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Wolverine Back Issue Talk, Part Two: You’ve Taken Yer Best Shot!

§ December 18th, 2024 § Filed under wolverine § 4 Comments

So in Part One, we started to take up the gauntlet thrown down by philfromgermany as to which Wolverine comics may or may not retain demand as the years carry on.

Now I should say, I’m writing these articles from the perspective of one longtime funnybook retailer — your pal, me — and the local marketplace to which I’ve been selling for the past smidgen-over-three-and-a-half decades. Other retailers’ mileage may vary. But I started working in comics retail about the same time the first ongoing Wolverine series began in 1988, so I got to see the waxing and/or waning of new and secondary market sales of the series, one issue at a time, one month at a time, in real time.

And speaking of which, in 1989 we saw this two part story guest-starring a certain large grey-skinned gentleman of some note:

Without checking actual numbers or bugging my former boss about it, I’m presuming Wolverine was outselling Incredible Hulk at the time. That said, Incredible Hulk was in the midst of Peter David’s tenure as writer on the title, and selling at least reasonably well. Not sure if there was any significant transfer of readership from one title to another, but I know I wasn’t a regular follower of the Wolverine title. I was a fan of the Hulk, so Wolverine did at least get a couple extra sales out of me for the duration of this storyline.

It’s been a long time, so I don’t recall what the impetus was for the plot, but the premise of Wolverine in his “secret” identity as “Patch,” encountering the Hulk, in his grey-hued persona as Las Vegas enforcer “Joe Fixit,” was an amusingly clever one.

Now I haven’t shown you the cover to part two of the story yet, so here it is now:

…and that’s sort of gone down in comics history as one of the classic iconic covers featuring the two characters during this somewhat oddball period in both of their lives. Even the Overstreet Price Guide has it notated as a “classic cover.” And it is a good’un…John Buscema, you’ve done it again!

And of the two, it’s that second issue that commands Big Prices, much more than the first part. Obviously people are just buying this for the cover (and presumably many of these are trading in those Officially Graded sealed plastic slabs, so the cover’s the only bit you could enjoy anyway). Not to say that #7, the first half o the story, doesn’t sell reasonably well, but the prices it can command aren’t anywhere close to those of the second part.

Going back to my nigh-patented Wolverine’s Claws rating sale, one claw being “eh, it’ll occasionally sell out of the box” to the three-clawed “it’ll always be in demand,” I would give issue #8 the coveted Three Claws rating. This comic always has been, and will likely continue to be, desired by collectors. That is a good and, it bears repeating, iconic image.

Issue #7 I’m giving the middling Two Claws rating, which means, well, something. It will sell is the buyer is interested in reading the story, but if buyers are pickin’ and choosin’ and just looking for cool covers, they’re taking #8. The cover to #7 is no slouch, but I can see it being overshadowed and forgotten by collectors.

Also in 1989, we got this issue, #10, featuring Wolverine versus his arch-nemesis Sabretooth:

This is a standalone issue featuring a flashback to a conflict between the two. “Wolverine Versus Sabretooth” was kind of a thing, and this issue, with its striking Bill Sienkiewicz cover, attracted a lot of attention at the time. And it continued to be a persistent back issue seller for years afterwards…until it wasn’t.

Now, again, this may just be a local market thing, but I haven’t seen any demand on this for a very long time. Even as people ask to poke through my Wolverine back issues, that particular number doesn’t move. The price guides and the Hot Comic Apps still have it at a premium, but I just don’t see that being realized here in the real world.

If I had to put the Wolverine Claws rating on this issue, I’m probably going for Two Claws again. It’s a nice vaguely defined value, in this case meaning “once hot, now not, but potentially could be again” if only because it is a classic Wolvie/Sabrie battle. It theoretically could find an audience again.

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What’s coming next time? A couple issues out of a once-high profile creator’s run, and a return visit from one of the above guest-stars? Maybe!