by Glen Weldon

The cover of Action Comics #1, which just sold for $1 million.
Associated Press

This is a Very Fine comic. That makes it worth several hundred thousand dollars more than a Fine comic book.

On Monday, a copy of Action Comics #1, which cost exactly 10 cents in 1938, sold at auction for $1 million. It shattered the record for a comic sale ($317,200) that was set only last year, for a different copy of the same comic.

The Washington Post's Michael Cavna has the (frankly mystifying) details.

Last year, when that other copy of Action #1 sold for 317 large, we took a look at the practice of grading and "slabbing" comic books — encasing them forever in a hard-plastic sheath. It's standard operating procedure among hard-core collectors, like those involved with both Action #1 sales. Go, read, embrace the weirdness.

I still believe that it takes a particularly joyless breed of cynicism to slab a comic book — why not shellack yourself some ice cream, while you're at it? — but looking at the numbers, I can no longer deny that it's potentially remunerative.

Here's what the copy that sold last year for $317,200 looked like. Note the little scribble on the cover. Its rating was 6 out of 10, or merely Fine.

Compare that to the copy that sold on Monday for a cool million, which was rated 8 out of 10, or Very Fine.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "very": The $682,800 adverb.