Whiz Comics #2 Is the First Issue. Here’s Why.

There is no Whiz Comics #1. Not a rare one, not an expensive one — there is no such comic to find. The first issue Fawcett ever sold is numbered 2, and collectors write it as Whiz #2 (#1) to keep everyone straight.

I have had people apologize to me for only having the second issue. They were holding the first one. It is the single most common thing I have to explain about any Fawcett book, and on a comic that has sold for over a quarter of a million dollars, it is worth getting right.

Why the first issue says #2

The short version is a copyright dodge, and it was standard practice at the time.

Before a publisher put a new title on the newsstand, it would produce an ashcan — a handful of copies, often just a new cover stapled over some other comic’s interior, printed in tiny numbers and never sold. The point was to register the title and secure the trademark before a competitor claimed it. Nobody was meant to read one.

Fawcett made ashcans under two names, Flash Comics and Thrill Comics, and inside them the hero was called Captain Thunder. Both titles turned out to be problems: another publisher was already using Flash Comics, and the Captain Thunder name had its own conflicts. So Fawcett changed the title to Whiz Comics, renamed the character Captain Marvel, and carried the numbering forward from the ashcans it had already registered. If you would rather have that history from somewhere other than a dealer, CGC tells the same ashcan story in its own auction coverage.

The result is a first issue with a 2 on the cover. Which means that on this particular comic, the number on the cover is the one piece of information on it that means the least. What you check instead is the publisher, the date, and the indicia — the small print inside the front cover.

The character who outsold Superman, and the lawsuit that ended him

Captain Marvel is not a footnote hero who happens to be in an old comic. Through the 1940s he was, by most accounts, the best-selling superhero in America — outselling Superman himself at the peak. A boy named Billy Batson says a word and becomes the hero, which turned out to be an idea children responded to enormously.

That success is exactly what got him killed. DC sued Fawcett, arguing Captain Marvel was too close to Superman. The litigation ground on for more than a decade, and in 1953 Fawcett settled and stopped publishing the character entirely. He vanished from newsstands for twenty years, and when DC eventually acquired the rights it could not use the name Captain Marvel on a cover, because a competitor had claimed it in the meantime. That is why the character now goes by Shazam.

For a seller, that history has a practical consequence. Fawcett’s run was cut short, the books went out of print and stayed out, and there was no decades-long reprint program keeping copies in circulation the way there was for DC and Marvel’s flagship characters. The comics that survive are the ones that survived on their own.

What the old record copy was, and how the record fell

For over a decade the number to beat was $281,001, for a CGC 9.0, at ComicConnect in December 2012. According to my research on the sale, that copy came out of the Library of Congress. Then in June 2024 a CGC 7.0 — two full grades lower, with no institutional story attached — brought $288,000 at Heritage Auctions, and the old record fell.

Institutional provenance does the same job a pedigree does, and for the same reason: it explains the condition. A comic that sat in a national library rather than a child’s bedroom has a storage history a bidder can believe, and on eighty-six-year-old newsprint that belief is worth real money. It also means the 2012 record was attached to a copy with a story no ordinary example can borrow.

So treat the library copy’s number the way I treat every pedigree record on this site — as proof the demand exists at the top, not as a starting point for your copy. The 2024 number is a different kind of evidence, and for a seller it is the better kind: an ordinary copy, with nothing going for it but what it is, beat the record anyway.

The six sales worth knowing

The 7.0 line is the one I would point at now. That is a collector-grade copy, not a census-topper, and in June 2024 it brought more than the library copy brought in 2012. A record that falls to a copy two grades lower is the market moving, measured rather than guessed at. And read the bottom of the table on the way past: a 3.0 brought $78,000 and a 3.5 brought $120,000. On this book, worn is still six figures, or close to it.

The 6.0 line says what it always said. A CGC 6.0 is a mid-grade comic — honest wear, nothing hidden — and it brought $176,000 as far back as 2011. Demand for this issue runs deep rather than concentrating at the top. People want the book, not just a perfect example of the book.

Now the caveat, which is smaller than it used to be. The 2011 and 2012 results are roughly fourteen years old, and for a long time all I could honestly say about them was that the market had moved and I would not guess by how much. The June 2024 sale settled it: a 7.0 clearing the old 9.0 record means those early figures were floors, exactly as I had been treating them. What has not changed is the practical advice. One modern sale is a benchmark, not a curve, and if you are holding a decent copy the right response is still a current read on your copy, not arithmetic on somebody else’s.

The ashcans themselves, and why you will not find one

Since the ashcans are the reason the numbering is strange, people reasonably ask whether the ashcans are worth anything. They are, enormously, and you are not going to find one.

These were internal legal documents in comic-book clothing. A handful of copies of each, produced to be filed rather than sold, most of them destroyed or lost once they had done their job. The survivors are counted in single figures and they surface roughly never. If you think you have one, what you almost certainly have is a later reprint or a reproduction of the cover, of which several exist.

The practical point for a seller is the opposite of what it sounds like: the ashcans do not compete with your comic. Whiz Comics #2 is the first issue anybody could buy, and it is the one the market treats as the key. Its strange number is a historical footnote, not a discount.

The rest of the Fawcett run is worth checking too

If a Whiz Comics #2 turned up in a collection, it almost never turned up alone. Whoever bought it in 1940 was a Captain Marvel reader, and Captain Marvel readers bought Captain Marvel comics for years afterward.

• Whiz Comics #25 — the first Captain Marvel Jr., a genuinely valuable book in its own right and the one I would look for second.
• Captain Marvel Adventures #1 — a 1941 title with a Jack Kirby-drawn cover, and a key in its own section of the market.
• The Marvel Family #1 — 1945, and the first appearance of Black Adam, whose profile rose considerably once the character reached film.
• The rest of the Whiz run — ordinary issues, but early Fawcett in any condition has buyers, and a run stored together usually graded together.

This is the single most common way real money gets left in a box. Somebody identifies the one famous comic, sells it, and treats the rest of the stack as filler. On a Fawcett collection the rest of the stack is frequently where half the value sits.

Why so few copies survived

Two things worked against this comic, and together they explain why even beaten copies are worth serious money.

The first is ordinary. It was a 1940 magazine for children, printed on cheap pulp paper, and it was thrown out. That is true of every comic from the period and it is why the entire Golden Age is scarce.

The second is particular to Fawcett. When DC’s lawsuit ended the character in 1953, Captain Marvel did not just stop being published — he stopped being anything. No reprints, no back-issue demand, no reason for a shop or a collector to keep the early issues in a box through the fifties and sixties. By the time the hobby organized itself and started caring about Golden Age comics, twenty years had passed with nobody deliberately preserving Fawcett books, while DC and Timely material had at least some continuous following.

That gap matters. The comics that survive in decent shape from 1940 are usually the ones somebody had a reason to keep. For most of the period when it counted, nobody had a reason to keep this one.

Which brings me back to the numbers. Six documented sales in thirteen years, and every one of them lands high — even the beaten copies. A 3.0 brought $78,000 in 2021 and a 3.5 brought $120,000 eighteen months later. When worn examples bring that kind of money, it is not because demand is thin; it is because so few copies survived that the market takes whatever condition it can get. The record falling to a mid-grade 7.0 in 2024 was the same story told at the top of the ladder.

Selling a Whiz Comics #2

1. Confirm the issue from the indicia, not the cover number. Fawcett, 1940, and the small print inside the front. This is the one book on my list where the cover number is actively misleading.
2. Leave it completely alone. Eighty-six-year-old newsprint shows every intervention, and graders are looking for exactly the marks that well-meaning tidying leaves behind.
3. Check for completeness. The centerfold especially. On a book this old, an incomplete copy is a different object with a different market.
4. Get a current valuation, not a 2012 one. The June 2024 sale showed how far past the old records the market had moved; anyone quoting you confidently off the 2011 and 2012 sales is quoting you off history. What an appraisal actually involves covers what should happen instead.
5. Take the auction route seriously here. A strong copy of this issue is exactly the kind of book where the bidders who produced those results belong in the room, and grading it first is what lets them bid with confidence.

Photographs cost you nothing, and on this title the first thing worth establishing is simply whether you are holding the first issue or a later one. I will answer that before anything else. And if a copy of this particular book is sitting in a box in a garage somewhere in Riverside County, I would very much like to hear about it.

More on the books that get misnumbered

• Flash Comics #1, the DC title whose name Fawcett had to give up.
• How to work out what any old comic is worth, starting from the indicia.
• The 100 most valuable Golden Age comics, and what each one really sold for.

Cover images on this page are shown small, for identification, with the publisher credited in the caption. If you are a rights holder and want an image removed, contact me and it comes down.