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More racial sensitivity in comic books, plus more ’90s stuff.

§ July 22nd, 2007 § Filed under archie, market crash, pogs, publishing, question time, racial sensitivity, retailing Comments Off on More racial sensitivity in comic books, plus more ’90s stuff.

I don’t normally buy current publications from Archie Comics, and when I do, it’s almost always books that reprint their work from the ’60s and earlier. Such was the case with last week’s Archie Digest #236, which reprints Archie’s first appearance from Pep #22, along with a full reprinting of Archie #1 from 1942.

One of the stories from Archie #1 has Archie involved in a series of mix-ups on a train with another passenger, and the poor railroad porter gets caught in the shenanigans as well. The porter looks and talks like this:


I realize it’s no shock to anyone familiar with comic book history that racist caricatures of black people (and Asians, and Native Americans, and so on) were common in early stories (and this isn’t even the worst example from this particular story, with other panels including dialogue like “I done thought…” and “Mus’ be dat bump on yo’ had!”). Not having an original Archie #1 lying around the house, I’m going to assume the porter has been recolored slightly for the reprint, even though all his stereotypical dialogue appears to have remained intact.

I’m not saying this shouldn’t have been reprinted as is. If you’re going to reprint your old material for historical purposes, it should be reprinted as it was, warts and all*. And that’s what folks have been doing…a glance through your Shazam Archives and your Golden Age Wonder Woman Archives, among others, will show you examples of political incorrectness similar to that bit of business with the porter. But these are high end reprints, aimed at comic collectors, who are presumably familiar with the poor way minority groups were portrayed. Disclaimers aren’t uncommon, noting the usage of such caricatures were typical of the time, and left unchanged for historical reference.

This Archie digest, however, is aimed at a young, general audience. It’s one of the few modern comics actually sold in places where people who aren’t comic fans shop. At my grocery store, they’re right up there at the checkout line, next to the TV Guide and the Weekly World News. How will kids take the porter’s portrayal — how will the parents? — particularly since there is no disclaimer that I can find noting the historical reasons for that portrayal.

I’m very curious as to the response Archie Comics will receive.


Okay, one last round of “Mike Remembers Barely Making It Through the 1990s:”

  • Commenter Stavner asks

    “Do you think we’ll ever see comic books back in supermarkets and convenience stores?”

    It’d be nice, and in some cases apparently you can find comics in some convenience stores…but a widespread revival of this manner of distribution? Not unless 1) comics get a whole lot more popular, and 2) the profit potential for them is enough for store owners to risk valuable space on them.

    “Do you think Gemstone will keep publishing Disney comics for very long?”

    Hard to say…my gut feeling says “no,” since their number of publications has declined, and their prices have gone up. Their last Don Rosa reprint book has sold very well for us, though, so maybe there’s some life there yet.

  • H of the Comic Treadmill doth ask

    “There are those who insist that monthly super-hero comics will be dead sooner rather than later. Do you see a trend in that department? What’s your take on the viability of our beloved monthlies?”

    I think if the price point of the standard comic book goes much higher, something is going to have to give. My guess is a regular comic book will eventually undergo some form of evolution, possibly into a much thicker publication with more stories, at a slightly higher price point (but giving a higher perceived value to the reader), and just loaded with ads to help subsidize the cost of the magazine.

    There are a lot of economic factors there that I’m overlooking (such as whether or not a comic book publication could attract enough ads, and get enough money from them). At the very least, I don’t think monthly books will go away, but they’ll have to become something new to give readers more perceived value for their money.

  • Commenter Roel asks

    “Where the hell did all these investors come from in the first place? I mean, why did everyone suddenly get the idea that these comics would be worth a lot of money? Comics had been around for decades and decades, and then — all of a sudden, out of nowhere — all these non-comic book fans start investing in them? Why? Was there some sort of triggering event? I don’t get it.”

    Apparently there was a large crash in the sports card market just prior, and it was just a lateral shift from collecting one thing to another…I don’t have exact details, but it appeared to be common knowledge at the time. I can personally testify to the number of investor-types requesting “comic book Becketts” — Beckett being the publisher of several sports card price guides — so that lends credence to that theory.

    Also, the greater awareness of comics among the general populace, driven by movies and media-hyped events, combined with a possible economic downturn and plenty of newspaper stories dragging out the old “did you know old comics are worth money?” thing…that made comics a large, attractive target for investing, without all that “dealing with brokers” stuff.

    “Oh, another question — why are you so remorseful about selling pogs? How is that any worse than selling, say, a trading card or an action figure? People wanted pogs, and they wanted to give you money in order to own them. What’s the big crisis of conscience there?”

    Because I can see the value of a trading card or an action figure. Though technically, I realize, there’s only a slight difference between a trading card and a POG, but least trading cards were numbered, sometimes had cardback text, and could be put into sets. They had something to them. POGs (or, rather, milkcaps) were, with some exceptions, just random pictures on bits of round cardboard, and just felt to me like it was worthless junk. The alleged “game” involving milkcaps was essentially jacks or marbles, without the skill….you threw a heavy disc down onto a pile of cardboard discs. and you kept the ones that turned over, or some damned thing.

    I understand this might just be bias on my part, since there are plenty of folks who think comics are worthless junk too, but even if customers were willing to part with their money for POGs, I felt like I was giving them nothing of value in return. I was essentially turning their money into crap. I know I should feel like this when I sell someone a copy of, say, Purgatori, but I don’t.

    Yeah, cheap shot at Purgatori, sorry, but I can accept that someone might find entertainment value in that comic. Somehow. I just don’t see that value in milkcaps.

* As far as story content goes, anyway…I realize the comics in question have been recolored and (it seems) relettered for clarity.

A couple selections from Fun and Games Magazine #12 (August 1980).

§ July 21st, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on A couple selections from Fun and Games Magazine #12 (August 1980).


The sample last line provided by the book’s creator, as found in this comic’s answer page:

“And now he can play at ‘The Palace'”

…Which, all things considered, is better than my attempts, since I kept trying to rhyme the word “Sallis” with “phallus.”


Oh, you nutty Hitler-clone, you’re the wackiest!

More ’90s retailing , a Licensable Bear™ cartoon, and links to Punisher studies.

§ July 20th, 2007 § Filed under market crash, pogs, question time, retailing Comments Off on More ’90s retailing , a Licensable Bear™ cartoon, and links to Punisher studies.

Okay, I’m gonna try to go through these a little more quickly…I’ve given you a lot to read this week, which means a lot of typing on my part, and a man’s gotta get some sleep sometime. Plus, that Doctor Who Genesis of the Daleks DVD I got from Netflix ain’t gonna watch itself.

So, here are a few more answers to questions posed to me about the comics market, the ’90s, and, God help us all, POGs:

Cove West asks

“Did you as a retailer see any signs that comics were recovering in the late-’90s, or was it just a long period of malaise from the Bust until Quesada/Jemas at Marvel kicked off the Media Age?”

I think the simple departure of the investors meant a stabilization/correction of the market…unfortunately, that stabilization of the market also included the departure of fans who were present prior to the fad/boom, who left for a myriad of reasons (tired of the decline in quality, disgusted by the catering to investors, distracted by other hobbies, etc.).

At that point, there was no where to go but up, really, and with the shaking out of lesser books and a general increase in quality in what was left, you got the sense that a slightly healthier market was beginning to emerge. Retailers ordering more sanely, consumers showing a bit more discretion…we all went from “wild abandon” to “cautious penny-pinchers” right quick.

The Quesada/Jemas thing, if anything, probably stirred things up a bit more than the market was really ready to deal with at the time. It’s like taking someone out dancing two days after they broke both their legs…a little more recovery time is probably required. I’m thinking the whole “upping comics schedules to every three weeks instead of monthly” shenanigans they tried, briefly, before discovering everyone hated it.


Commenter Bill asks

“I was wondering if your shop saw a lot of customers who, like me, didn’t even notice the boom and bust.”

Probably…we had a few folks wondering where all their Punisher titles went, for example, or noting that a lot of the comics they were following suddenly dried up, or came out less frequently. Whether some of them were aware of the changing marketplace as a whole, I don’t know…I imagine some never really noticed. So long as we still had our doors open, still getting new comics every week for them to buy, then it was all Business As Usual.


The mighty and fearsome Ken Lowery asks

“Rare, sought-after book = high value. Did speculators not realize that companies printing 300k-500k copies of a new book, and everyone buying five copies apiece to store away, meant that these books were by definition not rare and therefore not valuable?”

You’d think. I did a lot of explaining to people trying to sell us comics during the lean years why their stacks of Image #1s weren’t worth diddly squat.

On the other hand, there’s a particular phenomenon I’ve noticed when I see collections from people who bought multiple copies in large quantities. The vast majority of these people did not keep their comics in new condition. Of those 500,000 copy print runs, chances are the copies that actually made it into customers’ hands (and not just stored away in shop’s backrooms) are not longer in mint shape, if they were even kept at all and not just tossed out once the faddish fever broke.

So, maybe, just maybe, that one person who bought fifty copies of Secret Weapons #1 and managed to keep them in mint shape actually may have something, there. Still not going to buy ’em, though.


Commenter P-TOR asks

“You wouldn’t happen to have any packs of GHOST RIDER hero caps (aka; pogs) left over would ya?”

Nope, no more POGs. A year or two back I found one last cardboard box filled with POGs and associated paraphernalia still gathering dust in the back room, threw it as is on the eBay, and got about thirty bucks for it. Aside from maybe a POG promo or two in our card section, and that little tiny plastic POG case with a few caps in it that I use as both a paperweight and as a constant reminder of my retailing sins, POGs are no longer welcome in the store. Phooey, sez I.

FMguru has lotsa questions, so let’s see what kind of answers I can give him:

“When the boom was going on, did you believe that the market was ascending to a new plateau (i.e. that a lot of the boom was actual long-term growth in the market) or did you think it was all hot air and candyfloss and likely to end in tears (or, more positively, a nice little bump in sales and cashflow before things settled back to normal)?”

My expectations was that it was a faddish increase, and that things would eventually normalize…but I figured it would normalize with some extra folks joining the comics scene as regular readers, so that as a whole the market would be slightly larger than before. Alas, what ended up happening, as I noted earlier in this post, was that the investors went away, the fad-followers went away, and a bunch of the regular fans went away, leaving us with a shell of an industry.

“Also, what was the most traumatic event of the boom, from a retailer’s POV? What one thing (corporate decision, book delay, whatever) did the most damage to your business?”

I’ve discussed this in past posts of mine, trying to track down the book that killed the industry. In my mind, it’s still Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 from Valiant, which every retailer overordered, and ended up not selling anywhere close to expectations. It might just be me creating connections in hindsight, but it seemed to me that this was the book that triggered the realization that investing in comics, particularly comics that had larger print runs than the Bible, was a really stupid thing to be doing.

“What was the most ludicrous waste of money that was clearly going to be an enormous failure? I’m thinking Tekno Comics, here.”

Tekno Comics is a good answer, featuring a lot of Big Famous Names on titles that they were only tangentially attached to, like, say, Isaac Asimov’s I-Bots. Not saying they were bad books, but having “Isaac Asimov’s” and “Neil Gaiman’s” and “Mickey Spillane’s” across the tops of the covers, and having someone else write the insides, was bound to disappoint somebody. Yeah, I know, what were they expecting, but still.

In general, though, I think the huge amounts of money spent to try to compete with Marvel and DC at their own shared-universe superhero game was a bad idea. And the whole “collect the trading cards to assemble the first issue of our series” idea for Defiant’s Warriors of Plasm and, I think, Dark Dominion, seemed like a good way to dissuade people from trying your books.

“What role did the Magic: The Gathering boom of 95-96 have in helping keep your store afloat during the comic market implosion?”

Games in general helped keep us going…half the store was devoted to role-playing and tabletop gaming, and that kept bringing in the bacon when the comic half was in the doldrums. I knew something was up with Magic almost from the start, when we’d get calls like this:

“Hi, I’m in Los Angeles. Do you have any Magic packs?”

“Uh, yeah, I have a couple left here.”

“HOLD THEM FOR ME I’M DRIVING UP THERE RIGHT NOW.”

So, yeah, RPGs, Magic, Warhammer…all that stuff definitely helped.

Not a question, but an observation:

“One other good side effect of the boom was that it created a huge demand for writers and artists, and a whole bunch of people who otherwise wouldn’t have broken into the industry got breaks.”

True enough…I was going to touch on that, but I kept wanting to phrase it as “consumer confidence was undermined by the influx of not-ready-for-prime-time artists and writers hired primarily for their ability to fill a page with something, regardless of quality, as all those books being pumped out each month couldn’t go out blank.”

But you’re right…the side effect of this was that, just by the sheer numbers involved, some of those people would actually turn out to be pretty good, and got their breaks during this creative influx. So that’s a good thing, but too bad about the trials we all had to endure for this to happen.

“Finally, of all the dumb cover enhancements that came along in the 90s, which was your favorite? I really liked a Superman cover that was just a Metropolis cityscape with a slightly waxy coating – and it came with a sheet of ColorForms(tm) you could peel off and make your own cover with. Reusable!”

That is probably one of the best ones, but I still like the firework effects on this Adventures of Superman cover, and this enhancement may be the Greatest One Ever.

I’m kinda partial to glow-in-the-dark covers, too, like the Spectre ones. Or that elaborate Mighty Magnor pop-up cover by Sergio Aragones.

All in all, I didn’t hate the idea of novelty comic covers, but there were just too many, too fast.

(FMguru has many other good observations that I’ll eventually get around to discussing in a future post.)


Commenter Mark dares to ask

“You know, I still can’t effin’ understand how POGs are played. Is player? Are played with? I can’t even get the prepositions right!”

It involves throwing a heavier POG, or a Slammer, at a stack of other caps, and whatever flipped over you got to keep, or something. Either that, or the point was to accumulate as many POGs as possible, so your mom will something to complain at you about leaving all over the floor of your room.


And Pal Nat notes

“About the black-and-white boom, it should be noted that some of those ‘failures’ were selling in numbers which would happily get them continued by a small black-and-white publisher today.”

True enough…though a portion of those b&w titles were selling to retailers, and not necessarily getting into the hands of any customers. Shadow of the Groundhog sold great to that convention guy I told you about yesterday…he just couldn’t sell ’em to anybody else!

But I get your point….lots of good b&w titles sold solid numbers, to actual readers…numbers that may have been sneered at by Marvel and DC at the time, but are probably looked at now as “pie in the sky hopes” dream numbers by the Big Two.


Speaking of Pal Nat, the (sniff) last issue of Licensable Bear™, #4, is now out in stores. Read more about the cutest little licensable bear ever at Licensablebeartm.com.

And here’s a Licensable Bear™ video that I seemed to have accidentally skipped featuring on my site when it was released. So, please, enjoy a lesson in branding and marketing from the only expert you can trust…a bear wearing a shirt:


Tim O’Neil continues his in-depth examination of the rise and fall and rise again of the Punisher comic book, inspired, at least in part, by a post of mine briefly discussing the character’s waning and waxing popularity. (Here’s part one of Tim’s Punisher posts.)

"Buy something you’d like to read, that way it’ll always be worth something to you."

§ July 19th, 2007 § Filed under investing, market crash, question time Comments Off on "Buy something you’d like to read, that way it’ll always be worth something to you."

So some of you folks had some good questions in response to this post of mine from yesterday…I’m mostly just answering direct questions today, but I’ll probably get around to speaking about some of your more general observations soon.

If you have more questions or comments, feel free to lay them on me.

Commenter Allan asks

“I would be curious if you could think of any possible bright sides of the bust. Did anything good come out of it (besides the death of a ton of lousy titles) or was it just a great big pile of suck without any glimmering glints of gold peeking out from underneath the rubble?”

Well, there were a few good things, I think:

1. A refocusing by certain publishers on comics that were worth reading, rather than just being foil-covered, die-cut objects for magpies to gather. (Though this is slowly coming undone.)

2. Shaking out some of the retailers who jumped into the market just to exploit their customer base with “investments” and “collectibles.”

3. And most importantly, teaching the surviving retailers a very important lesson about over-ordering, buying fads, and the transience of “investing” customers. You’ll find a lot more retailers nowadays swearing by their cycle sheets and ordering a lot more conservatively, particularly if they weathered the ’90s.


Commenter Larry E asks

“As a retailer, did you ever try to talk any customers out of buying multiple issues or otherwise contributing to the speculation bug? If you did, was it regular customers or just guys thinking they would cash in on the Death Of Superman or X-Men 1, etc?”

If someone came up to the register with multiple copies of a book, I wouldn’t necessarily try to dissuade them, but I would at least ask them something along the lines of “Are you sure you want this many?” Even if they had just two copies of a book, I’d say “Hey, you had two copies of this comic in your pile…did you mean to do that?” But, if they were adults, and they wanted to have multiple copies…hey, it’s their money.

Also, keep in mind we had ginormous distributor bills…we were raking in a ton of cash, but we were also doling out a lot of coin of the realm at the same time. If someone wanted to buy thirty copies of a book that otherwise was kind of sitting there, we weren’t in a position to say “no,” really. Multiple copy sales of that magnitude (or more, like full cases of books) rarely happened anyway, and it was usually as special-ordered wholesale items to people selling at swap meets, or via mail order, or what have you.

On the other hand, when customers asked me which comics would be a good investment, that’s where I drew the line. Depending on my mood (and how well I knew the customer) I’d say “If I could tell the future, I’d be at the racetrack,” or I’d just respond with a “Who can tell?” Or, more likely, I’d say “Buy something you’d like to read, that way it’ll always be worth something to you.” That particular mantra was repeated many a time.

At no time did I ever, ever, recommend a comic book as an investment. Aside from the fact that I’d prefer people read the books, the danger of that was, of course, recommending a book that turned out to be a turkey, and having the customer chase after me with a rusty clawhammer because I sold him four hundred copies of Team Youngblood #1.

Another thing that, hopefully, makes me look a little less bad was, at the time, I had set up a “RECOMMENDED READING” rack of good comics that I wanted to encourage people to actually read, as opposed to just dropping into a Mylar and waiting for the price to skyrocket. (That’s how we ended up regularly selling about 5% of the print run of a Pirate Corp$ issue, to bring up one fond memory.)


Commenter Scratchie asks

“I’ve often wondered if Overstreet and the other pricing guides acknowledged the crash, or whether their ‘market prices’ for various issues just kept going up, and up…”

You know, that’s a good question, and I think I probably have the magazines and guides at the shop to research it. But just as a hunch, I imagine it’s like this:

Overstreet, on the whole, is pretty conservative with pricing, so aside from some fluctuation on, say, Valiant titles, it probably didn’t alter its pricing too much, since they probably never acknowledged too much of the “hot title” pricing to begin with.

Wizard probably just dropped “hot” comics out of their price guide entirely as prices dropped, with “not enough interest in the title to justify using the space” as a reason.

And the other fly-by-night price guides all dried up before they could start running post-crash pricing.

I need to dig out some of the guides and take a look to see what they actually did. Watch this space!


Commenter Thelonious_Nick asks

“…Do you think there will ever be another time when comics are a mass medium, as they were from the 1940s-1990s? And if so, what changes in the comics industry and/or society will be necessary for that to happen?”

I think it was Dave Sim, of all people, who said that television is the only real mass medium, and everything else is a distant second. But, for a while there, comics were enormously popular, but I think the ’90s may have been the last hurrah of that particular market situation (no matter how hard the publishers are trying to revive it with all their variant covers).

1. We had an enormously popular Batman movie that created a faddish interest in comics.

2. The sports card market collapsed, driving investor types into the comic market looking for more collectibles (a drive pushed by the Batman-created fad, most likely).

3. This may just be crazy talk, but I’ve had a half-baked opinion that comic sales seem to bump upward during times of economic depression, and maybe someday I’ll get around to researching that a little more fully.

And I’m sure there are other reasons, but I think the main reason for the ’90s market being the way it was could be attributed to the faddish nature of comics’ popularity. There’s no real telling what will create a fad like this, how big it’ll get, or how long it’ll last…and now that comics have had their big fad moment, it’s unlikely it’ll happen again in the near future. (How many big “pet rock” revivals have there been since the ’70s, for example?*)

As it is, the comics market is improving slightly, as the focus moves ever so surely towards a trade paperback-based system. As awareness of comics increases, more people find things they like, and readership increases…and so long as the market grows naturally, and healthily, I don’t care if it does reach the heights of the ’90s. And frankly, the only way that would happen at this point is for another comics fad to hit, which I don’t know any of us really want to see.

By the way, in some instances, comics are doing enormously well. How many best seller lists is the Naruto manga on, for example?


Commenter Matt asks

“…Was there one “eureka” moment for you when you knew the crash was coming? When you knew things were falling apart, or about to fall apart?

“For that matter, did you smell the crash at all?”

I think I’ve noted before that the crash was pretty sudden. We had a few weeks when sales dipped a bit, and we thought it was just one of those periodic sales adjustments, and things would be back up to normal shortly.

And then things just kept dipping, and we thought “Well, this is going on a little longer than normal, surely those customers will be back. We’d better keep ordering our regular numbers so that we’ll have the back issues for them when they return.”

And then the sales continued dipping, and then we, along with every retailer in America and abroad, went “Oh, shit.”

The one thing that really made me think “Oh, this can’t be good” was a certain issue of the Diamond Previews catalog. For one, it was much thicker than previous issues. I think it was even thicker than the current Previews. And two, it contained the debut of (or at least special-featured solicitations for) at least three different superhero shared universes from three different publishers (one may have been Dark Horse’s Comics’ Greatest World). I remember looking at that and thinking “We don’t have the rack space to support this” and “How do they expect customers to afford to follow all these books?” I can still recall my very strong feeling of dread.


Commenter jimbo asks:

“I guess like Larry E, I’m interested in, for lack of a better word, the ‘ethics’ of the 90’s speculator boom. Did you feel a certain responsibility to dissuade folks from being a bit too silly with their money (multiple issues, ‘investing,’ etc.), or is this sort of like asking a liquor store owner if he feels bad about taking money off a guy who buys a 30 pack?

“I know you to be a generally swell and ethical guy, but were there ever any moments in the 90’s where you felt tested, or even points where you were like ‘No, this is not why I got into this business at. all.’?”

I addressed this at least partially with my response to Larry E…I think my responsibility was in telling people who asked about comic book investing was that it wasn’t a good idea. But, if people wanted to spend money on multiple issues, even after I asked them if they were sure…well, I’m not their mom, I’m not going to tell them what they can or can’t spend their money on. And like I’d said…most of the time, it was just people buying doubles, which was no big deal.

Was that healthy for the comics industry in the long run? Probably not. But not even a Mikester in his early 20s’ fightin’ prime could save the industry by himself, refusing to sell multiple copies and extolling his customers to turn away, turn away I say, from those five different X-Men #1s, stop rubbing the blood on Bloodstrike #1, and buy only comics you’ll enjoy reading! I did what I could to encourage reading and discourage investing, but the economic reality of it was that I had to accept the investors are part of the deal. Besides, if they didn’t buy ’em here, they’d go to one of the other half-dozen stores that popped up in our immediate area and buy ’em there. (‘Course, most of those stores dried up years ago.)

On the other hand, the kind of person who’d buy a case of any given issue at a time wasn’t someone who was going to stick around as a reader anyway. He was in it for short term profit, not long term entertainment.

As far as the “not why I got into this business” part…it wasn’t comics, but POGs what did the deed. I’ve written about this before, but POGs and their ilk are really the only thing I hated, hated selling. It honestly made me feel like a crook taking money from kids for POGs and POG supplies and POG sheets and slammers and what have you. I would have probably felt better about selling cigarettes to them, because then at least the kids would get cool menthol flavor, which is far more than they’d be getting from these stupid milkcaps. This was pretty much post-crash, however, and we were doing everything we could to get cash in the door and keeping the doors open. And, kids wanted POGs, we had no shortage of people wanting to wholesale POGs to us, and our will was weak.

When my time comes, I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to God.


Commenter David C asks

“Were you around for the ’80s ‘Black and White’ boom? If so, how was it similar and different?”

I was around as a reader and a fan for the black and white boom, but I wasn’t on the retail end of things until shortly afterward. Our shop didn’t fall for the b&w boom like some folks did…we may have carried Solson titles and assorted other small press titles cranked out to take advantage of the investors market created by the popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but never more copies than we thought we could sell. There was no investing in these b&w #1s in quantity, in the hopes a financial killing could be made (like the poor bastard I saw at a convention circa ’91, with a whole long box of the notoriously terrible Shadow of the Groundhog).

I would say, in general terms, that the primary difference between the black and white boom and the late ’80s/early ’90s boom was that the former was more publisher driven, while the latter was consumer driven. When TMNT came out, it was a huge hit, with early issues commanding enormous prices. Suddenly everyone was a comic book publisher, cranking out their own black and white titles hoping for that same success. Not saying there weren’t any good publishers that came out of that (like Slave Labor and Dark Horse), and that some titles didn’t sell well, but there was a metric assload of terrible, terrible comics, number ones pumped out one after another, in the hopes that if you threw enough crap at a wall, some of it would stick…and very, very little of it did. (And then there are the tales of some publishers holding back cases of their own titles, attempting to manipulate the market and create their own “hot” books….)


And Comic Bob wants a more detailed timeline of the ’90s, in regards to the rise and fall of the industry. I’ve sort of noted some of the things he mentions in past posts linked in yesterday’s post, but perhaps a more thorough timeline would be in order. I’ll see what I can cook up.

Related: Dick has been relating his history as a kid reading comics in the ’90s beginning with this post, which may be of interest to people curious about what the market was like from a reader’s point of view.

* A TRUE MIKESTER STORY: In grade school, we were given a project to create some kind of marketable product, along with its packaging, for…well, for some reason, I’m sure. Hey, it’s been 30 years, give me a break. Anyway, the product I created was a Pet Rock knockoff called the “Pet Stick,” a wooden stick packaged in a triangular tube I constructed (kind of like the priority mail tubes you get from the USPS). It came with a set of instructions that included games you could play with your Pet Stick, including “Fetch the Dog” — you throw the stick, it’ll attract a nearby dog, which will pick the stick up and bring it back to you. I’ll still defend that as being a pretty good joke.

In which I link back to people who linked to me recently. Plus: questions for you.

§ July 18th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on In which I link back to people who linked to me recently. Plus: questions for you.

  • Tim O’Neil goes into deeper detail on the fall and rise of the Punisher that I’ve been discussing over the last couple of days, and comments on the efforts Marvel had to go through to rebuild a Punisher fanbase.
  • THE PROFESSOR SPEAKS! And among the things he speaks about is meeting me, in person…and surviving the experience. Yes, friends, it is safe to encounter me in the wild. I don’t bite or scratch, and I generally don’t spit a lot.
  • Warmth and Green Paper mentions my weblog here as a great comics site, which I appreciate. He also calls me “Tom Sterling,” but, hey, close enough. I’m not picky.
  • Found on Let’s Get Comical, a new weblog that recently linked to me: yes, it’s yet another YouTube video, and yes, it involves Batman, and, yes, it’s just a series of still photos…but it’s silly and it made me laugh, and that’s all I can ask for some days:


    Did I mention it’s in French? It’s in French.


Now, I tend to talk about the ’90s market crash a lot. Our store had to ride it out, and in some ways we’re still recovering from it…thus I have a first person perspective on that period. It was a very odd time to be trying to sell comics, particularly after the money we were making hand-over-fist during the comics boom. I’ve gone into detail about it here and here and here and here, and apparently that’s not enough, because I have the itch to talk about it some more.

So, I have two questions to ask you:

1. Do you have any particular questions for me in regards to the comics market bust, that I haven’t already covered in my other posts?

2. Do you have any memories or observations from this period? What was your perspective on the comic market crash, from either side of the counter?

Please let me know in the comments. I’d like to hear what you have to say.

This isn’t just an elaborate plug for my eBay auctions, I promise.

§ July 17th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on This isn’t just an elaborate plug for my eBay auctions, I promise.

In response to my post from Sunday, where I briefly touch upon a reason or two for the mid-’90s decline of the Punisher’s popularity, Alan David Doane had this to say:

“Those Punisher comics that tanked in the 1990s? That had to be in part at least because they weren’t very good, like most Marvel comics prior to the Heroes Return event that briefly ushered in an era of quality storytelling in some of Marvel’s core titles.”

And he’s right, that was probably part of the reason as well, and one I should have mentioned. While one could argue that for some fans, the consideration of “quality” for a comics purchase may not be as strong as an imperative to “keep the run complete” (insert cheap shot at any given X-book here), there does come a point where there is some crap even the most ardent fanboy won’t eat.

Plus, considering the huge attrition of consumers the market experienced during that point in history, all the investors and casual readers and “just buying out of habit” folks were long gone, finding other investments (Beanie Babies! Action Figures!) and other time-wasters (Video Games! Sidehacking!) with which they could occupy themselves. All that were left were the people who were actually reading the comics (and, admittedly, some of the more diehard “buying out of habit” folks), and the big companies couldn’t so easily get away with filling 23 pages with junk, slapping a die-cut holographic scratch ‘n’ sniff cover around it, and expect it to sell.

I’m not saying this was a 100% turn-around in buyers’ attitudes…but I think enough of the audience rejected what was being offered to them that, along with the other reasons I touched upon (overall declining sales, character burn-out), it was enough to end the Punisher’s reign as a “hot” character.


On a somewhat related note, an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed from selling on the eBay is the still-strong demand for Valiant Comics. Not your standard issue, monthly issues of Valiant Comics, but rather the “gold” editions, or the variant cover editions, or the signed books.

I think most comic fans would agree that Valiant Comics were, on average, pretty good, particularly during its initial years. This was at a time when a number of new “superhero universes” were being started by a variety of publishers, but Valiant, for whatever reason, became the star that shined the brightest. Malibu Comics’ Ultraverse, Dark Horse’s Comics’ Greatest World — they had their fans, but Valiant had the most across-the-board success.

It didn’t start out that way…I can still remember looking at a stack of unsold Harbinger #1s and thinking “Oh boy, we’re stuck with these.” A big part of Valiant’s eventual boost in popularity may be attributable to the then-booming comics fad, the influx of investors from the crashed sports card market, encouraging in investment by Wizard, and so on.

But, eventually, when the comics crash came, Valiant went with it (though the beginning of the end probably started with the departure of Jim Shooter, who oversaw Valiant’s shared universe). It lurched on, in varying incarnations, backed with video game money (and found many of its properties converted into games), and even now a high-end Harbinger hardcover reprint (with a new story) is on its way.

Anyway, back to the variants: one day, a few years back, searching for some goodies to throw on the eBay, I noticed that we had in the backroom a set of the two Unity trade paperbacks produced by Diamond Comics (which you can see here and here). I figured, hey, Valiant’s pretty much dead, I don’t think I can move these books locally, and they’re not doing any good taking up shelf space in the back…I’ll just sell ’em on the internet.

So on the eBay they went, and a week later, I had winning bids on both of them in the hundreds of dollars.

Needless to say, I was a bit flabbergasted.

A little research, starting then and over the years since, has revealed a healthy aftermarket for the rarer Valiant items. Alas, I didn’t have too many left…I had a “platinum” Unity #1 that sold for about $16, a handful of blue-variant Harbinger trades for about $10 to $12, on average. That doesn’t seem like much, but compared to how the non-variant Valiants sell, in the store and online (i.e. hardly at all), it’s certainly something.

I’m seeing a little more action on an auction I’m currently running for a Shadowman #0 Valiant Validated Signature Series, which, as I write this, is up to $46.00. (According to this page, guide value is $45.00, last recorded auction sale, in ’05, was $48.00.)

I suppose it’s possible that it’s a small group of hardcore Valiant collectors all competing for the same items, but it may just be that there’s still a sizable following for these titles, and are simply using the eBay now to fill holes in collections and acquire rare items that were unavailable to them at the time. There have also been a number of in-store requests for last issues of Valiant series (i.e. the ones with lower print runs).

By comparison, when I tried to auction off a semi-rare Diamond-produced Youngblood trade paperback, similar to those Unity trades, I received no bids. (Yeah, I know, what was I expecting?) Some of the Ultraverse variants, with the full-cover holograms…those auctions ended with low bids, if any at all. And I think I’d have better luck selling Comics’ Greatest World stuff if I stapled dollar bills to the covers.

I find it interesting that a recently-defunct comics company like this, especially one from the heyday of comics faddishness, is still attracting collectors. Usually when “hot” popular items are past their sell-by date, that’s it for them. But Valiants — at least the “rare” items — still have their buyers. My confidence for the long-term staying power of the company would be stronger if we saw more general interest in the regular, non-collectible, non-rare issues. But that there’s still any interest at all, and that there’s enough apparent interest to justify a new hardcover collection…well, that’s unusual enough to keep me watching further marketplace developments involving Valiant.

(For lots more info on Valiant Comics, including print runs, average pricing, etc., I highly recommend the Valiant Comics fan site, which I’ve already taken advantage of several times throughout this post.)

Who doesn’t love Roadhouse?

§ July 16th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Who doesn’t love Roadhouse?

Okay, so in this story from World’s Finest #137 (Nov. 1963), both Aquaman and his young companion Aqualad are stricken by mysterious fumes that cause them to be weakened, rather than strengthened, when they are in the water. Aquaman has to go to Aqualad’s rescue, but he’s too weak, and too far away from the sea, to command some nearby fish to help. However, there is another sea creature of sorts nearby:


That almost seems like stretching the definition of “sea life” a bit…at least, considering the types of sea life with which Aquaman usually communicates. But I’d be willing to let that slide…

…Except I’m totally going to have to call “no way” on this sequence :


At most, Aquaman has two load-bearing eagles keeping him aloft, as I don’t believe the other eagles in this grouping would be able to get close enough to provide enough direct support and/or lift to handle Aquaman’s weight. Plus, it would seem as if Aquaman would continually be smacked in the face, sides, and, um, other body parts, by the flapping wings, which would be painful, or at least annoying for him, not to mention how that would interfere with the eagle’s ability to fly effectively. And I have my doubts that this group of five or six sea eagles, as powerful fliers as they are, would be able to handle Aquaman hauling a sopping wet kid-sized load out of the ocean, even briefly.

This is what I think about, when we’re having a slow Sunday afternoon at the shop.


In other news:

  • Sunday morning, I was interviewed by the darling Dafna and the cacophonic Kid Chris for their Bispectacult podcast. It went well, it was a lot of fun, and even though my very first response to a question didn’t come out in any kind of recognizable English (I believe the correct term is “word salad”), after that things went swimmingly. We were silly, we had a good time, we couldn’t keep ourselves on any topic for very long, aside from discussing the greatness of the movie Roadhouse.

    So, even as you read this, Kid Chris is feverishly working away at the post-production of the interview, and it should be up on their site in a couple of days. It’ll teach you nothing, you won’t be a better person for it, but maybe you’ll get a good laugh or two out of it. Hopefully “with me,” not “at me.”

  • A few days ago, I wondered if the printing error in the DC Universe: Stories of Alan Moore trade paperback had been corrected. (Briefly: the text intro to “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” was omitted.)

    In response to the more recent post, commenter Carl told me that a copy he flipped through at a major chain bookstore appeared to have the error corrected. So, one reorder placed through Diamond later…I can indeed confirm the book is on its second printing, and the text intro to the Superman story is back in its rightful place at the top of the splash page.

    The Killing Joke endpapers are still AWOL, however.

  • Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News — once seen, it cannot be unseen:


    And yes, the text tag in that video refers to Harry’s marriage yesterday. Details, of sorts, can be found here (along with the video you just endured above). Congratulations to the happy couple.

Sorry, this domain is not for sale.

§ July 15th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Sorry, this domain is not for sale.

from Man-Bat #2 (Feb-Mar 1976) by Martin Pasko, Pablo Marcos & R. Villamonte


Three things the Ten-Eyed Man doesn’t like to do:

1. Pick his nose.

2. Thumbwrestle with the Ten-Penised Man.

3. Wipe.


Found on the eBay:

“ADAM West Signed Check BATMAN ZAP POW BAM….* REAL *”

“Authentic Autographed Check with original signature of Adam West best known as BATMAN…… Check is in very good condition with normal bank markings and cancellations. Check is from 1981 and payable to State Farm . It is boldly signed in Blue Ink.”

“BOLDY.” Take that, evildoers.


We got a couple Marvel key books in a collection the other day that we hadn’t had in the shop for a while: Giant-Size X-Men #1, introducing the new team, and it was all downhill from there; and Amazing Spider-Man #129, featuring the first appearance of the Punisher. I only mention them here because 1) in the case of the X-Men, I felt like being a smartass, and 2) the ASM #129 reminded me of the huge crash in popularity of the Punisher from the mid-’90s. That crash can probably be tied to the general comics market crash of about the same time, at least as a symptom of the overall damage being done to the marketplace. It wasn’t just that sales were dropping across the board, but that once popular characters were being outright rejected by the still-remaining fanbase. Just plain character burnout? A conscious (or even subconscious) realization of the usage of said character, as a sales-bumping guest-star, being part of the market’s poor health?

There’s probably an overlong, confusingly-written essay in me on that very topic, but that’s for another day, I think. No, I just wanted to bring up a brief flash of memory from that middle period of the 1990s, when we had a stack of Amazing Spider-Man #129s all priced up and sittin’ pretty in our big ol’ glass case, just waiting for a Punisher fan with a few bills in his or her pocket to wander by and make a purchase.

Used to be, in the Good Old Days, we could turn over ASM #129s day in and day out. We had people hounding us for them constantly. Almost as soon as we got one in, it went away. And we were buying and selling them all the time. Seemed like every other collection we bought had one of those in it.

Then we ended up with a small stack of them. About half a dozen. Varying conditions. We thought “Wow, those will be gone in no time!”

Then no time passed. Then some time passed. Then a lot of time passed, and there they were, still in the case. The bloom was off the tree on the other side of the fence leading a horse, or something like that, and suddenly we went from having “1ST APPEARANCE OF THE PUNISHER WOO HOO” to “Do you have any cheaper copies of #129? I’m just trying to fill my Spider-Man run.”

And that’s how, with tears in our eyes and Shadowhawks in our quarter boxes, we ended up slashing the prices on those ASM #129s in order to move them out.

‘Course, now, what with a revived interest in the Punisher character, and increased demand for ’70s Amazing Spider-Man comics, we could have sold those ASM #129s for much more than we had them originally marked at the time, but What Can You Do? You can’t sit on everything, thinking its time will come again, or even come a first time.


No, really, this domain is NOT FOR SALE. I will, however, happily accept sponsors. “CAMEL CIGARETTES, HALLIBURTON, STARBUCKS, MARVEL COMICS, WALMART, THE RIAA, AND CHRIS SIMS PROUDLY PRESENT MIKE STERLING’S PROGRESSIVE RUIN.”

Oh, the possibilities. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? And if you were the Ten-Eyed Man, you’d be weeping from your fingers like nobody’s business, I bet.

The cruel, cruel incarceration of the Ten-Eyed Man.

§ July 14th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized § 1 Comment

from Man-Bat #2 (Feb-Mar 1976) by Martin Pasko, Pablo Marcos & R. Villamonte

"This is not war…this is pest control!"

§ July 13th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "This is not war…this is pest control!"

I don’t have much of a post at the moment, as I was busy catching up on the Doctor Who DVDs. And is there a better scene in season two than the Cybermen and the Daleks totally ranking on each other?


I submit, sir, that there is not.

Yes, I realize I’m, like, a year behind everyone else on the show. Don’t rub it in.


My completely mean-spirited and unfair exchange with Employee Jeff, as he was preparing to move some of our infrequently-accessed comic stock in the stockroom to somewhere out of the way, to make room for more in-demand material:

Employee Jeff: “Hey, is it okay if I move the Gambit comics to the top shelves? I need the space for these other X-books.”

Me: “Yeah, go ahead. No one cares about Gambit.”

Jeff: “Oooooh…don’t let the Gambit fans hear you say that!”

Me: “No worries…Gambit fans are weak and ungainly, and pose no threat.”

And then we laughed and laughed at Gambit and his fans, for we are cruel and heartless. And then I wept openly, for I realized this is all I have.


And now, for no good reason…Swamp Thing in a biplane:

from Saga of the Swamp Thing #8 (Dec. 1982) by Marty Pasko & Tom Yeates

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