as a $.02 magazine to sell nick-nacks in 1930
is now a global comic phenomenon
worth over $7,000,000,000.
When 2 Chainz heard Dinesh Shamdasani
had some early additions of his favorite characters,
he couldn’t resist jumping into the action.
Alright, what’s going on?
They tell me you are the man with the magazines.
Not just magazines,
but comics. Comics.
I’m a man child.
A grown man that is obsessed with childish things.
When I was coming up, not too long ago,
I too enjoyed looking at certain comics.
Tell me a little bit
about where your passion came from to collect.
They teach you about life.
I’m gonna sound so silly here.
But they do, they teach you about life.
They teach you lessons.
You see allegories for the world,
for how you should behave.
As you grow up and you learn different things
and you get to different stages of your life,
you see different things in the characters.
They’ve existed for so long,
so many great writers and artists have been involved.
They imprint their souls onto the books and the stories.
I mean, it’s just amazing.
Is it a huge market for comic and collecting comics?
I mean, the comic book market for reading is global.
The movies obviously help, the video games,
the toys, et cetera.
And collecting is becoming more and more and more
of a huge component of it.
Got it.
Now, I see you have a Ninja Turtles
[Dinesh laughing] construction made comic.Now, I know about the Ninja Turtles.
You a Ninja Turtles fan?
Yeah, I know about ’em.
Do you know what this is?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles No. 1.
It’s the first comic book.
The way you make comics is you look at a proof,
a very early draft printed,
and you check all the spelling, you check it looks right.
Two copies of this existed.
This is the printed proof they approved.
That’s why the cover looks janky like that.
[Dinesh] Oh. They draw the art.Draw the art.
They send it to the printer,
the printer sends them this and says,
Does it look the way you thought it would look?
Oh. And they say, Yes.
Or they say, No, no.
The blacks aren’t printing right.
You missed a page.
It’s printing wrong.
So they approve that, and then they mass produce it.
So this is a printer’s proof.
[2 Chainz] Printer’s proof. [Dinesh] Of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.This is special.
It feels special and it looks special.
And the outside, you really can’t tell.
It’s my favorite part.
But on the inside it has so many details
and drawings and artwork.
How much would something like this cost somebody
if they wanted to buy it from you?
I’ve been offered
[cash register chimes] about $300,000 to $350,000.I can’t remember exactly.
It was in that range.
Y’all going crazy over paper?
Yeah, I know, I know. For real.
What year is this?
1986. 80, something like that.
Damn!
Alright.
What else you got up here, man?
This is my favorite comic of all time.
Amazing Fantasy No. 15.
That’s Spider-Man, obviously.
This is the first appearance of Spider-Man.
You’re gonna see, a lot of these books,
the characters first appear in a book
that isn’t their own book.
This book is about
[cash register chimes] $300,000, $350,000.I mean, it’s just got one of the greatest covers
of all time.
Most people don’t know this, Jack Kirby drew this cover.
He drew almost every major Marvel character’s appearance,
including this one here, Captain America No. 1.
Let me see.
[Dinesh] Joe Simon signed that.Joe Simon.
And he drew this artwork?
He, along with Jack Kirby.
Jack Kirby and Joe Simon drew that book.
He’s punching Hitler in the face.
[2 Chainz] Captain America is punching Hitler in the face.This is before America entered the war as well.
This is their protest for, We should be doing something.
As Jews, they were thinking,
The whole country should be doing something
to get involved in World War II.
[2 Chainz] Really? Yeah. [2 Chainz] All the way down to the comic books,people were making it known. 1941.
How much?
How much is this one?
This is about $400,000.
Man!
Now, what about Spider-Man?
My son used to love Spider-Man.
Now he’s turning seven years old,
he’s shying away from Spider-Man.
What would this cover, the first Spider-Man.
So you say he was introduced on his own.
So Stan Lee was running Marvel
and it wasn’t doing well cause they weren’t superheroes yet.
[buzzer buzzing]They were about to go out of business,
and his wife said to him,
Just tell one story the way you want.
Forget what you think they want.
And he wrote this story, Amazing Fantasy No. 15,
first appearance of Spider-Man with a morality tale.
And it blew up.
And then immediately after this
Spider-Man No. 1 comes out,
and Fantastic Four, X-Men,
Daredevil. The rest is history.
Changes the world.
This is an invisible comic book.
The staples are not invisible,
they couldn’t figure out the technology.
What I love about this, this is like Warhol.
So many people will say,
Well yes, this is the first made Spider-Man.
You can’t read it.
You can’t open it and read it.
Yes, this one is for show.
You can only see the front and back.
And many people will buy just the grade.
Just the look of the cover.
Doesn’t matter what it looks like.
This is like Warhol saying,
Okay, well just buy the the slab then.
Don’t worry about the rest of it.
But, of course, comic fans are crazy.
So this thing should be worthless.
This is $5,000, $10,000. [cash register chimes]
What is it? Just this.
It’s just collectors are able to show off to each other,
Do you have the Invisible comic book?
It’s just a joke.
This is a book called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly No. 1.
There’s five copies in the world.
This is a book that’s so rare
most collectors don’t believe it exists.
It took me forever to convince someone to sell me this copy.
When I got it, most of my friends were like,
You’ve gotta send me a photo of you holding it
’cause I’ve never seen a photo in human hands.
I’ve been so tempted to open this
’cause we’re not entirely sure what’s inside.
What we do know is that this book, Marvel Comics No. 1,
which is often considered the first Marvel book
back when they were called Timely Comics,
that book named the company,
it’s the first appearance of the Human Torch,
you know, the guy that gets on fire from Fantastic Four.
And for a long time was thought to be
the first mention of Namor, the Sub-Mariner.
Then they find this book in an estate sale for the editor.
Lloyd Jacquet, who also edited the first DC comic,
and this book here, the first Marvel comic.
And they open it up and they go, Wait a minute.
It predates Marvel Comics No. 1,
and it’s got the same story.
They reprinted the story.
So, it changes history.
These both have the same story?
Same story with a couple extra pages there.
Because this book was given away at movie theaters.
So they would say, Come to the movies.
We got air conditioning, we got cheap movies,
and we’re gonna give your kid a little comic to read.
But, of course, everyone throws it away.
That’s why there’s only five in the world.
There’s very few pictures of the inside.
The whole book is not available to look at it digitally.
No one really knows exactly what’s in there.
I want to know what’s inside this thing so bad.
[smooth upbeat music]So this is probably the most expensive comic book
I brought today.
This is like Amazing Fantasy 15.
This is not Batman’s own title,
but it’s the first appearance of Batman.
Detective Comics No. 27 from 1939.
That’s crazy!
The first appearance of Batman.
And that is an easy $1,000,000.
[cash register chimes] Amazing.Really, bro?
Easy million.
64 pages of action.
Yeah, what’s that per page?
[cash register chimes]This is May, 1939.
First appearance of Batman, Bruce Wayne.
Now, Superman had come out right before that,
So you’re looking at this-
This is worth $1,000,000, bro.
It’s worth a little over a million, yeah.
There’s only 35, 40 copies that have ever been graded.
The collectors that have ’em, they don’t wanna let ’em go.
They’re never gonna find another copy.
Do they know?
Well, I’m sure after seeing the show,
that if you do have one, you should let it go.
It’s worth $1,000,000.
Imagine you not having 1,000,000,
not living up to some of the standards,
and you have this in your attic.
Redefines spring cleaning.
I enjoy Batman because his car,
the little dungeon he was in,
when he used to punch people with the little pow!
Stuff like that.
Yeah, I’m with you, man.
Batman’s the best. $1,000,000 on this table.
On this table,
how much do you think we have on this table altogether?
Roughly how much did you bring out the house?
You’re gonna embarrass me.
This is probably $5,000,000 [cash register chimes]
or $6,000,000 on the table here.
[gentle music]Damn, boy.
What kind of car you got?
[playful music]I have a minivan.
Oh, okay.
You have a lot of kids?
I got three kids.
Shout out, I have three kids.
[Child] Shout out to the kids. Hi.$6,000,000 on my table.
If you brought $5,000,000, $6,000,000,
then the collection crazy.
The collection, all the comics,
I’m a huge comic book art collector as well.
So if you look at all that, $15,000,000
Damn, boy!
What is wrong?
Here’s the thing, here’s why I feel okay about that.
I made my money in comics.
I lived the American dream.
I ran my favorite company of all time,
the characters I loved.
I built it up, I made it amazing.
We got a movie made, then they fired me.
That’s the American dream,
it gave me a lot of money. American.
It was called Valiant Comics.
I have a Valiant shaped hole in my heart,
and I try to fill it with all the stuff I loved as a kid.
That’s one of the best stories I heard on the show.
Thanks, man.
But now you are up here with me.
Yeah.
So you a winner. Yeah, that’s true.
That’s all that matters.
[smooth upbeat music]
