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In late 1980, I spotted this comic on the rack during an out-of-town car trip and boy was I intrigued by the premise. Dr. 13, the DC Universe’s most prominent skeptic, face-to-face with the Spectre, DC’s most famous ghost? Somehow even at 11 years old I knew this was a confrontation of some significance. However, also because of being an 11-year-old, I had a limited budget for comics purchases and opted to pick up one of DC’s digests, which I had been in a habit of collecting, and hoping to grab that Ghosts issue another time.
As it turns out, that later time didn’t arrive, either due to a lack of availability in my area, or it sold out before I could make my bicycle rounds amongst the various convenience stores, grocery stores, and newsstands looking for my reads. And in the decades since I never did find copies, or copies of all three parts (as the Dr. 13/Spectre story ran through issues #97, #98, and #99) were never found in back issue bins all at the same time.
Why I didn’t just buy the individual issues as I found them, like I have with other back issues I was collecting, I have no idea. Could be that what 11-year-old Mike wanted for his comic collection didn’t have the same priority as other items I was seeking as, say, 20-or-30-or-40-or-God-help-us-50-something year old Mike. But I still occasionally thought about these comics and wanted to read them.
They did get reprinted, in one of the black and white Showcase volumes, and again in a Spectre Omnibus, but I didn’t get either of these. However, recently, thanks to a certain little stuffed friend, I finally have my hands on these issues, and now at last I can peruse this story.
Ghosts in general is a fun anthology title that, given time and access, I’d love to collect together a full run. The covers are great, the interior art is nice, and for some reason these appeal to me more than other DC mystery anthologies aside from that one issue. For some reason I’ve had a number of copies of Ghosts #1 come through the shop of late…maybe I should hang onto one.
In the meantime, I’ll read these Dr 13/Spectre stories and finally satisfy the curiosity of 11-year-old me.
So I was pricing up some comics the other day, and my eyes just happened to light upon a title I hadn’t ever seen before on one of the price guide pages. I looked up the comic on the Grand Comics Database and sure enough, that was a cover entirely unfamiliar to me.
Well, I was intrigued, so one visit to the eBays and the passing of some mailing transit time later, I am now the proud owner of the one and only issue of Zody the Mod Rob, published by Gold Key in 1970:
A representative panel:
I’ve done this sort of thing before…I spotted in the price guide some Popeye educational four-page something or ‘nother I hadn’t known about, and after finding a cheap copy on eBay here it is in my hot little hand.
It just showed up in the mail on Thursday, so I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Online pals who have tell me not to bother, but c’mon, look at this dumb thing. It totally smacks of someone in his 40s sittin’ around his office, puffing on a cigarette and thinking of What The Kids Are Into and scripting the comic accordingly. (See also that first run of the Teen Titans.)
Anyway, if you need to know more, here’s a good write-up from some years back (though I’ll add the reason the title is in plain type up above the logo, as wondered by that writer, is so the comic could be more easily identified on the rack if a bunch of books are overlapped on a single shelf — same reason for the corner boxes showing the characters on Marvel books).
• • •
I’m probably gonna close voting on the
Final ’90s Countdown at the end of next week, so get in your favorite 1990s indie book over at that post sooner rather than later!
So with the acquisition of the above book, Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga Deluxe Hardcover, my collection of DC’s chronological reprints of these comics starting with the Legion of Super-Heroes Archives Volume 1 back in 1991 has now reached the issues I started with in the early ’80s.
Now this book is the “2025 Edition,” and apparently a version of this book had been available several years before, in both trade and hardcover, if I’m understanding Diamond’s back catalog correctly. The issues contained within pick up from where the Before the Darkness hardcovers of a couple of years ago left off, with issue #284 through #296 plus Annual #1. It also includes a gatefold reproduction of Keith Giffen’s amazing 1983 poster featuring every Legion character, complete with a guide as to who is whom.
This is not to be confused with the other Great Darkness Saga reprint volume, which looks like this:
…which, just to confused matters, also has been rereleased in a new edition with that same cover. This version reprints #287, #290 through #294 and Annual #3. As opposed to the chronologically-reprinted Deluxe Hardcover up there, this other book is intended to be Darkseid/Great Darkness-specific, including the follow-up in that third annual.
Speaking of Darkseid, one of the bits of business about the Great Darkness Saga when it originally ran in 1982 was that is was supposed to be a surprise when the Big Bad Guy, ol’ Craggy Face himself, finally shows up. After Kirby’s Fourth World reached its end, more or less, in the ’70s, Darkseid maybe popped up here and there but was mostly unused. “The Great Darkness Saga” put him back on the map as an imposing villain (along with a certain intercompany crossover the same year that also used him in an impressive fashion).
Given the fact that Darkseid’s appearance was a surprise, it’s a little amusing that his big ol’ noggin is prominently featured on these covers. It’d be like putting the Statue of Liberty on the Planet of the Apes movie poster (which I’m sure must have been done at some point). I realize the surprises for these have long since filtered into public consciousness (maybe more so the Lady Liberty thing than the Darkseid thing) and possibly no harm is done in putting a spoiler just right up front like that. However, there are people who come to these with fresh eyes and I feel bad there’s little to no chance of them enjoying the surprise as it comes, versus having it staring in the faces of those out to experience these stories for the first time.
The next Legion reprint hardcover comes out in May, but that one is entirely issues I read and own. I may still get it out of completeness because, y’know, I’m a comic collector an’ all.
Oh, and also, Bruce Willis’s character is a ghost. Look, I told you up there in the title of this post there’d be spoilers, don’t get mad at me.
Going back to my ramblings about the influx of back issues of a certain age from newly unearthed collections:
philfromgermany has some germane thoughts
“These Byrne X-Men books always command high prices and I don’t count on ’em dropping off a whole lot. It’s great reading and if you get into collecting chances are you will want as many of these as you can.”
There are few perennials in the back issue comics market, but it seems like the Byrne-era X-Men books (and the Cockrum ones that just preceded) are always in demand. Even at my previous place of employment, with had a much larger backstock than I’ve yet to achieve at my own store, our Byrne issues were running a bit thin near the end of my tenure there a decade ago.
So…I may have been “worst case scenario-ing” the idea of a sudden price drop caused by people’s collection suddenly being dumped in the marketplace. I can see maybe a local price fluctuation given a large enough pile of a certain comic showing up at a particular outlet. (“What am I going to do with 1,000 copies of Unicycle Tragedy #14? Well, fifty cents each on ’em, I guess.”) It’s gonna take a warehouse find like the Heroes, Inc. thing I mentioned last time, with just thousands upon thousands of units showing up in a back issue market that couldn’t absorb them.
I think at this point it seems unlikely an Uncanny X-Men #142 treasure trove, many times the size of the batch I received, is still lurking in some as-yet-unexcavated storage until. But one can’t be entirely sure that’s the case.
“But is all that Venom/Carnage spec gonna remain strong? Early Wolverine after the mini? Signal? Gwenpool? Ghost Rider Punisher or Weapon H?”
That’s the continual question about “hot” books, how long ’til they cool down a bit? In most cases it’ll be a conditional thing…Punisher’s first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #129 will likely always be in demand. However, I’ve told the story before about, at the previous place of employment, slashing the prices on our giant stack of this issue as they were gathering dust following the 1990s decline of interest in Punisher.
At this point, though, that #129 has passed some…event horizon, I guess, moving from “conditional hot book” to “perennial,” both as a Key First Appearance of a Major Marvel Character, and as a Bronze Age Amazing Spider-Man issue. Barring an overall industry crash relegating all comics to be of interest only to people who need paper after all the trees have died out, interest and prices will probably remain high.
The Venom thing has its own likely perennial, Amazing Spider-Man #300 (pictured above, if you couldn’t guess) with the first full-length appearance of that large-jawed, big-tongued adversary. Plus it’s got the extra perks of being 1) Amazing Spider-Man, 2) an anniversary issue, 3) an anniversary issue with that striking cover, and 4) a comic with Todd McFarlane artwork.
Later Venom/Carnage appearances may wax and wane, but that #300 feels like it will always be in demand. Maybe slightly less certain is the first appearance/storyline with Venom tie-in character Carnage, also appearing in Amazing Spider-Man. I mean, demands high now, but will that stick? Well, to be fair, 30 years on the kids still like Carnage comics, and hearing a kid that can’t even pronounce his “Rs” yet ask for “Cawnage comics” never fails to slay me. Anyway, I successfully talked myself into thinking that, yes, that first Carnage story will likely retain its interest and collectability.
Those other characters, though? Well, pretty much any first appearance turned into hot commodities, especially during the opening years of the COVID pandemic and speculation was rampant on just about everything that hit the racks and even slightly looked like it had a first appearance of someone in it. And…have people been looking for Weapon H books? hat’s new on me and I sell these darn things.
In short, some in-demand comics stand the test of time, some don’t. And some just remain pricey despite the reason for its value being pretty much negated (like that one issue of Uncanny X-Men with “The Death of Colossus” who, I’m pretty sure, is hale and hearty now).
There’s a half-joking observation I’ve made, in-store and later shared on Xwitter (R.I.P.) and repeated on Bluesky, in which I said that someone bringing in Grandpa’s collection used to mean Golden Age books when I started in this business, but now it usually means the same twelve or thirteen issues of Spawn everyone seems to have.
The dichotomy is not always quite that drastic. There were times at the previous place of employment in the ’90s when we’d be told on the phone “oh, I have a bunch of really old comics my grandpa used to own!” and they’d come in with, like, post-Liefeld X-Force.
And at my current (and hopefully final) shop, I’ve seen my share of older books, but more on that in a moment.
For years there was an opinion, one I believed first voiced to me by pal Dorian and that I shared, that there would soon be a huge influx of Golden Age books into the general funnybook population as their older owners…uh, went to that great quarter box in the sky.
And…I never saw it. At least not around here, not locally. I’ve had Golden Age books come in dribs and drabs, usually Disney books. But by and large if there was a sudden injection of these books into the secondary market, they all probably got snapped up from estate auctions or otherwise dumped out of the inheritors’ lives and went straight to gradin’ and slabbin’.
So I don’t see a lot of Golden Age books come through. Even 1960s Silver Age comics seemed like they were in short supply, though I’ve had some really good collections come through the door over the last couple of years. One collection held 1960s first issues on up through the 1970s of many major Marvel series (including an Amazing Fantasy #15 and an Amazing Spider-Man #1), a good handful of which were in beautiful VF to NM condition.
But that’s the exception. Most collections for sale that come in that have any age to them at all are generally 1970s-1980s. (I do see a lot of books more recent than that, too, of course.) “Bronze” and “Copper” Age books, as the Comics-noscenti would dub them…all those issues of Ka-Zar and Human Fly and Tarzan and sometimes even comics people would want, like X-Men and Spider-Man and Batman.
In other words, it was beginning to look like it was the Bronze Age collectors who were now…um, divesting themselves of their own collections and going to live on a farm upstate to leave their relatives to deal with the books.
I mean, I’m extrapolating a lot from my singular data collection point of “guy who once managed one comic shop and now owns another comic shop.” But it’s the trend I’ve been seeing over the past few decades, that as older collectors sell off their books, there is a general movement forward in time of the general age of their comics. Just, y’know, overall, when dealing with original owners buying books new off shelves and restricting back issue purchasing to the “more recent stuff” of their time.
I was thinking about this because yet another large collection made it into my hands over the weekend. A nice lady with eight longboxes that belonged to a recently passed family member brought them in for me to peruse and this is what I acquired:
That works out to about three longboxes’ worth of stuff, by the way. It was primarily 1970s through mid-1980s books (the most recent I believe being some issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths), with a smattering of 1960s books (a handful of Daredevil, some of DC’s space comics).
What was interesting was that this also appeared to be someone’s Investment Opportunity. To wit:
…that John Byrne Silver Surfer oneshot from 1982…
…this issue of Wonder Woman guest-starring the New Teen Titans…
…and shockingly, a whole bunch of part two of that “Days of Future Past” story from Uncanny X-Men. And believe it not, there were more copies of this comic than pictured here.
I realize those photos may be slightly reminiscent of this ancient post, but hoo boy, just look at those. It wasn’t all duplicates, but there was a whole lot of obvious speculation goin’ on. I didn’t buy the 1/3rds of a longbox full of New Teen Titans #16, featuring the Captain Carrot insert. And that issue of Wonder Woman pictured above? That’s only 10 copies out of the 30 or so I could have bought.
This is on top of another collection I bought not too long ago, which was another investment accumulation, filled with ’90s books like the X-Men #1 with the gatefold cover, of which there were about 20 copies.
Once again, I’m just one guy with one small comic shop, so I’m working with a small dataset here. But these collections, both owned by folks no longer with us, could be an indicator of a possible trend. As blogging brother Andrew put it on Bluesky:
Is there a burgeoning influx of investment books about to enter the market? In a way, we’ve already seen it with the dumping of heavily-speculated ’90s books that are basically just landfill waiting to happen, like Brigade or, well, most short-run and forgotten Image and Image-a-like titles. But that sort of thing isn’t going to affect the price of books that already hold no value in the seconday market.
But what’s going to happen when, say, collections with three dozen F to NM copies of Uncanny X-Men #142 start getting dumped on the market? A comic that traditionally is a pricey book suddenly theoretically facing an increase in supply.
Likely, I’m worrying about nothing…now. It’s possible even as speculation stocks from private collections show up in the back issue market, it may increase local supplies here and there, but no single book is going to be hit hard enough to affect value industry-wide. Especially since most comics collections are preserved poorly and NM copies can remain harder to acquire. Even this newest collection, where most of the duplicated investment books are nice, very few grade at a NM.
What I’m saying is that we’re not likely to have a repeat of the Heroes, Inc. situation, where an enormous warehouse find in the 1970s of uncirculated copies drove the price down to essentially nothing. But your local retailer may soon find himself with, say, four dozen copies of Moon Knight #1 (1980), or 50 copies of 2001: A Space Odyssey #8, and more similar acquisitions.
Maybe in the long run we’ll experience a repeat of the Shazam! Effect, where a heavily speculated book (DC’s Shazam! #1 from the 1970s) is dumped into bargain bins, where it primariy stayed for years. Then suddenly it was realized “hey wait, nice copies of this book are hard to find now!” and they were pulled out of the bins and if they could find any mint copies, those were slapped with premium prices.
Not that anyone’s going to dump Uncanny X-Men #142 into a dollar bin…I’m certainly not, and even as many copies as I’ve acquired I don’t expect them to last long. But maybe the day will come when even, say, Brigade #2 is a rare find in NM and my 152-year-old self will price it up at 50 space-credits and put in my case.
So what you see above is some of my well-gotten gains from the week, retrieved from a good-sized plastic storage box similar to this:
That jumble of comics you see above (Uncanny X-Men #281, the wraparound cover version of the 1991 X-Men #1, and the second printing of the foil-embossed Silver Surfer #50 weren’t the only books inside…there were multiple copies of Infinity Gauntlet (every issue represented, but only single copies of a couple so not multiple runs), Wolverine #41 and #42 (Wolvie Vs. Sabertooth battle, briefly a hot book), a whole lotta Darkhawk, various other variants of the 1991 X-Men #1, and other similar items.
When I mentioned the collection on Bluesky, I called it a collection of “investment comics” and that’s clearly what it was. Some of these comics do have value (despite being printing literally in the millions, I have no trouble moving theseX-Men #1s), their method of preservation could have been better.
When I started pulling these comics out of the container, the plastic bags started splintering into tiny little fragments that I’ve mostly cleaned up but darn if I don’t keep finding more of them on the counter or floor. Anyway, as I noticed this I asked the seller if this box had been kept in a warm garage, and no surprise when the answer was “yes.”
Surprisingly, the comics were mostly still intact and in reasonable shape. I say “surprisingly” because this sort of plastic storage box isn’t meant for keeping your comics, especially if, like this collector, you had the comics standing and not laying flat, meaning lots of shifting and falling over an’ such. A few comics did come out straight up bent in half (thankfully, mostly just New Warriors), and at least two super sun-faded Ghost Riders (maybe stored by a window?).
I was asked by another Bluesky user how much I paid for these, in that surely this paid for someone’s college education. Alas, I paid them enough to buy maybe a college textbook…one of those big too-expensive-for-what-you’re-getting volumes. Others on Bluesky commented on how none of these pictured books are worth anything, “like five bucks” being a common refrain.
Well, that’s not my experience with the X-Men #1 or the Silver Surfer #50 (any printing), at least. Despite the improper long-term storage of these books, they remain in nice condition…lots of Near Mint copies, though the X-Men #1s will have to be graded down due to most of them having dinged corners. And they’ll sell for pretty good money, all things considered.
Despite being relatively common, there is still huge demand for X-Men back issues, both of the 1991 series and the original Uncanny run. (Not so much for later relaunches for Uncanny, but I’ve got a whole ‘nother post about that in the near future.) Plus, that Silver Surfer embossed cover remains a popular novelty item. Gimmick cover burnout was a thing long ago, but enough people buying comics now weren’t there when everything was foil or die-cut, so it’s all new and fresh and appealing to them.
Even decades after the fact, there are still collections like this, in varying degrees of condition, sitting untouched in garages and attics and basements and deep in closets. Sitting unmoved for years, or perhaps hauled from place to place with each subsequent changing of residences, there are boxes filled with perceived fortunes. The one I just acquired at least had comics that I could sell, but it still feels a little weird dismantling someone’s comic investment-collecting dream.
Okay, I’ve been dealing with bit of a stomach bug the last couple of days, so I’m going to keep this short. I had planned to look at the second page of distributor tips (first page here), but that’ll have to wait until next week.
I will address a couple of items from Monday’s post, however. I spoke to my former boss Ralph in regards to the Champions comic (based on the superhero role playing game, not Marvel’s weirdo team from the ’70s). Turns out, yes, the comic did sell very well initially, and, shockingly, did sell primarily to gamers versus your usual comic book fans. However, sales petered out pretty quickly.
And in regards to Watchmen #1, my assumptions as to his order numbers were correct…Ralph did order a lot, but not as many as, in retrospect, he should have because despite Alan Moore being red-hot in comics at the time, this was still an untested concept with new characters. As it turned out, he ordered pretty close to what he needed for the initial month or so, not quite selling out on the rack. But yes, he wished he’d ordered more, given how things worked out!
Also as an aside I asked him about Howard Chaykin’s Shadow mini and how that did for him, since that was offered in the tips page as the title to base your Watchmen numbers on . Yes, it sold very well, thank you (I know I bought a set!). I’m pretty sure I’ll find his specific orders in the stack of Bud Plant catalogs I have here, so when I track it down, I’ll provide an update.
And on Wednesday’s post, Daniel T asked if I have any plans for my comics after I go to the great comic convention in the sky? (Or, since I’m presuming a comic convention, more likely the other place.)
Well, given how I’m been feeling the last couple of days, not quite sure I want to dwell overlong on my presumed-eventual death. To be completely honest…I’m not sure. If comic book stores are still around, I’m presuming my collection will be taken to one of those, much like I’ve seen more than my fair share of collections of the recently passed make it into my store. At the very least, my collection may be better organized, theoretically, once I finally get everything sorted.
Ideally, if I live long enough, I’d like to get my personal collection winnowed down to a fraction of where it is now. My recent attempts at making passes through what I’ve got to sacrifice to the store have been relatively unsuccessful, however, so I may need to develop stronger willpower.
The whole “donate to the university” thing could be a possibility, at least for the fanzines. I’d hate to see that collection broken up, but hey, I’ll be pushing up daisies by then, chances are slim that I’d be in a position to really care.
And, you know, it’s possible I’ll have a family member who’d want to keep it all. That’d be fine with me.
At the very least, if, as I said, I live long enough, I could have one heck of a dollar sale and just move everything out. Come to the “Mike’s About to Croak” Sale, the first weekend in March 2056 at Sterling Silver Comics!
So this week DC is releasing a new facsimile edition (including all the original ads an’ such) of House of Secrets #92 from 1971, featuring the first appearance of Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. Here are the different flavors you can pick up:
You can get the plain ol’ version with a standard comic cover:
You can get the “blank sketch cover” in a lovely shade of green, upon which you can get your favorite artist to draw, I don’t know, the Heap or Man-Thing or whatever:
You can get the shiny foil-covered edition, and the scan I made ain’t the greatest, but if you’ve been in a comic shop lately, you know what this particular enhancement should look like:
And most surprisingly, in a bit of collaboration between Warner’s comic book division and those other divisions that make theoretically money, we get a version of this comic with a cardstock cover plugging the forthcoming Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sequel (art by Kelley Jones):
Yes, that means four more versions of this comic to add to my collection of House of Secrets #92 reprints and, of course, my original copy of the actual thing.
A long, long time ago (about 18 years now!) I did post here listing all the versions of this comic that I own. I keep meaning to update it, and have occasionally listed new reprints of the story here and there in subsequent posts. Thus, the plan is this: creating a new page on this site devoted solely to House of Secrets #92, with notes on the various reprints in either single comic book form or in trade paperback/hardcover.
This is kind of a last second decision, so I have nothing ready to go just yet, since I kind of have to track down where all my copies of these reprints have gotten off to. My collection at home remains in some disarray, though I’ve been making progress in getting it under control of late. But I do want to gather together all my reprints, do fresh new scans, and put ’em all in one standalone place that I can point to and say “look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
So there we go…nearly 21 years of doing this site, and I can still find ways to make my life more difficult. But at least it’s additional incentive to get my comic act together at home.
EVERYONE, HOLD EVERYTHING: I’ll get back to movie comics next time, but first I must address this inquiry from Matthew Murray:
“…Ignoring condition, what is the ‘least valuable’ comic? Or, since that question is more or less unanswerable, what would the criteria be that you could use to narrow down this search?”
It’s very hard to point to a specific comic as being “least valuable,” because as Thom H. says further down in the comments
“…Someone somewhere will pay money for any first issue.”
And if I may amend that, someone out there could pay money for any comic so long as there’s someone out there filling holes in a want list. Even Thom’s example of Brigade #9, just some random issue in a middle of a run…even that might be picked up by a fan who needs it. You never know. Granted, probably not very often, maybe one time a year a fella going through a back issue bin might pull a bagged and boarded copy out and declare “dear God in Heaven, at last, it’s Brigade #9! My collection is complete…COMPLEEEEETE!”
Basically, you have the (forgive me for using this term) “key” comics, the ones with current collectors’ value, sought after by fans and speculators, the often command premium prices. They regularly sell and trade in the marketplace. Things like first appearances, (some) first issues, Big Event issues…you know what “key” means, you don’t need me to explain.
Then you have the stuff that isn’t necessarily “key” but will regularly attract sales. Like pretty much any issue of Batman or Detective or Amazing Spider-Man or Sgt. Rock, or appearances of certain villains, or stuff with cool covers, or produced by certain creators, or sometimes just first issues in general. I mean, whatever reason that would attract a reader to pick up a comic outside of pure “hotness” of the issue. Not necessarily expensive…could be pricey, might not be, but are in higher demand than your average comic. Speaking of which…
…there are the “box-fillers,” just issues not in any particular demand, just there to fill out runs and be there just in case someone pops in looking for Sun Devils #2 and lo and behold, here you have it! Not comics that have any sort of immediate turnover, maybe you’ll only ever sell the one in your lifetime, but they’re there in case anyone needs ’em. A lot of recent comics come to mind, especially on series that ended quickly and were replaced right away by a relaunched version of the same title. Sometimes not much separates these from…
…the bargain bin comics, stuff which you’ll be happy to get anything for, and enough people want cheap comics that they’ll likely sell more quickly there than they ever will in the regular back issue stock. Frankly, I should probably put that Sun Devils #2 in there. Anyway, they’re usually cheap, and possibly cheaper if you buy in bulk. My boxes start at $1 each, or 15 for $10, and so on, all the way to $50 for 100. This is kind of the “last stop” for comics in the shop, and I try to put things in there that are overstock, or maybe damaged but readable, or things that were dumped on me in collections.
This isn’t necessarily as cut and dried as all that. Comics can shift between these categories all the time. I remember after the 1989 Batman movie came out, we started fishing around in the cheap boxes at my previous place of employment, looking for all the copies of the once-moribund-now (then)-hot Joker #1 (1975). Or once hot comics getting relegated to the bargain bins (sorry, Pitt).
And then there are the comics that price out at even cheaper-than-bargain-bin prices, stuff that maybe grade as a, I don’t know, Good Plus and costs $0.65, but it’s a Name Book That’s In Demand (like say a What If) and will sell much faster in the regular bins than mixed in with the chaff.
I’m sure this quick list doesn’t cover every nuance and possibility, but it should get across the idea that nearly every comic (assuming sellable condition) has some value, at least to someone. Even vastly overprinted comics like Valiant’s Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 has some demand now. Black and white boom comics that were cranked out by the truckload, mostly moldering in backrooms or in forgotten bins, now see some demand from folks interested in that particular period of the industry.
The trick is learning when a comic moves from one “level” to another. Usually that’s decided when it’s time to throw stuff in the dollar box, and sometimes it’s keeping tabs on the market when a forgotten $3 book in the bins suddenly shoots up to $35 because it features the elbow of a background character who might appear in a forthcoming movie.
I believe someone mentioned Woody Woodpecker comics. Well, believe it or not, I had a couple of different people regularly buying those from me a while back. The Warner Brothers comics, like Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, are traditionally very slow sellers, but I have a recurring customer who pops in every few months to grab one or two. Back at the old job, I had a customer in Japan who’d regularly mail order stacks of Tom and Jerry from us. So you never really know.
Chick Tracts were also mentioned, and I’m not going to link them here because more often than not the supposed “loving” “religious” messages are reprehensible, but you can read them in full on the official site. And everything else aside, a handful of those actually have some excellent cartooning, a detailed grotesqueness that wouldn’t be out of place in MAD or any other EC Comic, for that matter. And while this is a very close candidate for “least valuable” comic, given they are often found “distributed” in public areas for potential converts to pick up for free. They are printed in large numbers, easily thrown out without much thought, and mostly quickly forgotten. That said, there are a number of collectors who acquire these out of ironic interest.
The comic I want to say is the least valuable, mostly due to personal experience I had at a convention decades ago, involves the comic pictured at the top of this site. Shadow of the Groundhog, released in 1986 during the Black and White Boom, was one of those titles cranked out to get a little love following the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There was a lot of “investing” and “speculating” and other…shenanigans going on in the industry at the time, and long story short, I saw some poor bastard at a comic con with a full long box of them. I should’ve picked one up, because now I do want one in my collection, an example of what some dubbed “the worst comic book ever.”
But I look online now? $5, $10, a copy? That’s…well, $5 isn’t too much, but I didn’t check the shipping cost which is probably stupidly high. So there’s either demand, or some retailers think there is demand, driving those prices. Which means this person with the long bx full of ’em is rich, rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Anyhow, I’ll get one someday.
So, I’m sorry, I wish I had an ultimate answer to this question of “which comic is least valuable,” just so I could say, “it’s this one, Purgatori: Goddess Rising #2:
…but it seems there’s even some measure of demand, even for this.
So I was processing some back issues at the shop, and flipping through the pages of Fantastic Four #274 (January 1985):
…and I was reminded of this sequence from the end of the book:
…in which Spider-Man’s sentient and shape-changing black costume escapes from Reed Richards’ lab, which is where it had been kept since being forcibly removed from Peter Parker’s body in Amazing Spider-Man #258 (November 1984). And then eventually the costume, AKA “the symbiote” bonds with Eddie Brock, pushes Peter Parker onto a train track in Web of Spider-Man #18 (September 1986), then makes its on-panel debut as Venom in Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988).
And, I don’t know, maybe I’m leaving some post-Peter Parker pre-Venom appearances of that pesky extraterrestrial outfit out of my little overview there, but I’m not really hear to give you an Amazing Heroes-style Hero History of the Alien Symbiote. Mostly the question that came up for me, while I was pricing up a stack of back issues for sale (as you can see what with the price guide visible in the photos above), is why isn’t this comic pricier than it is?
Look, I’m not trying to be the “hot” “key” “investor” guy here, but it struck me as odd that this weirdo appearance of the suit prior to its becoming Venom hasn’t been glommed onto by The Usual Suspects. Even the Hot Comics App just has it at three bucks and doesn’t even mention the symbiote’s appearance in the issue. On eBay I see a couple of folks getting a little more adventurous with their pricing (outside the always-overpriced “slabbed” copies), but by and large most of ’em are pretty cheap. Even when they note this particular cameo, that doesn’t seem to guarantee a sale or even a bid. It just seems like a big, fat “nobody cares.”
It wasn’t that long ago, during that mid-pandemic investment panic when collectors were looking for any reason to make any comic A Hot Commodity, that a comic like this would have been bought by the armful if they could. I mean, speaking of the pandemic, there was a Spider-Man comic that became a sought-after item because it introduced a villain named Corona. Did a feel a burning shame for our industry as a whole as I was typing that? I won’t say “no.”
I also won’t say this behavior has gone away completely, since I still see people with their apps out tracking down that secretly hot comic that’s had a sudden burst in demand that isn’t reflected by the price I put on the book, say, three years ago. But it’s not nearly as prevalent, especially as the prime mover of this form of collecting, the Marvel movies, are currently approaching the nadir of their cultural relevance, making comics with related character appearances to those in the films not quite as attractive.
Anyway, just an interesting trend I’ve noticed in the marketplace lately, at least locally. Your Market May Vary.
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