collecting

Batman, absolutely.

filed under Categories batman, collecting, retailing 16 Comments

Hi pals. First off, I’ve shut down the comments on Friday’s post, and I’m going to consider the matter closed here for the time being. So, please don’t revive the discussion/debate in today’s comments. If something changes, I’ll put up a new post and start a new thread, but I think the topic has been covered sufficiently for the time being. Thanks to everyone for participating, and to Matthew for being a trooper.

Second, I’ll be returning to responding to your queries from the last Question Time post, as well as continuing the Final ’90s Countdown, in short order. I promise to finish both series sometime in 2026. Well, at least I’ll try with the Final ’90s Countdown.

Third, I know it’s an unpleasant world out there right now, and people are rightfully upset and afraid and angry at what’s happening. It may seem a bit silly focusing on comics like I am, but it helps to relax and center myself and escape from the world at least momentarily, at least for my mental health and yours as well. I’m not ignoring current events, but doing something quiet that I can control and enjoy really recharges the ol’ brain batteries. I hope everyone can find some similar respite.

• • •

Okay, I’m letting Wayne skip the question line a bit to answer this inquiry of his from last Wednesday:

“What is the deal with ABSOLUTE BATMAN?

[…]

“What is the main selling point? Is it violent like I’m the goddamn Batman? Is it Batman with no [other] bad guys or girls yet? I’m not checking Wikipedia.

“I want YOU to tell me why YOU buy so many copies and WHY it sells for you.You are in the middle of a desert, yet you sell more than the comic shop in downtown Chicago.”

Ever since Marvel hit it big with its fresh-start, continuity-lite (’til it wasn’t) Ultimate line, DC’s been trying to find a way to do something similar with their own titles. Essentially, “rebooting” their big characters with new hopefully-new-audience-grabbing titles and stories while still keeping the regular versions around in order to not alienate their already-existing readers. Sort of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation.

The initial two attempts were the All-Star line, started in 2005, which resulted in one genuine classic (All-Star Superman), and one still-as-yet-uncompleted run that received slightly more…mixed reviews (All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder). Both were not part of “official” DC continuity (however that usually stands), and were not connected to each other in any way. And while they both sold very well, the “All-Star” line faded out once the Superman story was done, and it became apparent that the Batman series had stalled out. Other series, like All-Star Batgirl and All-Star Wonder Woman, were planned but never released.

DC’s next attempt at an Ultimate-esque imprint as the “Earth One” line, a series of graphic novels aimed at the book market. And while a number of these were released, some with multiple volumes (like Superman: Earth One, have three volumes so far). I think, technically, this imprint may still be A Thing, even though the last graphic novel in the line, Green Lantern: Earth One volume 2, came out in 2020. (And Wonder Woman Earth One received a Compact Comics paperback edition within the last year.)

DC’s newest attempt at Ultimizing their comics, the “Absolute” imprint, certainly seems to have the most traction out, with current titles selling well, and new titles on the way. Unlike the previous imprints, “Absolute” has its origin in the regular DC Universe, via various Darkseid-related shenanigans that began in the DC All-In Special and are now coming to some kind of head in the DC K.O. event, currently running in a comic shop near you.

It’s possible, that at least for some readers, that connection means the comics “count” in their ongoing investment into the DC Comics Universe at large. And that pays off, in its way, with that current crossover I mentioned. I don’t know if that’s a significant factor in the Absolute line’s current popularity, but it’s not not one.

But when it comes specifically to the Absolute Batman series and why it’s popular, the biggest reason is that…


…it’s Batman.

And I know that sounds like a facile answer, but it’s really the big one. Batman is arguably the most popular superhero character of all time — or at least in the top three, behind Swamp Thing and Krypto — and having him headline the brand new imprint of comics is usually going to lead to big sales. Absolute Batman was first out of the gate with a comic book series, it showed everyone how this new line was going to work, and remains the flagship title of the imprint. It is the face of this publishing endeavor.

It helps that it stands alone, with (so far) only some minor crossing over with Absolute Wonder Woman, even though all the “Absolute” titles exist in the same world and the characters certainly will all meet each other. (Not counting whatever’s going to happen in DC K.O., of course.)

The quality of the art and writing is top notch, drawn by Nick Dragotta and written by Scott Snyder, with Snyder being already generally well-regarded for previous Batman work. I know when Absolute Batman was first announced, and the art was released, many fan reacted with “uh, Batman looks weird” but now that everyone’s seen it in action, those same fans are now “we love our chonky boy.”

But the two of them together have produced a work that is dense with information, both textually and visually. And given issue of Absolute Batman feels like it contains the equivalent of two other comics, and in these days of high prices and concern over cost-versus-content, it makes for an appealing buy. It feels…modern, taking these nearly 90-year-old characters and reinventing them via current sensibilities and storytelling techniques.

Now, I’m trying not to step too much on what WizarDru and William have already said in their correct and valuable responses regarding the actual contents of the books. These are new takes on old characters, from Batman/Bruce Wayne himself, all the way to his rogue’s gallery (many of who are, at least at first, friends of Bruce and privy to his secret). As William notes, emotion plays more into the proceedings, supporting the previous be-all Batman tropes of problem solving and punch-outs. And making Bruce poor, or at least not rich, puts paid to all the criticisms of “why doesn’t he stop crime with money” and “rich guy punching down, literally, on the underprivileged.” Every battle Bruce has is an uphill one.

And in concession to our online meme-full world, there are more cool elements in each story. More examples of pure radness and badassery that makes for lively discussion and scanned images on TikTok or Instagram or wherever. “Look at Absolute Batman just wiping out these white supremacists” sells more people on how cool a comic this is, making more people look for it, meaning more sales, more sell-outs, more reprints, so on and so forth. Making comics cool again, or at least these “Absolute” comics, can’t be underestimated as a factor, especially wit younger people not in the habit of buying physical media.

Another reason Absolute Batman sells well is for a reason that may not immediately come to mind unless you’re a comic shop owner observing comic sales. Or if you’re participating in this yourself…but investment. Not the kind of “investment” I mentioned previously, but “buy multiple copies, get ’em CGCed and put on eBay” kind of investment. The comic sells well, therefore there’s demand, therefore there’s opportunities. First appearances of Absolute Catwoman, Absolute Harley Quinn (that one kinda slipped past people), and of course Absolute Joker, that gets the investors excited.

Plus, the multiple printings each issue receives (#1 just had its tenth) attracts not just readers trying to catch up, but investment collectors who think the lower print runs on some of these may lead to a financial boon. And the more readers part = more demand for issues = more chances of higher prices on the secondary market.

I’m sure that’s not all the reasons, and that the sales on this book will continue like this forever. I’ve said a number of times that some days at the shop, I feel like I’m an Absolute Batman store and nothing else, as I get customer after customer, new customer after new customer, passing through my doors and asking where the new issue is, or where any issues are. And anything that’s getting new readers in is a good thing.

Now if I were in 1965 buying thirty-year-old comics from 1935, that’d be somethin’.

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So let’s see…do I start off my next year of blogging with a post about our relative sense of “old” comics, or do I start it off looking at the trend of comics about real life murders and serial killers?

Well, let’s do that first one today, because that second one is going to take a little more digging than I’ve left myself blogging time for today. Let us go back to a comment left by longtime reader Chris G. who sez

“…Thank you for making me realize that back when I was a comic collector looking for ‘old comics,’ I was in fact looking for comics from thirty years earlier.

“Why did 1965 seem far away in 1995, but 1995 seems like yesterday?”

There are certainly a lot of reasons for that, particularly in reference to comic book collecting. One main reason is the wild overordering of comics in the ’90s, leaving plenty of stock around for folks to find. Now, generally, it may not be as easy to find now as it once was, given that many of the stores that did said reordering have since shut down and vanished along with their inventories (my former stomping grounds included). But even that is only a minor change in availability. If you want a Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1, you can find one in short order.

Related to that is the very nature of the direct market. Comics ordered by shops were, for the most part, theirs to keep. There were rarely “stripped cover returns” that newsstands, the primary retail arena for comics in the decades prior to the ’80s, were able to do. Thus, to use the years Chris offered up, a comic from 1995 that didn’t sell was just the retailer’s problem to store in the backroom forever or throw in the bargain bin. In 1965, a comic that didn’t sell would have the cover striped off and returned to the distributor for credit, the rest of the comic being disposed of.

Another possibility depends on the age of the collector in question. If you weren’t around, or at least old enough to buy comics, in 1965, those will always seem to be from ye olden tymes to you. But you may have been old enough to start collecting in the ’90s and are still collecting now, so there is a continuity of acquisition that makes you see those ’90s comics as “the earlier part of my collection” versus “hokey smoke those are three decades old.” I get that feeling sometimes when I’m at the shop: “I remember buying this issue of Spanner’s Galaxy off the shelf, it can’t be old!”

One more thing that would make a “30 year old comic from 1965” seem that much older than a “30 year old comic from 1995” is simple aesthetics. If you’re in 1995 looking back at a 1965 comic, it just looks old. I don’t mean wear and tear and other matters of condition, I mean the artwork, the storytelling, the coloring, the paper stock, everything…a 1965 comic would just look dated to the eyes of someone thirty years later.

Someone in 2025, like, y’know, all of us at this moment, looking thirty years back at a comic from 1995: it’s still going to have elements that are dated. Maybe some Liefeld-isms in the art, more dialogue on the page, more cover blurbs, some crazy cover gimmicks…but you can still usually draw a straight line from that 1995 comic to the comics of today. You can see how one may have evolved into the other.

If I had to put my nickel down on any of these, I’d say it would be just the sheer number of 1995 comics left out there in the marketplace to buy now. You can probably go into most comic shops and ask for a Spawn #27 and chances are good they’d have it. But if you were in 1995 asking for a thirty year old copy of Star Spangled War Stories #120, you might be out of luck.

I still wouldn’t quite rule out “being old enough to buy the ’90s comics when they were new,” because that’s the one that hits old farts like me the hardest.

Still reading Absolute Green Lantern, however.

filed under Categories collecting, green lantern 30 Comments

So I started reading the Green Lantern series sometime around 1980, picking up issues here and there until getting it every month starting with #141 in 1981, the first appearance of the Omega Men.

Eventually, I dropped the book after #157 (1982):


…which was still near the beginning of the “Hal Jordan in Space” storyline (more on that in a bit). I seem to recall enjoying that specific issue, since I liked Hector Hammond as a villain, but GL being stuck in space all the time began to wear a bit thin on me, I guess, or the next issue didn’t grab me. Whatever the reason, I stopped with that #157.

While I did check in with a random issue partway through the run (the infamous “exploding boy” cover on #162, which I wrote about…21 years ago? Really?) I didn’t hop back on the Green Lantern train ’til #171, the infamous Alex Toth issue that all the writers removed their names from:


Now I don’t know if I knew it at the time, and given my love of fanzines I can’t see how I didn’t know, but the whole Hal in Space thing was coming to an end, with a brand new creative team and direction for the book starting in #172 (1984). I presume everyone else was sick of the space stories, or sales had dipped far enough that they were ready to try literally anything else, or maybe they just ran out of Gil Kane inventory covers to run. But I kept reading, Len Wein and Dave Gibbons showed up, turned things around, everything was great, and so on.

And it was all well and good for, oh, another decade or so.

That Green Lantern comic went through a few more creative changes over the next few years, with everyone doing interesting and sometimes peculiar work, before that series wrapped up in 1988. I followed the GL franchise into Action Comics Weekly, DC’s new serialized format that was released…well, you can guess how often it came out. And there were the well-received Emerald Dawn minis retelling Hal’s early years as a Lantern, and a new ongoing series that launched in 1990.

That 1990 series was also quite popular, and I enjoyed it quite a bit myself, even if the writer for that series is now considered persona non grata in the comics business, or, well, anywhere for that matter. It was a thoughtful, imaginative run that culminated in a tie-in to the whole “Death and Return of Superman” storyline going on elsewhere in the DC Universe. A storyline in which GL’s stomping grounds, Coast City, is destroyed.

The final issue of that writer’s run is #47, in which Hal comes to terms with that huge loss with his old partner, Green Arrow. And, when the writer actually did a signing at my previous place of employment waaaay back when, before His Troubles were known, he’d basically said as such, that he had other plans for the big 50th issue, that the Coast City thing was dealt with.

But DC was still chasing that “Death of Superman” dollar and wanted Big Changes for the characters that had been around a while and seemed possibly moribund compared to the edgier, “hipper” comics being produced by their competitors. So word came down from on high that Hal was to go away and be replaced with a new fella. And as it turned out, the way Hal went away was to make him go crazy over the destruction of Coast City and start killing his fellow Lanterns to gain enough power to resurrect the city and its inhabitants.

Am I sure this is exactly how it went down? I mean, that this was ordered by DC, not that was what happened in the comics, because that was definitely what happened in the comics. All I have is The Former Writer’s statement on the matter, and given how many brains “The Death of Superman” story broke, it all seems plausible.

At any rate, Hal was gone, we had a new guy, Kyle Rayner, on board as the one (and only!) Green Lantern. And I read his comics up through issue #55:


…and it wasn’t so much that I didn’t like Kyle Rayner, as I didn’t like what they did with Hal Jordan, and I gave up reading Green Lantern again. That was 1994.

Now they did a lot of things with Hal Jordan in the meantime…he popped up in that Day of Judgement mini-series, he was the Spectre for a bit in his own comic, and I read all of those. But it wasn’t until 2004 and the series Green Lantern: Rebirth that DC finally put Hal back in the green and black space togs. That is what finally got me back into reading GL comics, correcting a bizarre decision to try to push a new version of the Golden Age/Silver Age transition without just sort of letting it occur naturally.

From Rebirth we went right into a new ongoing series launching in 2005, and I’ve been reading Green Lantern comics in all their various incarnations ever since.

Until, I’m thinking, right about now. It may be time for the third big Green Lantern break.

I was trying to talk this out on Bluesky, and I think about as far as I got was that it was “too much.” Every comic is crowded with characters, crowded with lore, crowded with ever increasing stakes and risks…it’s practically sensory overload. The alien Lanterns are no longer fun guest-stars, they’re just more noise.

The exact example I used was that it seemed like after the Sinestro Corps War, a genuinely fun and interesting multipart super-battle amongst opposing Lantern armies, every Green Lantern event continued to chase that high. It seemed fine at first, particularly with the introduction of new Lantern Corps based around different spectra (I don’t care what anyone says, I liked the Red Lanterns). But it all just seemed to go on and on and on until this last one, the GL Corps versus the…Starbreakers, I guess? It’s just one more mass of action figures to throw at the GL action figures.

Going back to that 1980s GL series, when I was talking about the “Hal in Space” story. That storyline kicks off with Hal’s bosses, the Guardians of the Universe, calling him on the carpet to remind him that he’s got an entire sector of space he’s supposed to be watching over, not just Earth. As such, the Guardians banish him from Earth for a year, and tell him to work his beat for once. It actually does come across as odd to see Hal not in his regular earthbound stomping grounds.

Which of course isn’t to say Hal didn’t take off into space occasionally prior to this, But there was a balance…sure he may have left Earth once in a while, but he always started there and usually ended up back there, if not at the end of the issue, but eventually at the end of the story. It made him slightly more relatable.

Now, it feels like it’s the opposite, with stories beginning and ending in space and if Earth is seen at all, it’s only sporadically. Even the early issues of the current Green Lantern run, with Hal stuck on Earth, while good and maintaining my interest, were mostly about Hal trying to figure out how to leave Earth.

And while the lore and history of the Corps have always been part of the comics, they weren’t the be-all/end-all like they seem to be now. It felt more special when we got the Deep Lore once in a while, not with every outing.

This may be the first time and last time I’m doing this, but I’m going to refer to something from the Family Guy TV show. There is a line Peter says, in regards to The Godfather, a line that the show’s creator Seth McFarlane apparently liberated from a college professor, in which he says the film “insists upon itself.”


It is a weird critique to make about anything: it’s both exacting enough to sound like a very specific jibe, and it’s vague enough to be wide open to interpretation. But regardless, you sort of get what’s being said here.

This is the Green Lantern franchise as it is currently: it insists upon itself. It’s self-referential, it’s repetitive, it’s Green Lanterns solving Green Lantern problems.

I tried to stick with it, I really did. But I’m just not feeling it right now, and who’s to say if I will again? Am I going to go back to new GL stories when I’m 70? Feels unlikely.

And it’s a real shame, too, because they’re bringing back the old GL villain Krona for a new story, and I have bit of a nostalgic fondness for him. But Krona is who you bring in when you want some big, universe-shaking threat and frankly, what’s one more to add to the pile here.

Not that 56-year-old Mike has that much more money.

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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.

Robots in dis poncho.

filed under Categories collecting 15 Comments

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!

Spoilers for Great Darkness Saga, Planet of the Apes (1968), X-Men/Teen Titans, and, I don’t know, Sixth Sense, maybe?

filed under Categories collecting, legion of super-heroes 20 Comments


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.

Don’t worry, I’ll have more to say about Wolverine back issues next time.

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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).

I could feel my checkbook quivering in fear as I pulled out all those X-Men.

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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.

I’m probably just going to recycle the pile of Wonder Man #1s that was in here.

filed under Categories collecting 11 Comments


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.

In which I bug my old boss about comics he sold in 1986.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing 14 Comments

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!