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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.
I miss being able to flip open a comics ‘zine and seeing a pure and simple news blurb like this:
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like reading about scandals and shenanigans in the comics industry as much as the next guy, but it’s…just nice where the item is entirely “this dude got a job on this comic.”
And whatta comic it was:
I bought this new off the rack in 1981, where 12-year-old me was still learning about the back continuity of DC’s heroes. And Tales of the Green Lantern Corps went deep into the history of that particular franchise. Between this, reprints of older stories in DC’s digests, and seeing that Golden Age/Silver Age GL team up against Krona on the early Nickelodeon show Video Comics, I knew pretty much everything I needed to know about Green Lantern.
I really ate up that stuff as a young Mikester, trying to find out about the histories of all these characters. It’s probably why I really appreciated Roy Thomas’ work on DC’s Golden Age characters at the time, as that fan feared no footnotes, exposited every exposition. I loved it all. Now, going back as Old Mikester, approaching it as storytelling versus an educational textbook, that early ’80s Golden Age material doesn’t go down quite as smoothly, but I’ll always appreciate the lessons of Roy ‘n’ pals.
Those aforementioned digests helped a lot too, reprinting from DC’s vast back catalog in themed releases…”here’s the Justice League one, here’s one with a bunch of secret origins, here’s one with Batman villains.” I grabbed those whenever I could. Even if they weren’t necessarily “educational” in the sense of explaining pertinent details of the past, it was still fun to see these tales of yesteryear, and even so E. Nelson Bridwell (or someone) usually had a small text piece providing historical context for the contents.
Sometimes the digests were like mini-graphic novels, like this one which included this whole “Batman – Murderer!” storyline. Or this whole “Warlord versus his arch-nemesis Deimos” one.
And then, going back to supplying some background to their currents series, there’s that one pictured to the right…a digest focused on the Justice Society, released shortly after the debut of of Roy Thomas’s Golden Age-centric All-Star Squadron, It not only featured an origin of the Justice Society, but also included the first Per Degaton story, a character that would again rise to some prominence during the ’80s.
Look, I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up when I started writing this post…it’s just that seeing that ancient news blurb made me nostalgic for a simpler time as a comic collector. One where I actually did wonder who was going to write/draw what title, and one where I still eagerly awaited any glimpses into the past either via reprints or flashbacks.
news blurb from Comics Feature #9 (1981)
So I’m not good at “end-of-year” lists where I run down the best comics, simply because 1) I haven’t read everything, so I’ll feel like a dummy for leaving some stuff out, and 2) I haven’t even read everything from the past year that I’ve taken home to read. As I’ve noted time and again, I have stuff from four years ago, about the time I started having my eyeball shenanigans, that I haven’t read yet. I still have that big ol’ collection of pre-Popeye Thimble Theatre to read, for example.
Thus the plan was to at least point out a handful of oversized collections I picked up this year, as I obviously did’t have enough already to read. I had my reasons for acquiring each, which I can detail (though in at least one case you can probably guess).
But here’s the thing…one of these I’ve already discussed, another I need to take some decent pictures of for use here since I can’t find any decent ones at distributors or on eBay that I can steal borrow, and the third is still at the shop stilling on a shelf behind my counter.
The first one, the one I already talked about, is the Absolute Edition of Doomsday Clock. Yes, it’s garbage, but it’s well-presented garbage, with beautiful artwork reproduced at good size, and plenty of behind-the-scenes material to be had. There’s also that extra thingie in the back of the book that literally shocked me. It remains a “was this trip really necessary” kind of thing, with its ultimate purpose (attempting to once again give in-universe explanations for DC’s rejiggering/rebooting of its fictional milieu) already pretty much ignored or supplanted or piled-upon by other DC event books, as everyone assumed would happen.
But, as a collector of weird Watchmen-related ephemera, this felt like an interesting item to have. Plus, it matches up nicely with my Absolute Watchmen slipcased edition, a thought that probably is giving someone somewhere a bit of a twinge right behind their eyes.
The second oversized collection I’ll talk about later in the week, once I get some pictures taken.
The third collection, still sitting shrinkwrapped at the store, is the Thing Omnibus:
This collects the 36 issues of the Thing series from the 1980s, along with a couple of issues of Fantastic Four that tie into storylines in that book. There are also other miscellaneous Thing stories from the period mixed in (like the Barry Windsor-Smith story from Marvel Fanfare, a Marvel Tales back-up, and that Jim Starlin/Bernie Wrightson Thing/Hulk graphic novel). Issue #3 of the computer-game tie-in Questprobe is even included. I kinda wish they’d made room for the Hulk/Thing team-up in Marvel Fanfare #20 and #21, also by Starlin, which has never been reprinted in the U.S. as far as I know. Ah, well, there’s always the next omnibus.
Now why did I need this volume? Well…I didn’t, really. I own nearly all of its contents still…that Thing series, the graphic novel, the FFs, the BWS story. But it is nice to have it all in once place, and that cover…! There were two covers for this book, because of course there were. One cover, by John Byrne (who wrote the early part of the series), was taken from this issue, and it’s…fine, though not a patch on the Ron Wilson cover they did use. That’s one of the great and iconic images of Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew.
Ron Wilson drew a whole lotta this book, and he is one of the unsung heroes of superhero funnybooks…clearly inspired by Jack Kirby, but not, like, outright copying the guy. One of the surprises this omnibus has for me is its inclusion of a story from the 1990s version of Marvel Super-Heroes which I hadn’t read, featuring 22 new-to-me pages of Wilson art. Can’t wait to see that.
One thing (heh) I am curious about is that in this issue there was a scripting/editing error which resulted in two conflicting names for the same character. It would be nice if that was straightened out. Also, the “How to Draw The Thing” page from this ish better be in there. I need nice, quality printing of the Thing telling me to not give him no lips. (Which of course literally works out to “give him lips,” but I’m not gonna tell ol’ Benji that.) Also, stop giving the Thing a neck, you guys, so long as we’re on the topic.
I know that’s Too Many Words for a book I haven’t even cracked the covers on yet, but it’s an exciting book to have. That Thing series was quite good, with some nice emotional/background work on the character, particuarly in the early issues. And the whole post-Secret Wars “Rocky Grimm, Space Ranger” was a weird ride, with Ben Grimm, adventuring on an alien world, finally with the ability to switch back and forth between human and Thing forms. All fun, all well-drawn, and all solid support for why the Thing is one of the greatest Marvel characters ever created. If not in fact the greatest. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. He’s even better than Hellcow, don’t make me fight you.
So I don’t have very many of those illustrated comic boxes for my personal use. I mean, I sell plenty of them at the shop (where I dubbed them “Fancy Boxes” on my signage for them, and the name seems to have stuck with my customers), but I haven’t much felt the need to grab too many for myself. I did make an exception for the Hellboy boxes, of which I bought three and immediately filled two, thinking the third would last me a whle. But, the joke’s on me as Dark Horse seems to have accelerated its Hellboy and Hellboy-adjacent funnybook output over the last year or three and now I’m wishing I’d picked up two or three more of those boxes.
Anyway, another design has come out that tempted me into owning, and as you may have guessed by the image leading this post, it’s that darn ol’ Miracleman what done the deed. It’s a nice pic they used, though I would have liked it they’d wrapped illos around the entire box and not just the two sides. Ah well. Despite that, I now have a fancy box of my own in which to stow my Miracleman goodies.
I haven’t yet gathered all my MM stuff together, as I’m currently in the midst of reorganizing my collection at home (“wait, didn’t I give up most of my stuff to the shop, how do I still have this much left”) and everything is still in the “total and utter disarray” part of the process. But I know I have the original 24 issues of the Eclipse run, plus the Apocrypha mini, the Miracleman Family mini and the 3-D special, plus all of the Marvel reprintings of same from a few years back. Not to mention that one-shot Marvel put out giving a history of the character, and all those black and white reprint comics (I passed on the hardcover archives).
And there’s the tangentially-related stuff, like the Total Eclipse mini. Plus, we’ve got new MM stuff on the way, starting with the refurbished Silver Age #1, leading into newly published Gaiman/Buckingham stories in a month or three. If that’s not all, there’s whatever Marvel is planning to do with the character (I predict the “Marvelman” version, versus the “Miracleman” version tied to that specific story) in the Marvel Universe itself, as hinted at by this one-shot from a few months back. Oh, and there’s the two new pages in, I think, Marvel #1000, right?
With new stuff on the way, I’m not sure how much more box space I’m going to need. Without having all the MM comics I own in front of me, I can only estimate that they would take up about…half a box, maybe? I don’t know how much more of the “Miracleman” story Gaiman and Buckingham have left to tell, and once Marvel starts doing separate Marvelman stories…who knows, maybe I’ll be wishing then I’d picked up more of the fancy boxes. God forbid I just put these in plain white boxes, what would the neighbors think?
Oh, you know, I forgot the oversized stuff I have, like that original UK Marvelman Special and Warrior #4 with the formerly-unreprinted MM story. And, ooh, wait, there’s the forthcoming Miracleman Omnibus, I’ll need room for that, too!
Almost forgot the Warpsmiths stories that popped up here and there, like in the A1 anthology! I’M GONNA NEED MORE BOXES
…
As a wise man once said, “it’s sort of an illness.”
So a new post in the ongoing multiverse talk series just wasn’t coming together, and as such today I’ll instead post this Popeye comic I just acquired for the personal funnybook collection:
This is issue #166 from 1982, pretty late in its run (which would end in 1984). And since I’ve already been asked, no, it has nothing to do with the 1936 cartoon Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, in that the the Sindbad in the animated feature is spelled with two Ds.
My eventual goal is to get my ungainly mitts on every issue of this publisher-spanning Popeye run, though I think I’ll be satisfied with having all the early Dell numbers in their IDW reprints.
Also of note is that there is no #93, lost in the transition between Gold Key/Whitman/Western/whatever and Charlton in the late 1960s. Plus, ssues #160 and #161 were not published during the later Western run at the title. And just to make things difficult, two issues (158 and 159) were only sold in those 3-packs, so I’m probably looking at paying more of a premium for those (but not as much as what I’d be paying for the similarly-distributed Uncle $crooge #179 — sheesh).
You see what I’m up against. Ah well, I hope at least I can find that #158…I need to learn more about THE MOODUC:
So I was looking at one of those “here are the hot comics!” apps that some collectors are using in place of t heir own want lists, because I’m trying to keep on top of when some comic is dubbed by the investment gods as The New Thing and I can gird myself for the onslaught of phone calls and emails from folks all asking for the same item.
At any rate, on a whim, I looked at the various Swamp Thing entries, as I seemed to recall some discrepancy or ‘nother the last time I looked. And yup, here it is, in the listing for Saga of the Swamp Thing #21 (1984):
The “new origin” bit is correct, but the first appearance notation is way off. (And gotta be honest, totally forgot about the New 52 “Seeder” incarnation of the character, which is fine because I bet he won’t be called that the next we see him, if ever.)
Anyhoo, Jason Woodrue, the Plant Master, first popped up as an Atom villain in the first issue of the diminutive hero’s own series in 1962. There he is on the cover in the selfsame hot comics app that listed Saga of the Swamp Thing #21 as his debut:
And then I thought “oh, well, maybe they mean the first time he was referred to as the Floronic Man, or the first time he looked all planty.” And nope, I knew neither of those were the case. I mean, it says right there in the Atom #1 listing…he transformed from the normal human appearance into his plant form in Flash #245 (1976). Here’s the app’s entry for that comic:
…which is the form in which I first encountered the character, in Justice League of America #195 (1981):
And then there was the Steve Bissette/John Totleben redesign of the character, first appearing in that Saga of the Swamp Thing #21, and as pictured here from #24:
Unless that’s what they meant by “first appearance,” the first time this particular design of the character appeared, I’m gonna say that app’s entry for Saga of That There Swamp Thang #21 is “human error” and needs to be corrected. Though I wonder if someone out there heavily dependent on the app has their copy of #21 marked with a big “FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE FLORONIC MAN!” tag.
Actually, don’t need to wonder…hello “Top Rated Plus” eBay seller with this listing:
The desperate quest to establish “first appearances” for maximum collectability can be a weird and wild one, leading to contradictory and erroneous information getting out there. Thus, the moral of the story is…TRUST NO ONE. Except me, your pal Mike.
Oh, and I saw this, too, in the entry for Saga of the Swamp Thing #25:
Augh, don’t get me started (because I already did start back in 2004 in this link-rotted post). And even the app in the entry for #37 says
Hoo boy.
Okay pals, I know plenty of you reading this have been itchin’ to start a comic book collection of your very own. Well, everyone give a big thanks to the 1990s because they’ve got you covered with these two exciting packages!
First up is the Comic Book Starter Kit, original retail price, as it says right there, a mere three dollars and ninety-nine cents:
Does this kit have everything I ever needed to start collecting?
OH THANK GOD. Let’s flip this sucker over and take a peek.
Whoa nelly, it’s pretty wild they went with Toxic Avenger #1 to entice folks into entering the hobby. But then again, maybe it grabbed a few fans of Troma Films, so who am I to judge. Anyway, more on that comic in a second.
Here’s a closer look at the content list:
Okay, so let’s see. The New Warriors cover price was a buck, the Toxie book is $1.50, the 20 almost certainly polyethylene bags let’s say retail at about a nickel each for a total of a buck…we’re at $3.50 so far. With the Jim Lee cover-of-X-Men-#2 poster and that swank comic collecting guide…well, depending on how you feel about those I guess that can make up the $0.50 balance. A pretty good deal overall.
I have to admit I am this close to busting open the package so I can read what this guide has to say (though it’s probably just this):
…but I think it’s more of an interesting novelty item leaving it intact. Oh, and by the way, while I wanted to snicker at the “2 highly collectible comic [sic]” fact of the matter is that Toxic Avenger #1 does sell for a little bit of a premium. One of those speculator apps has it at $35, which ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at. Only took 30 years to septuple your money, you clever investor you. I didn’t bother to look up the New Warriors issue…if it’s an $1800 book or something let me know. Before you buy it.
Anyway, the other collector’s pack I took in was this ’90s all-over bundle:
A mere fin for five…well, dollar comics, I guess it’s a push ’90s retail-wise. But for your convenience you have a couple two part stories gathered together here, so you don’t have to hunt them down. And you know these are good comics to have because it says right on the package:
It has a ™ on it so it has to be true.
And what’s this?
Don’t you threaten me.
Flipping it over they make good on said threat, with a copy from what must have been a vastly overprinted run:
Here’s a guide to what’s inside, and, y’know, for five bucks I guess this is okay:
The way this is packaged, the last line of the contents is cut off, so we may never know what Spider-Man lends to NFL™ Superpro. It probably says “hand,” but it could be “ten bucks.”
In terms of today’s value, I don’t believe any of these became huge collectibles. I mean, maybe the Spider-Man issues have a little premium attached to them, though they’re hardly the most in-demand parts of the run. There was some brief demand for Sleepwalker of late, but sorry, no demand for NFL Superpro. Maybe if it was NFT Superpro…nope, wait, just checked, too late for those, too.
Like I mentioned, I’m probably selling these intact as the novelties they are, so whoever buys them can bust ’em open or leave them as is. Whatever they want to do, because as this headbanded hero “Treat” ( think) says:
WELL SAID.
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