Okay, still trying to extract some old Batman ’89/early comics retailing memories from my head to supplement the last couple of posts. A few of you have contributed your own memories, and I shall be commenting upon them soon, oh yes, so prepare yourself for that.
As it turned out, I was talking to my old boss Ralph the other day and pestered him a bit about the impact the first Tim Burton Batman movie had on the shop. In line with what I told you the other day, Ralph said that business had pretty much exploded what with all the excitement over the film’s release, and while lots of different things were doing well, Batman comics and merchandise were of course doing the best. One thing he mentioned that I should have remembered was what happened to prices on the 1970s Joker series, which suddenly skyrocketed. Prior to this period of time, you could get them dirt cheap…I’d bought a copy of #1 for one slim dime at a comic book convention, and Ralph had issues scattered throughout his 50-cent bargain bins. Ralph recalled that when the Bat-craze hit, and prices shot up, he dug through the bargain bins to pull out all those Joker comics. Of course, one or two got missed, and Ralph would just have to cringe inwardly as he sold the $20 comic (or whatever it was) for four bits.
On a related note, I had asked Ralph what his invoices were like at the time…I had vague memories, but wanted some confirmation. Ralph said that during the boom years, the weekly comics invoice would easily reach several thousand dollars, at a time when DC and Marvel comic book prices were still, what, about $1.50 each, and indies were $2 to $3? Ralph said he was ordering hundreds of copies of several books and mostly selling through on them…and the back issue market was still strong enough that we were selling a lot of back-numbered comics as well. So basically money was just pouring in the door, to the extent that Ralph had bought a new truck about that time and paid for it entirely in cash. That’s the sort of thing that would probably set off alarms today, but back then, in the wild and crazy days of the late ’80s/early ’90s, ’twas no big deal.
As I’ve said in the past, when the crash came, it came quick, and we didn’t know it was a crash at the time. We figured it was a brief lull in sales, and that folks would be back, and orders continued to be placed as if sales would be back up shortly…and it eventually became fairly evident that wasn’t happening. For business to go from doing so well to [crickets] was a shock, and the store had nearly died before orders could be adjusted back to realistic levels. One specific example Ralph gave (and gave me permission to relate here) was having a new comics invoice that cost about $12,000, and then making only about $7,000 for that week. As you can imagine, having too many weeks like that could drive any business into the ground…and it did, for many comic shops at the time. We were able to ride it out, once we scaled orders back, and plus we had game products in the store that supplemented our income, and we were still the biggest comic shop in the area, so we still did some comics business. Oh, and pogs helped too. No, really.
It was a strange time to live through, and one that I hopefully learned from as I run my own store now (he said, juggling numbers to get those Marvel lenticular covers). Anyway, next time I’ll talk more Batman ’89 and less “I SURVIVED THE ’90s COMICS CRASH AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS FOIL-LOGOED SHADOWHAWK T-SHIRT.” If you have your own Batman ’89 memories, feel free to chip in!
So I get an email from Joe, and Joe sez to me, he sez: “there’s a new Swamp Thing toy out” and I sez “okay, well, off I go then, as there’s a Major Toy Store Chain along the path from my home to my place of employment at the Ventura Comic and Cardfight Vanguard Shop and Video Deli and I shall make a stop during my journey to work, oh yes.”
And what is this toy, you dare ask? Well, there are these things called “Squinkies,” it seems, which are little squishy rubbery toys that are indeed very very tiny and perfectly sized for fitting one or four into each nostril, not that I’ve ever done that, nor have I taken pictures of it, but there is a line of DC Comics Squinkies, and you can see Joe’s pics of his own purchases right here.
The deal here is that each package of twelve “Squinkies” includes three that are “blind-packaged,” so you can’t see what they are. Swamp Thing is one of those “blind-packaged” ones, apparently to avoid riots at toy stores as people rushed in and mobbed the aisles trying to get their hands on the latest Swampy item. The blind-packaged Squinkies not randomly packed, and if you were to pick up the package marked “Series 2,” you too could have a wee elemental that looks a little something…like this:
Here’s the little guy next to somethin’ to give you a sense of scale:
The other two “blind” Squinkies in the Series 2 package are Kamandi and Sinestro, the latter of which actually looks a little like a bee from the back, or maybe a member of Stryper, what with the yellow and black costume he’s wearing.
I almost, almost bought Series 1, since there was a little squishy Darkseid in that package, but, you know, it’s already problematic as it is that I purchased the one set.
So anyway, if you’re a Swamp Thing collector and you need one of these, look for the package with a picture of Green Lantern on the backer card in the lower right hand corner…also, note that a couple of other Squinkies in the package are Batman and Aquaman, to help you identify that you’ve got the right set. And when you’re buying your Squinkies, tell ’em Mike sent you…I mean, chances are pretty good they know a Mike, they’ll just assume you mean him.
§ May 10th, 2006§ Filed under pogsComments Off on Another look at Marvel Super Heroes POGs.
Well, a good chunk of them are just pictures of the characters, with their logos:
Then there are a handful of group shots:
Some group shots are “themed,” such as “Brusiers” (with Hulk, Venom, and the Thing), or “Fire ‘N Ice” (Human Torch and Iceman), or this one, featuring a skull motif:
This one brings up some vague memories of the Great POG Scare of the early ’90s, particularly that the “skull” POGs were considered more desirable, for some reason. Or maybe I’m confusing them with the “poison” POGs (not to be confused with these guys)…or maybe the skull POGs and the poison POGs were the same thing. I don’t remember. I don’t really want to remember.
At any rate, the themes get a little strained, like this one:
Because, you see, the Thing is rocky, and Ghost Rider…rolls, I guess, since he has a motorcycle. ROCK AND ROLL, DUDE.
And there are quite a few POGs that just have logos:
The sample pack we opened was primarily just logo POGs.
All those images above were taken from a promo poster we were sent a few days back, by the way. I’m half-tempted to put it up in the store just to see customer reactions: “No, not POGs! Not again! Nooooooooo-“(deep breath) “-ooooooooo!”
I think this attempted POG collectible revival may be about five-to-ten years too early for the typical 20-year “nostalgia gap” that most things like this seem to have. Assuming, of course, there will be nostalgic interest in these at any point in the future…most of my customers who had bought them as young’uns seem embarrassed by it now, and in my case, I’m embarrassed that I even sold them here at the shop.
Given that the superhero trading card market is fairly moribund (it primarily consists of people not buying new cards, but trying to sell their old Marvel sets to us and being surprised that they’re not worth much of anything now), I don’t think the tangentially-related superhero POG market is going to take off. Unless, of course, they sell it as a gaming item (since there is a game of sorts associated with POGs, mainly involving throwing things at other things) to the kids buying the Yu-Gi-Oh collectible card game and the like, but even the CCG market sorta looks like it’s slowing down.
POGs. Geez, of all the things I thought I’d never have to deal with again….
So I related this story on my Bluesky account (follow me there if you can, and I have a couple of spare invite codes if anyone needs ’em) where a customer came in looking for a present for a friend of his. Said friend was described as a “big collector” of comics during the ’90s, and wanted to find a special comic that would essentially symbolize that time in this person’s life.
Well, of course the initial thought that ran through my head was to run to the dollar bins and pull out a full run of Brigade, but I couldn’t do that to a complete and presumably innocent stranger. Plus, of course this customer was looking for something “giftworthy,” so we’re probably looking at a single issue of a comic that was a tad more substantial (i.e. dollar-iffic) than some random ’90s thing that was better off as a tree fished out of the Boxes of Misfit Comics.
My next thought was something like Spawn or Youngblood, both titles that in their own different, yet surprisingly similar, ways were emblematic of the excesses of that particular partial decade prior to the market’s Big Crunch.
But before I could voice these suggestions, my customer spotted an item that fit the bill perfectly, a special comic that is near and dear to my heart. Yes, friends, it could only be one thing:
Yes ineedy, the Death of Superman, Superman #75, rears its head yet again. After a couple of questions from the customer (“Is it the original? Is the bag sealed?”) I had me a sale and he had him a piece of 1990s comics history.
Anyway, after telling this story (in a much-truncated less-that-300-characters fashion) I posed the following question to my Bluesky pals: “what would you pick to be THE most 1990s comic book?”
I had quite a few responses, including one or two for books like Starman, which, you know, while definitely good, I’m not sure that’s exactly what I was looking for here. I mean, yes, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that very nicely done, high quality comics were in fact published, but I tend to associate (as I said earlier) publishing excesses to the earlier part of the decade, and “the stink of desperation” to the latter. Perhaps unfortunately, for having lived through it as a funnybook seller, my perspective is a little more cynical. Which is on me, admittedly.
Perhaps my question is better phrased “what most exemplified the” (here’s that word again) “excesses of the era?” The “Death of Superman” issue is certainly one aspect of it, the immense hype and overwrought demand for a “collectible” item. Which would also apply to, say, Youngblood #1, where a talk show appearance the night before release drummed up business for a comic that…mmm. perhaps was not the medium putting its best foot forward for an audience that normally did not buy comics. (And I wonder how many of these new folks, if any of them even bothered to look inside, still picture that as what all comics are like.)
Now I had some good suggestions for other titles, like pal Ian dropping Darker Image #1 on us (a title that promised big things but ultimately never made it past that first issue). Or stuff like X-Men #1 or X-Force #1, selling millions of copies on the basis of multiple covers or card inserts, representing the gimmicky methods publishers used to push comic sales above and beyond and reasoable (or healthy) expectation. (And I don’t need to tell you the multiple cover strategy is still in play today, on much smaller scales but for basically the same reasons.)
Or titles like Alley Cat, part of that small trend of basing comics around models/actresses, who would often have their pictures featured on the covers. (A precursor to the modern trend of “cosplay” covers, I think.) No less a personage than Rusty Shackles brought up the comic based on the mostly-forgotten Barbi Twins, for which I owe him my revenge.
But I think, personally, it comes down to pretty much any comic by Rob Liefeld…Youngblood, or X-Force #1, or Deathmate Red (another suggestion), or titles like that. It’s what I picture in my head when I think of my 1990s toiling in the comics mines, in between slinging POGs and wondering what these new Magic: The Gathering cards were all about.
I’ll ask you the same question: what is the most 1990s comic? I don’t mean “what’s your favorite 1990s comic” — I’ll get to that question eventually, when I’m done with my ’80s countdown — but what comic do you look at and think “yeah, this is what the ’90s comic industry was like, for good or for ill.” Please let me know in the comments.
Meanwhile, please enjoy this 1993 cable access comic book show I found on the YouTubes. WARNING: the DC Comics commercial at 11:55 will give you an aneurysm.
So thanks to Roel for pointing out my “forward/foreward” typo, which was dumb of me specifically because 1) I had the book right in front of me and it’s spelled out there, and 2) I had to correct myself when I typed the same word in an email, so I do know how to spell it. Ah, well, it wouldn’t be Progressive Ruin without any typoos.
Anyway, I’ve been going through some old CD-Rs and DVD-Rs of old files, and finding some oddball stuff. Like, here, enjoy a full box of Spawn POGs (or SPOGs) that I had at some point for sale on the eBays:
And here’s this thing, a blank template I created from the first Eclipse issue of Miracleman:
If you want a full-size version of this template for your artistic shenanigans, just drop me a line and I can email it to you. (Sorry, it’ll get hotlinked to death otherwise.)
Oh, and another thing…I’ve recently been reading Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema’s “Intelligent Hulk” storyline from the early to mid-1980s, leading up to the Hulk’s banishment to the Crossorads in #300. I started reading Incredible Hulk with #293, which is pretty much right at the final act of this story which more or less began around #270.
For about 2 1/2 years the status quo of the Hulk had changed from what everyone basically “knew” (either from the comic itself or from the TV show), which seemed like it was taking at least a slight risk. Even at the end, changing the Hulk back into an even more brutal, even cruel, version of the character was a little startling. It definitely laid the groundwork for following writer Peter David’s ten years of various versions of the Hulk, and pretty much the Hulk ’til today. (Not to leave out interim creator Al Milgrom, who was the fella what actually brought back the Grey Hulk before David got his hands on him.)
But what I thought was interesting, after Mantlo demonstrating repeatedly over the course of the storyline, that even with Banner’s mind controlling the Hulk’s body, he could still fall into a Hulk-ish rage if he wasn’t careful. This groundwork for Banner eventually losing control was put down sporadically, but not, like, overwhelmingly, and the danger of the old savage Hulk returning seemed…at least preventable.
Then Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars came along, where a whole gaggle of Marvel’s heroes vanished at the end of one of their issues, returned at the beginning of their next issues, and we were all extolled to read the 12-issue Secret Wars series to find out what happened to them between those installments.
In Hulk’s case, he came back with a broken leg and a bad attitude, suddenly a lot more cranky and violent than he had been just a month ago. Obviously things went poorly for ol’ Jadejaws during his Secret Excursion, causing his further mental decline.
However, reading it now, as a whole, rather than just the final few issues as I had originally…the pacing is off. Having so much of the Hulk’s decline happen elsewhere felt like something of a cheat after following the story in his own book for so long. Yes, everyone reading Marvel was expected to read Secret Wars, but even if you were planning to, the nature of the series meant that by the time you got to Hulk’s problems there, the actual Incredible Hulk book would have moved on into its new direction. A part of the story’s development had been excised from the main book, put into another writer’s hands in another series, and then deal with those repercussions back in Hulk. Ah well, that’s the Marvel Universe for you.
To be fair, #300 was looming ahead, so a change to the status quo was going to come anyway. And realistically, how much more of “Banner is or is not losing control?” plot events did we need? It would have been nice if we’d got more of Mantlo’s Intelligent Hulk, but it’s enough that he basically changed what a Hulk story is for…well, all time.
From the “About Us” page on the old Ralph’s Comic Corner website:
“In the late 1970s, Ralph Holt joined forces with a friend of his and began selling comic books and baseball cards at the Santa Barbara swap meet and conventions all over California. Eventually they opened up the Andromeda Bookshop, a store specializing in science fiction books and comic books, in Santa Barbara, CA. After a couple of years, Ralph decided to head out on his own. He made his way about 40 miles down the coast to Ventura, CA, and, in May of 1980, opened up the very first incarnation of Ralph’s Comic Corner. Originally located in the back of a thrift store (where it literally was just a corner), he carried only new and used comics. Ralph moved to a larger location, with his very own storefront, down the road in 1984. In 1990 Ralph moved the shop across the street to an even larger store. In 1997, the store doubled in size again, having moved next door to its current location of 2379 E. Main Street, becoming the Cultural Hub of Ventura County. Along the way, the store added trading cards (both sport and non-sport), role-playing games, science fiction paperbacks, card games, trade paperbacks, T-shirts, posters, board games, Japanese animation and manga, Pogs, and everything else you might expect to find at a Giant Pop Art Emporium.”
Not mentioned in that history I wrote for that site way back when:
1. My hiring in 1988 to replace departing employee Ray.
2. Seth, who’d been working at a comic shop north of us, coming down and buying out the gaming half of the store in the mid-ish 2000s, thus launching his own store “Seth’s Games and Anime.” Which means, yes, there were two stores operating side by side in the same location. Even, for a while, with different hours, which took some doing, let me tell you.
3. A number of years later, Seth would take over pretty much the entire shop save for Ralph’s own back issues. And eventually Ralph would stop being an active participant in the shop, meaning the entire store became Seth’s Games and Anime. (Ralph would continue to have an office there, and sell comics independently of the shop…does this all sound complicated? It is. At one point between Points 2 and 3 I was getting two paychecks, one from Ralph, one from Seth, which meant I have to keep track of what hours I worked for whom.)
So anyway, as of Point 3 “Ralph’s Comic Corner” pretty much stopped being its own storefront, and while there was a continuity of existence between Ralph’s store and Seth’s, the Comic Corner as we knew it was over.
Which takes me to the current sad news: Seth’s Games and Anime will be closing its doors for good at the end of this month.
As anyone who’s been following my social media probably knows, I’ve had some feelings about this. Now I’m at my own shop, a few towns over, and have been for years. This closing doesn’t directly impact me. But nonetheless, it’s left me somewhat discombobulated since I’d heard the news.
Part of it is that continuity of existence I mentioned before. Yes, it’s no longer Ralph’s Comic Corner, nor has it been in a while, but it’s still where I worked for many years, learning the trade and creating relationships, several of which I still maintain at my current shop. I moved the contents of this store twice, I built shelves and arranged stock, created displays and tried hard to make it a friendly, accessible place. Working for Ralph’s and later Seth’s represents well over a quarter century of my life.
“It was the apprenticeship and booster rocket that helped get you where you are now.”
Ralph’s Comic Corner, and the shop it became later, loom large in my history and development. And I guess I always sort of took for granted that they’d always be there. But as I was there the other night, picking up some stock for my own store at Seth’s urging, I knew this would be the last time I’d be seeing the inside of this building. It definitely wasn’t the comic shop I remember, but I could look around and see where it had been, beneath the new arrangement of fixtures and varieties of stock that existed there now. When I come back and the building’s been rented out to, I don’t know, the Screen Doors for Submarines store, even that connection to my past will be gone.
So, it’s been a pretty sad day for a lot of us, whether we were old-timey Ralph’s customers or folks who just started popping into Seth’s recently. I of course wish everyone there the best.
Ralph will still be around…I’m still doing business with him, and I’m sure he’ll turn up filling in for me at the shop once in a while.
Speaking of Ralph, pal (and also former Ralph’s employee) Cully sent me a scan of a panel that appeared in Gilbert Hernandez’s Luba #6 (2002)…warning, dirty words, don’t look kids:
In case you didn’t know, Ralph’s Comic Corner was the first comic shop anywhere that carried Love and Rockets, the original black and white covered one they self-published. Ralph often said “I told them to send it to Fantagraphics, that was the kind of thing they’d publish!” (Also, Jaime noted that Ralph’s was the first comic shop he and his brothers had ever been to.)
Ralph did make an appearance in an early Love and Rockets…#4 (1983), to be exact, in a story by Mario:
Mario would sneak Ralph into the mag again in issue #50.
Here’s one of Ralph’s appearances in Groo the Wanderer #28 (1987) by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones…Sergio was just over the hill from us in Ojai, and would pop in on a regular basis:
And here’s Ralph in Tom Foxmarnick’s story for Taboo #2 (1989)…Tom’s an old friend of Ralph, and in fact drew Ralph’s business cards and various flyers and even that logo at the beginning of this post (a very pixelated GIF from the website…I’m sure I’ve got a good black and white scan of the original art somewhere):
By the way, the photo references Tom took of Ralph for this story are pretty great, but I haven’t seen them in 30 years. Hopefully Ralph can turn them up again.
Ralph’s shown up in other places here and there as well…both Ralph and I have a “thank you” in Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics, as well as the recent Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures omnibus collecting Evan Dorkin’s work on the title. And at one point whoever was putting together the “Death of Gwen Stacy” paperback for Marvel inexplicably didn’t have a good scan of Amazing Spider-Man #122’s cover, and called us for one in exchange for a credit in the book. Sure enough, when said book was released there was a “thanks to Ralph’s Comic Corner” inside…at least for the first printing. For all I know Marvel’s still using our scan for things.
It’s fun stuff like this that I’ll try to hang onto, the memories and occasionally weird experiences I had in my 2 1/2 decades of working for Ralph’s and Seth’s. The stores may no longer be with us, but everything I learned there is still with me now, and informs how I approach this business. As the cliché goes, so long as someone remembers, they’ll never really be gone.
“Q: I’ve always harbored a low key ambition to collect/read all the Malibu-verse books. I remember liking the printing and art as I flipped thru them in the day. But would they scratch that ‘lets read a Comics Universe’ itch?
I appreciate your thoughts. thank you.”
I was thinking about this since the question was posed, and was all ready to go with a discussion with what little I could recall of the Ultraverse, Malibu’s superhero universe imprint that launched in 1993. But then I remembered “oh yeah they had a superhero universe type thing that preceded that.” (I mean, aside from their brief stint publishing Image Comics, of course.)
Now I gotta be honest…my exposure to the initial Malibu-verse line was fairly limited, beyond, you know, racking and selling the things at the shop I worked at. Nothing against them in the slightest, or against the people making them (disclosure: I know Dave Olbrich, co-founder and former publisher of Malibu, and have had friendly dealings with other co-founder Tom Mason), but the 1990s were a pretty wild time for comics publishing and I could only pick and choose so much to read.
I will tell you one that, somehow, I just learned now (or had learned before and forgotten in the ensuing decades) by looking things up on the Wikipedias is that the initial “Malibu-Verse,” as represented by The Protectors (pictured) and its handful of spinoffs, were in fact revivals of now public-domain superheroes originally published by Centaur Publications in the 1940s. You know, had I realized that at the time, I may have been more inclined to stick my nose between the covers of some of those books.
Eventually Malibu ran a crossover storyline called “Genesis” (not to be confused with) that roped in some other of their titles into an attempt at a shared universe thingie (including Dinosaurs for Hire by the aforementioned Mr. Mason, a rudely funny comic), and despite this attempt at broadening the line (plus promotional POGs!) the line was effectively supplanted by Malibu’s launch of the Ultraverse in 1993.
As to scratching that “superhero univesre” itch, OneWordLong, you’ve probably gleaned already that I can’t speak too much to that. I mean, it all looks fine, and given its relatively short existence, it probably wouldn’t be too much of a burden to find them all. I liked Dinosaurs for Hire, but that’s a later added-value insert into the Malibu-Verse, and probably not what you were thinking about. But at the very least, get your mitts on the one with the die-cut hole through the entirety of the book (kinda the more precise version of this cover enhancement).
Now Ultraverse…honestly, I thought this was what you were referring to, OneWordLong, and given the breadth and depth of the line compared to its predecessor, surely you can understand why one would stick in one’s memory over the other. This was a much more ambitious project than the Malibu-Verse, with Big Creators and hologram covers and all sorts of those 1990s comics publishing shenanigans. It was a lot closer in style, I think, to the Marvel and DC comics that readers were more accustomed to, so even just beyond the number of releases it was bound to gain a little more traction in the marketplace.
Like Malibu-Verse, I didn’t sample a lot of it, but I did read a couple of series. There was Prime, a take on the Captain Marvel/Shazam dynamic where a boy is able to turn into an adult superhero (which had some nice art by Norm Breyfogle) but in retrospect perhaps reads a little differently now that we know of the extracurricular activities of one of the writers. It actually was a pretty good book, I thought at the time, about childhood conceptions of adulthood and heroism, but…yeah, it’s hard to revisit now. There were later issues not involving that writer, however.
I also enjoyed Sludge, of course, given it was another take on the Swamp Thing/Man-Thing type of character, with the bonus that my favorite Man-Thing scripter Steve Gerber was the writer. Again, been a while since I’ve read these (but they’re still there in the collection, waiting for that far-off day when I’ll have free time), but I remember enjoying them. One quirk about the character that I remember is that, due to his injured mental state, he’d mix up words in his head…like thinking “I gotta smash that doily” instead of “I gotta smash that door” — you know, like that, only better written because I’m no Steve Gerber.
Oh, and then there was Rune, featuring one of the Big Bads of the Ultraverse. The series primarily grabbed attention due to the work of Barry Windsor-Smith, but interest wore thin once he was off the book (which is a terrible thing to say given that the follow-up team did fine work, but the people wanted BWS, who’s a tough act to follow).
There was a lot of interesting stuff under this imprint, and if you’re looking for a weird short-run superhero universe to get into, OneWordLong, this might be a little more what you’re wanting versus the previous Malibu-Verse. Unfortunately, with Marvel’s buyout of Malibu, the end of the Ultraverse gets tangled up in the Marvel Universe, which likely causes the thread to be lost, or at least diluted in relation to whatever shared universe the U-books were putting together. (And given that current owners, Marvel, seem unlikely to bring any of the Ultraverse properties back*, there’s at least a definite end to its existence.)
Some of the titles had followings, at least for a while, after the imprint’s demise. Still had people looking for Mantra (about an ancient male warrior trapped in a modern woman’s body…given our modern increased sensitivity toward transgender issues, not sure if that’s aged well or if it even relates), Firearm (written by James Robinson), and Lord Pumpkin (a more horror-edged comic). Exiles was interesting, a team book that had been solicited for further issues, but surprisingly killed off in issue #4 to, I guess, show how new and unpredictable the Ultraverse was (a publishing trick that was equally annoying many years later when The Walking Dead pulled that same nonsense).
Oh, and there was the team book Ultraforce, where (good news) early issues had George Perez art, but (bad news) were written by that writer I didn’t name who also worked on Prime. So, you know, up to you if you want to deal with that.
And there you are, OneWordLong, simultaneously more and less information than what you were looking for. I don’t know which briefly-existing superhero universe you would prefer, but you can either pick the one with the cover die-cut into the shape of the hero’s head, or you can pick the one where a version of the #0 of one of their titles came with a VHS copy of an original movie based on the series. I ENVY YOU NOT THE CHOICE, MY FRIEND.
BEHOLD! Part Three of mumblety-mumble of looking back at your predictions for the 2020 comics industry! (Here are parts one and two.)
And here’s yet another reminder to contribute your predictions for 2021, a year that’s already going way too fast!
A correction first…last time I said the Warhammer 40,000 comic book was strictly based on the tabletop war game of the same name, and thus not exactly based on a role-playing game as predicted by reader Bruce. Well, Bruce corrects me, saying the comic does indeed incorporate elements from the role-playing versions of the Warhammer milieu. For the record, I do know of the Warhammer RPG line, as I sold it for years at the previous place of employment…I just didn’t think it was involved in this comic! I STAND CORRECTED, thanks Bruce!
Now to more predictions!
DK returns with these forecasts
[SPOILERS for Doomsday Clock and recent Daredevil abound]
“1) The Mime and the Marionette will be dead (well, comic book dead) by January 2021.”
I had to remind myself, as while I remember the broad strokes of the series, some of the details escaped me. One of those details was the fate of Mime and Marionette. I remember the fate of their son, but had to check online as to their own “endings” in the series. Anyway, they survived. At leaset until Doomsday Clock II: The Clockening.
“2) At least one Major Marvel Hero replaced by someone of a different gender/race/religion/species as a legacy hero with an all-new #1. Not a mutant or an Iron Man.
“I’m hoping for Daredevil.”
I’m going to say DING DING DING not only on the Major Marvel Hero being replaced, but on the specific character as well! We got Elektra in DD’s clothing in #25, causing one of those last-second speculator rushes that I love so much, he said sarcastically. No new first issue for Darelektra, but, you know, give Marvel time.
“3) The next DCEU Movie Phase will include Booster Gold. Like they should have from jump.”
No specific plans that I can see, but certainly lots of people hoping he’ll show up in one someday! Hey, I’d like to see it!
• • •
Brian’s a very naughty boy with
“1. With the new Phase of Marvel films and the arrival of the Disney+ shows (along with the end of Marvel Television as an entity), we’ll see the shift in how the MCU carries the story: the main sequential narrative will be done now in the shows, with the films becoming more stand-alone tent pole pieces adding large elements to the universe (since there reaches a tipping point of “you need to see 25 other movies first to understand this one). In an odd way, this will make Marvel and DC’s films more alike (where DC wanted to be like the early sequential Marvel films, Marvel will end up with oddball stand-alone films like DC).”
Well, as we’ve discovered time and again in looking back at predictions, anything involving “movies” is kind of up in the air given the pandemic’s affect on film distribution and presentation. The delayed Black Widow looks to be like one of those standalone films you’re mentioning, but I feel like things will continue as-is, with movies leading the charge and the TV shows providing support. Not sure what the new throughline for Marvel movie continuity will be, but that’s a formula Marvel had great success with, and nothing resists change like success. We’ll see (maybe this year!).
“2. The return of Young Justice on DC Universe and Clone Wars on Disney+ will only be the beginning of new seasons of old, cancelled cartoons — now re-emerging on streaming platforms. After the slow emergence of the old BTAS/STAS/JLU voice cast in recent DC Animated films, one of these will be an actual continuation in some manner of the beloved Bruce Timm DCAU.”
I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but now that the DC direct-to-video flicks have discarded the New 52-esque continuity they were maintaining, maybe a revival/continuation of the Timmiverse cartoons is a little more possible!
“3. After its purchases of Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Fox, Disney will next purchase Hasbro, during current negotiations over extension of their long term deal on Disney and Marvel toys. While this raises a number of possibilities over synergy in toys and games (as well as use of the Dungeons & Dragons game engine with a number of other Disney properties), folks will mainly care about having the old D&D cartoon on Disney+ and making Dungeon Master/Baby Yoda memes.”
I was nearly taken in by an April Fools article titled “Disney Buys Hasbro and Mattel” and I just about plotzed. “I would have heard about that, right?” I thought, until I saw the article’s day. Sigh.
It would be nice to have Dungeons and Dragons on demand, though, despite it likely causing a whole new generation to speculate about the non-existent “last episode.”
“Neil Gaiman. Mark Buckingham. New Miracleman comics. Whadda need, a road map?”
Keep those home fires burning, Adam.
“In an attempt to flood the market with Eternals comics, Marvel even reprints something with Blackwulf. The target audience of me, and only me, does not even buy the $1 True Believers book because it’s just a reprint of something I already paid $1.50 for 16 years ago.”
Couldn’t find any recent Blackwulf stuff…no comics, no cameos, no nothin’. But it was hardly necessary since Marvel flooded the Eternals with…like, thirty different covers of .
• • •
Scott Rowland heads for shore with
“1. DC will expand their 100 page super spectacular line to include more tie-ins to their TV shows. Star Girl will be the breakout hit.”
The $9.99 line continues, but no more tied into the TV shows than they ever were. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do more to tie into the Stargirl TV show (popular enough to get a second season, at least!) but I swear it feels like DC is afraid to make money, sometimes. Putting a photo cover on the Stargirl collection, and making those Crisis on Infinite Earths 80 page giants is something, but…man, I don’t know. Sooner or later someone’s going to take charge of DC who’s gonna say “we’re tossing all this nonsense out and just doing comics that look like the movies/TV shows.”
“2.Marvel and DC will enter into an agreement to make their crossover books like JLA/Avengers and the Amalgam titles available in special editions to benefit the Hero Initiative. (Ok, that may be a wish not a prediction.)”
Few things make me madder as a retailer than the fact that JLA/Avengers remains out of print. I could sell those like…a really hot thing that sold well. Look, it’s been a long day, the metaphor-makin’ part of my brain is tired.
“3. Saga will return, but to a much less enthusiastic audience in an example of the Miracleman effect.”
We remain Saga-single-issue-less, but the trades still sell relatively well. At least some audience will still be around when they return. I hope.
• • •
David Alexander McDonald farms out the following
“Marvel Studios will have a rough 2020 theatrically, but prove out on Disney+ resulting in more series announcements…though no Squirrel Girl live action do-over yet. Man-Thing, however, will get put into development, complete with the Giant Size tag. Marvel Comics will continue to be mostly inconsequential.”
Cramming a lot of predictions in there, David! But they’re all related, more or less, so I’ll give it a pass. And yes, Marvel did indeed have a rough time in the theaters last year…and so did every other movie studio, for obvious reasons. Disney’s focus on their streaming channel hasn’t included debuting their new Marvel mmovies there, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time. No word on Squirrel Girl or Man-Thing, but that’s make a good team up. And the comics themselves are, as usual, an afterthought.
“DC Universe will be mainly about the comics. The Snyder cut will not appear. DC will increase the numbers of Album-style comics but otherwise be generally inconsequential. There will be no 2020 crossover in the Berlantiverse. Dan DiDio will kill the remains of the Age series of omnibuses, disappointing the five remaining geriatric fans who buy them.”
DC did indeed announce the scaling back their streaming service to just comics (supposed to happen in February, I think). Snyder cut keeps getting teased, but not released yet. A few album came out last year, but it looks like it’s thinning down a bit for this year. We’ll see. No crossover for the CW shows (aside from the end of “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which started in 2019). The Bronze/Silver Age books are still happening, slowly, but if they ever put out a “Copper Age” omnibus titled as such, I’m going to kick somebody.
“The indies have a bumper year due to Kirkman! and Lemire writing ten books a week apiece.”
Wait, that’s only one prediction in this section! Are you feeling well, David? Anyway, indies took a hit just like everyone else, but things seem to be recovering. Kirkman and Lemire seem to have kept their output down to a dull roar.
“Mike Sterling finally abandoned all hope of a Pogs revival and buries his slammers deep in the desert.”
Look, that’s four predictions (or, um, paragraphs of multiple predictions) and I don’t have to tell you what I may have done with my slammers. My beautiful, beautiful slammers.
• • •
Chris Gumprich cashes in these
“. Apparently DC has brought back Legion and the Justice Society. I predict these will be cancelled before the end of the year.”
Legion’s still a thing! Justice Society hasn’t yet received its new book, so it remains precancelled.
“2. DC will do yet another linewide reboot that will be a spectacular failure and lead to another reboot in 2021 (remind me I said this when it comes time for the 2021 predictions).”
They managed to stave that off a bit, unless you count the ending of Death Metal. Here’s hoping they keep away from rebootery for a while.
“3. We will see another issue of ASTRO CITY. (Kurt, I know you’re reading this.)”
Are you talking about my old customer Kurt? Because I’m pretty sure he does read this site. Not so sure about Astro City‘s creaetor Kurt Busiek, though. Regardless, no new Astro City yet (which is supposed to be in graphic novel form, versus the periodical format). I’m sure he’ll get to it when he gets to it, and it’ll be good.
• • •
That’s all for now…we’ll pick back up on Monday! Thanks for reading, pals.
So remember that time I asked you all for questions and you gave me a bunch of questions and I started to answer your questions until I got distracted by other questions which raised more questions? Anyway, I’m back to your questions:
DolphusRaymond dives in with
“Between Doomsday Clock’s [JSA]/LSH simmer, the return of Wally West (and consequent ‘no twins’ meltdowns), and the Zatanna “OMG Young Justice really existed what does it mean?!?” in the new Young Justice, do you see post-Crisis pre-New52 continuity making a comeback?
Is this my generation’s ‘I miss Barry and Hal bring them back?’
Will the comics world ever see more than 3 of the 52 multiverses published at the same time? (I count Main Continuity, Freedom Fighters Earth-X, and Shazam! …I don’t know if Bendis creates a pocket universe around his writing or not.)”
Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths it seems like creators at DC kept looking for ways to bring back the stuff they liked from the pre-Crisis continuity. And of course later reality-changing events like Zero Hour and The Kingdom were intended to bend our new DC Universe back into a shape somewhat resembling the Old DC Universe, and all these reboots and retcons and so on is what brought us to the point of having a story where all the continuity problems were pinned on Dr. Manhattan, which is probably not a thing anyone saw coming a few years back.
Anyway, I don’t really see DC just straight up going back to the way things were post-Crisis/pre-New 52. Like, just ignoring everything that’s happened since and starting right up again from just before all these reboots/relaunches happened, like restoring from a back-up. But I imagine DC will continue its habit of picking and choosing the pieces from the past that it likes and reworking them into the comics of the present. We essentially have the post-Crisis Superman in our current DCs and that seems to be going okay so far.
As far as the “number of different universes in play at any given time at DC…I don’t know. Do the Sandman books count as a parallel universe? Scooby Team-up?
But everyone, hold everything: things are about to get more complicated (and more headachey for your retailer pal Mike) if this business about DC’s “5G” plan is true. So, basically, ignore everything I wrote prior to this paragraph because I’m honestly just hearing about this supposed coming hoohar from DC right now. So now I suppose the ultimate answer to your question, DolphusRaymond, is “who the hell knows?”
• • •
Synonymous means only one thing when asking
“So why _was_ the ‘Mike’s Magical Comics Fort’ name rejected?”
Mr. S is referring to this lightly prophetic post of mine (posted only a few months prior to, well, my actually opening a shop), in which I suggest that as a possible name for my no-longer-so-theoretical store. (Though I’m kind of partial to the store name “Ventura Fun Time Comic Book/Magic Card Store and Video Deli,” originally posted here…though I’d probably have to change “Ventura” to “Camarillo.”)
Anyway, I didn’t use the “Magical Comics Fort” name because people would continally come in thinking I had Harry Potter comics and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Unless they accepted Books of Magic comics as a sufficient replacement, of course.
RELATED: Brian followed up the previous question with
“Is it true that Mike’s Magical Comics Fort actually does exist, except that it’s your secret fortress of solitude, with statues of Swamp Thing and Sluggo holding up a giant long box in the central hall?”
And it’s constructed entirely from pogs.
• • •
De demands da dope:
“After crossover minis with Star Trek and Green Lantern, what’s the next natural mash-up with Planet of the Apes?”
Ooh, I immediately want to say Twilight Zone, given Rod Serling’s connection to both, but maybe that’s a little too wide-ranging an idea. Um…Kamandi seems like the natural one, given POTA was the inspiration for the Last Boy on Earth in the first place. Or…I mean, you can always throw Superman or Batman into any crossover thingie like this and probably come up with something workable.
Oh, wait, I’ve got it…Swamp Thing! Yeah, I know, gee, who saw that coming, but hear me out: “PLANT ELEMENTAL OF THE APES.” Don’t tell me you don’t want to see that.
• • •
ExistentialMan makes me ponder my existence with
“What do you consider the single best year of comics publication in your lifetime?”
Holy shit. I mean, pardon my use of the word “holy,” but man, that’s a good question. I’m going to say 1986. You had Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, the relaunch/reboot of the Superman books by John Byrne (hey, I think they still hold up, mostly), you had Dan Clowes show up with Lloyd Llewellyn which I bought off the stands because it looked so amazing, the first Mage series by Matt Wagner was still going, there was the two part “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” by Alan Moore, Curt Swan and pals, Englehart and Staton’s Green Lantern turned into Green Lantern Corps and started to get weird (and also introduced Kilowog!), Dark Horse Comics and Slave Labor Graphics started up, we had ‘Mazing Man, Flaming Carrot was still going, Cerebus was still good, Love and Rockets was around (as it still is!), Swamp Thing hit issue #50, we had regular Groo the Wanderers…man, there are lots of things to love about 1986. I’m sure I could pick out any other year and find things to love about it, but 1986 was the first one to come to mind.
Oh, and the New Universe started in 1986, too. Don’t forget that!
• • •
Jason Sandberg contributes TOO MANY QUESTIONS but he advertises on my site so I will let his filthy lucre sway me into breaking the “one question per customer” rule:
“What holds the Winter Soldier’s mask on his face?”
Our hopes and dreams.
“Am I correct that ‘Captain America and the Mighty Avengers’ issue 9 was better than the entirety of ‘Avengers: Time Runs Out?'”
Since you advertise on my site, I’m going to say “yes, you are correct, sir.” I mean, mostly because I’ve read neither and have no basis for judgement.
“What dark and sinister medial moguls are thwarting the progress of the DREADSTAR film/TV franchise?”
Alas, it appears the frailty of human flesh may be the cause, as according to this interview with Jim Starlin, the producer died and that kinda scuttled their plans. He’s still hopeful to get it on TV, but, well, you know how it is.
“Robbie Reyes ‘ghost rided’ a dead Celestial. Could he ‘ghost rider’ Galactus’s Taa II? Where would he go, what would he do?”
“Rided?” Anyway, I suppose Mr. Reyes could pull that off. As to the question “Where does a Ghost Rider ‘ghost-riding’ Galactus’ home base/spaceship go?” and answer is of course “anywhere he wants to.”
“If I ever make it out to the West Coast, where would we go for lunch, dude?”
Anywhere that takes your credit card, my friend, because I’m not going to restaurants too often on a comic shop owner’s salary.
• • •
And with that bout of sheer favoritism, I think that’s enough Question Time for today. I’ll try to get to the remaining questions in short order instead of making you all wait so long again. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll see you Monday.
So I got a set of these in a collection the other day:
…and by “set,” for those of you who weren’t around in the early 1990s to experience this particuliar phenomenon, I mean “all five initially released versions of X-Force #1, each prepacked with one of five different trading cards sealed within the polybag.”
Now your pal Old Man Mike was there manning the comic shop front lines when this comic was unleashed. We had tons of them, and as I recall we set up a table near the front of the store to put them all out for easy access, divided up by inserted card. Which means, yes, we had to go through the cases and divvy ’em up.
The point is, we ordered a lot, and we sold a lot. And yes, I know you bought them. Yes, you, right there, reading this blog post right now. I saw you do it. We caught it on camera. WE HAVE EVIDENCE. Anyway, plenty of copies got circulated out there, and we had a reasonable, and surprisingly not overwhelming, stock of copies of that first issue stashed away for future back issue sales.
Well, things go as they go, and what was eventually became not, and X-Force and its ilk fell out of favor…as, well, did most comics as the ’90s wore on, in favor of pogs and Magic: The Gathering. And back issue demand for that particuliar first issue of X-Force did trail off, even as the series kept on keeping on.
It never fell entirely out of awareness, of course…X-Force #1 remained a notable artifact of the excesses of comic collecting in the 1990s, a cautionary tale along with the 5 covers for X-Men #1 and the “bagged” editions of Spider-Man #1 and thankfully the industry has learned its lesson and no longer depends on multiple variant editions of its publications to shore up sales.
The end result was that, for many years, X-Force #1 was not generally traded in the aftermarket for premium prices. If anything, it was slash-priced, marked down to move, for the love of God please take these off our hands…dollar boxes aplenty were fed by copies of this book across this great nation of ours, and that’s just how things were. Not to say that some venues didn’t keep copies in the bins marked at ye olde Overstreet prices, and they did sell occasionally, but its star had long since faded.
CUT TO: your pal Mike, getting a collection of comics over the weekend…some good stuff, some stuff basically dumped on me, but most of it still usable. Within was that set of X-Force #1s that I mentioned about 4 or 5 thousand words ago. I’d been literally turning these down as they showed up in the hands of hopeful sellers coming through my door, but, eh, here they in this box of stuff I got, might as well price ’em up and put them out.
And evidently it’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity of price this issue, because imagine my surprise to find out the guide has the version with the Deadpool card priced at $18. The one with the Cable card is priced the same. The other three card variations are a somewhat more reasonable, but still seemingly optimistic $6.
I feel like, at some point during one of the three or four previous times that Deadpool’s popularity peaked, that I did check our price guide and/or online sales to see if there was any increased demand for the Deadpool-card version of X-Force #1, and at that point it was big ol’ “nobody cares.”
But, obviously, things have changed. My initial thought was my pet theory about things that used to be common and in deep stock at stores through the ’90s boom period have suddenly become harder to come by, as shops from that era die out and, sometimes, take their stock with them. Or that copies that did make it into the hands of collectors were either damaged due to poor storage (a not-infrequent problem, even with the hardcore collectors at the time) or just discarded outright (after losing interest and/or failed attempts at recouping their money via resale back to shops that either didn’t want them, or offered only a pittance).
Mentioning this on Twitter, I received this response from Tony:
“They are everywhere and people will drop $5-10 easy on them. Its shocking. It’s a mix of the age of the book, new fandom from the popularization of Marvel movies, and those early 90s fans that are now wanting to rebuild their collection.”
And yes, those are factors as well. I know “age” doesn’t always equate with “price,” but I’ve seen demand for the novelty publications (bagged, like this X-Force, or foil/chrome/die-cut covers) from customers who hadn’t even been born yet when these items were in their heyday. And, like Tony mentioned, I’ve had customers who did collect these as they were new, who had since lost or discarded their collections and now want to reconstruct them. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia, friends.
The actual pricing seems pretty…extreme, and my response to Tony that it might be a case of “hot because it’s hot.” Not priced according to any supply/demand thing, but because “Deadpool is in a movie and these should be hot now.” The X-Force #1 with the Deadpool card is priced a little higher than normal, people notice, start picking them up, which encourages more up-pricing, a self-fulfilling prophecy that cycles on and on.
This is not to ignore that variation with the Cable card, also priced at $18 in the guide, which surely must solely be the fault of the character’s appearance in the Deadpool movie. That they’re both $18 makes me think it was specifically the movie causing the price bump, since in comics alone Cable isn’t nearly as popular as Deadpool, unless I’m about to hear from the International Cable Fan Club in my comments here.
So anyway, that was quite the shock, mostly because I’d expected this to happen a while back, it didn’t, I figured that was that, then suddenly IT HAPPENED. Don’t know how many people are actually successfully selling these for nearly $20 a pop. A quick look at the eBay shows it trading for far less than that…there seems to be more interest in issue #11 of the series (the “first appearance” of the real Domino, as it had been an imposter Domino in the comics prior to that…um, SPOILER, I guess).
Still not sure what I’m going to price my copy at. Maybe $100, really screw the curve there. But while I think about that, here’s a picture of me holding that bountiful treasure of X-Force #1s, as taken by the Mighty Matt Digges:
Hey, if you buy all these from me, maybe I can afford a razor to shave my face!
(PREVIOUSLY ON PROGRESSIVE RUIN: would you believe I’ve written about X-Force and the Deadpool card before? Here and here? I can’t believe it either. Look for my next post about this in 2022!)
I will tell you one that, somehow, I just learned now (or had learned before and forgotten in the ensuing decades) by looking things up 
Now Ultraverse…honestly, I thought this was what you were referring to, OneWordLong, and given the breadth and depth of the line compared to its predecessor, surely you can understand why one would stick in one’s memory over the other. This was a much more ambitious project than the Malibu-Verse, with Big Creators and hologram covers and all sorts of those 1990s comics publishing shenanigans. It was a lot closer in style, I think, to the Marvel and DC comics that readers were more accustomed to, so even just beyond the number of releases it was bound to gain a little more traction in the marketplace. 
