Cage owed him some commissions for all of his highly paid acting gigs. That marked one separation, but there was also one union to Lisa Marie Pressley. In August of that year, the

longstanding Elvis fan had married Elvis's daughter. There was something to the idea that Cage was undergoing a huge paradigm shift in his life. New marriage, new management, and new hobbies or no more old hobbies. Cage announced he was going to sell his comic book collection, his entire comic book collection, and the reason was interesting. Here's Bill Hughes again.

I was told that when he got involved with Lisa Marie, when they were married for a year or whatever, she hated the comics and wanted to see the comics go. And a year later she was gone and the comics were gone. She didn't like the comic book she said, get rid of them, or get rid of me and whatever. So he got rid of the comics and then marriage didn't last anyways. But that's just what I was told.

Hundreds of rare and exceptional issues he had spent years building up we're going to be put up for auction via Heritage, one of the industry's leading auction houses, and the person who helped broker the deal was Bill Hughes. Many of them were slabbed in c GC holders, those

hard plastic cases that guarantee a comics condition. Bill decided which one stood to benefit the most from that additional providence, and because Cage was so famous, the c g C label would make mention that the copy up for sale came from the collection of Nicholas Cage. Whether he desired it or not, he had become one of the more notable collectors in the hobby, and maybe the fact that these books were once Cages could mean a little extra money.

Bill Hughes helped arrange this massive comic book dump when the dealer he worked for, known as the Mint, partnered with Heritage. The idea was Cage could have twice the promotional power as well as the client lists of the two instead of just one dealer. It was like a superhero team up, only the team would get a percentage of the sales. While there were hundreds of books, there were a few Cage couldn't bear to part with, not even for Lisa Murray, if you believe that story. His

horror comics. Ron had told me at the time that Cage didn't want to let go of his horror comics, that he had trains on his walls, shoal frames made to house each comic book down a long hallway. I've never been to his house, so I can only mentally visualize it, but he said there were a hundred and one frames and that's where the Action one was housed.

During the party at his home when it was stolen, but after he had given up the comics for option that he had kept a hundred and one horror comics that he had in those frames down this long hallway at his home. The custom frames that had once held the rarest comics in the world, that had gone empty when they were stolen, were now being filled with horror comics. The old ec books that were once the subject of Senate subcommittee hearings in the nineteen fifties for being too

violent were now Nicolas Cage's wallpaper. For some extra pomp and circumstance, The non horror comics were sold at Dallas Comic Con, a three day gathering of the biggest dealers and fans in Texas. Heritage was located there and a con seemed well suited for such a high profile sale. If one phase of Cages comic collecting it started in Southebys back in it ended at another auction in two thousand and two. One by one the comics went under

the gavel and cages cash register kept ringing. A copy of All Star Comics Number three went for a hundred and twenty five thousand, five hundred dollars. It was thought to be worth just forty five thousand dollars. A copy of Detective Comics number thirty eight, the first appearance of Robin the Boy Wonder, went for a hundred and twenty thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars. That was nearly three times what it was estimated to be worth in price guides.

The Nicolas Cage effect was apparently real. It always adds value. When when stan Lee started letting go of some of his Marvel comics also at Heritage, they went for huge numbers. They were very poor quality at the time, and Stanley had kept back his better copies and had just offered

up his lesser copies. First, of course, the autographed him, and they went for huge numbers at the time, what was considered to be very aggressive numbers at the time, And it was just because of his affiliation, I mean the fact that they were part of his collection personally, same with Cage, that the books brought premiums for sure. Cage offered copies of Amazing Fantasy number fifteen, X Men

number one, Green Lantern number one. It was a collector's paradise and on it went until over one point six million dollars had been spent on his books, well his former books. The overall auction, which also included comics from other sellers, brought in five point two million total, a new record for a comic auction. Cage had likely drawn interest even in books that didn't belong to him. As for that Lisa Marie story where she admonished him to

get rid of his books, well, anything's possible. But we have to mention what Cage himself gave as the reason for why he decided to part with his vast collection, And it probably didn't have much to do with money. Sure, one point six million dollars is a fortune, but Cage was being paid twenty million for gone in sixty seconds. This wasn't someone finding some books in an attic he

probably didn't have to sell them. It was because his four best comics had been stolen, and despite the best efforts of the l A. P. D. And one close call in Memphis, it didn't seem like they were going to ever find their way back to him. It hurt. He decided that it was time to part ways with the hobby that he had once enjoyed. What good were having comics if they had to be under armed security? Where was the fun in that, when asked about it at the time, Cage gave an answer that hinted at

this sometimes. He said the things you own end up owning you, and that it was time to stop worshiping false idols. The Cage and Pressley union lasted just one hundred and eight days, Reportedly caged through Pressley's fifty six thousand dollar engagement ring into the ocean, Cage hired divers to try and find it, but with no luck, so he replaced it, going from a six carrot to a tend carrot ring. But ultimately it just wasn't meant to be.

It was a strange year. The comic auction came in November towards the end, and it held one final surprise for anyone following this labyrinth mystery. Among the the hundreds of comics auctioned off at the Dallas Comic Con that belonged to Nicolas Cage was action comics. No one, now, where did that come from? And more importantly, why is a story this weird not a movie? Already? The heist of Nicholas Cage's Superman stash, Well it is, someone made it,

but you'll probably never see it. For reasons You'll never believe that's next time I'm stealing Superman. 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. Additional voices by Ruthie Stevens and Zarin Burnett. Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson. With productions support from

Lulu Philip. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Our executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host Danish Sports. If you're enjoying this show, check out Haleywood and Noble Blood and give us a nice review. We'll see you next week.