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Wolverine Back Issue Talk, Part Four: Back Off, Bub!

§ December 22nd, 2024 § Filed under question time, wolverine § 7 Comments

Well, I said last week I was going to skip the Wolverine talk for a day or two, but just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! I’ll do my best to keep it brief (uh oh, you know what that means) but I wanted to address a couple of things before Christmas hit.

First, there’s a comment or three that have been left on the Wolverine posts that I promise I will get to, once 1) I’m through with the main posts in the series, or 2) when I actually take a brief break from posting about specific Wolverine comics. So if you left a question recently, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you.

Second, I still have a couple of responses due for the most recent Question Time post. Haven’t forgotten those either! I’ll get to them soon.

Okay (phew) how ’bout some Wolverine?

Speaking of comments, Joe Gualtieri gives me a poke with

“No mention of #27? Its Jim Lee cover was used for the box art of the Wolverine NES game and seems to be at least as expensive as the other issues mentioned here.”

Well, Joe, there’s a perfectly good explanation for the omission, and that is…um, I forgot.

Here’s the cover under discussion, straight outta 1990:

That is indeed Mr. Jimothy Lee on art duties for that almost literally striking cover there. And all I can say is that the reason I forgot about this cover is that…I haven’t had one in my evil retailer hands in many a moon. Or if I did it sold so quickly that it left no impression on what’s left of my mind that I even had one around.

As such, I don’t have specific sales data I can give you all for this issue. I can make some assumptions, both from sources like the Hot Comics App and looking at sales on the eBays. It does seem to sell for a little more than your average issue of Wolverine from around this period, excluding the crazy-talk prices for the “professionally-grade” ones slabbed in their little plastic coffins.

So, what to rate this, on my scientifically-rigorous Three Claws Scale of Current and Possible Future Demand, 1 = “might sell under the right circumstances, eh” and 3 = “only hosers wouldn’t buy this” with 2 being somewhere between those two extremes.

And I think I’m going to rate Wolverine #27 at…a provisional Three Claws, until I get more more hands-on data with in-store sales. I mean, it’s a Jim Lee cover, it seems to sell online when priced right (I see a few sales at lower prices versus the higher priced copies that haven’t sold as of yet), and I don’t have any in stock. That seems to point to continual demand. I’ll pay more attention the next I have copies of this around, and maybe provide an update someday.

Next up, 1992’s release of the extra-sized issue #50, complete with the requisite gimmick cover:

The gimmick? See those “slashes” across the cover there? As if someone with a three-clawed hand left ragged cuts across this dossier? Those are actually die-cut gaps into the stiff cardstock cover, leaving three vertically oriented holes through which you can see the images printed on the page beneath.

As it turns out, those die-cuts were kind of a pain in the ass to rack at my previous place of employment, which at the time had wall-mounted wire racks. The comics were backed into the metal slots…not tightly, ideally, but it created kind of a pocket into which comics would slide in and out. Most comic covers were smooth, so that wasn’t a problem. But with literal ragged holes on the cover…pulling things out usually wasn’t a problem, but if someone removed a copy and decided against it, shoving the book back into the slot could mean catching the die-cuts and tearing the cover.

Our solution to this at the time (which we did with other die-cut covers, of which there thankfully weren’t too many) was to put comic bags on all our copies, thus creating that smooth surface necessary to prevent any catching. The other alternative was to have just one display copy out that customers could look at, and have the rest at the counter. Or we could get rid of the wire racks entirely and replace them with something sensible, but we wouldn’t do that for a while yet after this comic came out.

The comic was bit of a hot commodity for a while, and sold out of the back issue bins on a regular basis, mostly due to the gimmick cover and that it was one of the “anniversary” multiples-of-fifty special issues that always attract extra attention. It’s slowed down of late, at least for me, but I’ll give it a Two Claw rating as because it is a special issue, it will always be likely to have some measure of demand, even if it doesn’t fly out the door.

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Andrew says

“It seems to me that longevity depends on the cover and issue number, and very little on the story content.”

Sure seems that way, in a lot of cases. At first the Byrne issues were sought after because they were, well, Byrne issues. People wanted the content. But as tempus fugit-ed and people forgot about Byrne, all that was left to attract people to those comics were the covers. Also, don’t forget the Sabretooth issues…those continue to be bought because people want to see Wolverine fight that guy.

There were some periods in the history of the Wolverine series where demand was story driven, such as during those brief Peter David and Warren Ellis arcs. But otherwise, yeah, Andrew, in many cases you are correct in your assertion.

That said, I have a couple of examples coming in the Very Near Future of Wolverine seeing demand, if even only for a while, because of what’s between the covers and not on them. We’ll see when we get there!

Thanks for reading, everyone, and I hope everyone enjoys whatever holiday they’re enjoying! I’ll probably have a short message on Christmas (shorter than this post, certainly…remember when I said I’d be brief?) and be back on Friday for more shenanigans. See you then.