The Redeath of Superman.
“Death of Superman” nostalgia seems primarily focused around “I used to have one of those black-bagged comics, what’re they worth?” and not so much “I want to read more stories about the Death of Superman,” it seems. I’m selling…okay on this new 30th Anniversary DoS special, particularly, and surprisingly given the price point, on the bagged edition. But, even though I have no reason to think this, and I know it’s not something that was going to happen, I can’t help but compare to when I sold the original version and we had a line down the block of people waiting to get into the shop.
Anyway, haven’t had a chance to read it yet myself (and yes, I got the bagged one), but I’ll have a more extensive report on it shortly. At least I get to extend the life of this ol’ blog category a bit longer.
Important thing about the 1992 Death of Superman story was its coverage on the Today Show and other news sources. There was a lot of interest by strangers but they were the kind of a-holes who thought that meant it was the very last copy of Superman ever to be published. I sold a hell of a lot more copies of the quickly collected $4.95 paperback than I did of Superman #75.
I had already pretty much given up on DC by 1992 but, of course, read the saga, which I thought was pretty well done from a marketing perspective but the story was kind of meh. I liked the Superman variations – I thought the idea was clever, actually. I did pick up Superman 75 of course, how could one not?
and yes, the non-comics buying public reaction was HILARIOUS. Only people who have never ever read a single comic book in their lives would think that Superman was really truly most sincerely dead.
Silly question- what if DC sold a new version of the bagged issue? Would that sell? Is there a market for such a gimmick?
Unless I’m misreading Mike, the bagged edition of this comic is selling better than he expected.
I want a regular version and a “bag only” edition, which will probably also require a cardboard rectangle to wrap the bag around. No sense in printing out a book I’m not actually going to read!
As a writer, I was telling a few people that DC’s easy out was that we never had an idea of how Kryptonians die, past kryptonite poisoning.
At the comic shop, the owner went big on the regular comic and low on the bagged. Which worked out well. This was back when comics were 75 cents. New comics were Thursday and on a good week we made about $1000 Thurs/Fri. We made $2600 that Thurs and I honestly remember little. The subscribers came in late in the day, for about six hours it was 75c 75c 75c.
We sold some black-bagged ones but kept about ten to hang behind the counter on Saturday. We sold them for ten bucks each.
And now ten bucks can get you two comics of most title, period.
“He died. He came back. The End!”
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