NEW YORK -- A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman has sold for $317,200 in an Internet auction.

The winning bid for the 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1 was submitted Friday evening by John Dolmayan, the drummer for the rock band System of a Down.

In addition to being a musician, Dolmayan is also a dealer of rare comic books. The auctioneers say he was acquiring the Superman comic on behalf of a client.

The price was one of the highest ever paid for a comic.

The auction site ComicConnect says the man who had owned the book purchased it in a secondhand store in the early 1950s when he was nine years old.

He paid 35 cents.