So thanks for the questions/discussion topics you dropped into the comments for Monday’s entry. That’s a whole lotta comic book talk for me to start makin’ with, so I’ll likely get to it next week. Also, sorry for no post on Wednesday, the mind was willing, the body less so, and thus the surprise day off.
But today I have…lazy posting, as I pulled out the Marvel “Sales to Astonish” retailer catalog from August 1993. Amongst the solicitations and sample…”artwork” that we somehow willingly tolerated then, were several full page ads for Marvel’s offerings. A couple of them I recall were used as actual print ads or house ads with the Marvel comics themselves. Others are, well, what they are, so let’s take a look, shall we?
Flashing back to that time when everyone’s favorite ersatz Thor (after Beta Ray Bill) was about to hit the scene in his snazzy new first issue, what with the foil cover gimmick an’ all. And it actually sold really well, and people were into the character. And, to some extent, the character is still remembered fondly today, even if the back issues don’t move like they used to. It was a time when you could put out a comic like this and have it get traction, at least for a while.
What really surprised me is that during the weird (and somewhat brief) comic cards book during the initial years of the pandemic, when even the 1991 Impel Marvel set was selling for stupid money after decades of literally nobody caring, that Marvel and DC didn’t try card inserts in their comics again. I seem to recall some promo cards being given away with some comics event or ‘nother around this time, and those were popular, but there wasn’t enough of that sort of thing. Granted, the marketplace now isn’t generating the same kind of money that it was back then, so things like “trading card inserts” and “foil cover gimmicks” are an expense only dipped into on a relatively rare basis.
I will note that younger folks, those who weren’t around in the ’90s for the first wave of all this stuff, love finding comics packed with cards or special cover enhancements. They weren’t jaded by the ’90s comics market experience like your boy Old Man Mike here.
I like this ad, even with the “It’s Miller Time!” blurb across the top (referencing of course Mr. Frank “THE SPIRIT movie” Miller, the auteur behind this series). I haven’t read the mini in forever, but I remember it being pretty good. A real standout in quality given the enormous amount of…possibly not top tier product being shoveled out at the time.
You see, there’s a frame around the main body of the ad, and that extremely blown up detail of Punisher’s head is indeed Not A Pretty Picture. Anyway, terrible.
Our second Gambit appearance in these ads, from the days people pretended that they liked Gambit. (Save your emails and your TikToks, I’m only kidding, maybe.) Scan’s a little crooked, which is okay because it fits with that jumble of blurbs at the bottom. And speaking of which, that’s a nice mix of ballyhooing the physical properties of the book (“Wraparound cover!” “Gambit hologram!”) with the signicance of the comics’s contents (“Wolverine’s last stand!” “Magneto returns!”), a reminder that there were still stories happening even underneath all the gimmicks and the “kewl” artwork.
Also, the toning on that ad is weird. The white hands, head, and cards with the rest of the image dimmed is a little offputting. Plus, that top card he’s supposedly throwing almost looks like it’s behind his head. Just the way it’s drawn, I’m sure, but it still looks odd.
So when I opened my store, I had a specific idea for my new comic shelving, a 36-foot long wooden rack (built in 4-foot-wide segments), with the fronts at a slight angle and flat shelves attached with, like, 12 inch gaps between them. It looks a little something…like this:
This photo was very early on…in fact, taken the night before I officially opened my shop for business…so the line of graphic novels and other products on the very top lip of the shelf isn’t there. But you get the idea of how the shelf looks. And it’s served me well for these just about ten years now.
But what he had at my previous place of employment…boy oh boy, what we had. Initially, what my old boss Ralph had were the wire freestanding comic racks, the twenty-pocket style, plus a few wire spinner racks (two of which I now own, one for home and one for the shop). Usually we had those freestanding ones “flattened” down and hanging off of pegboard mounted on the wall. It usually worked okay, though we occasionally had to ask folks “please don’t bend the comics forward on the rack” because, y’know, we were hding the secret good comics behind the ones in the front of each slot.
But eventually, what we ended up using were these, as seen in the September 1985 Bud Plant catalog:
I forget how many of these we used for the new comics…four or five of them, I guess? And we had others elsewhere in the store that we used for graphic novels as well.
Here’s a pic of dubious resolution showing the rack in action, stuffed full of good comics and also Purgatori:
The pricing is…hoo boy:
And that was in 1985 dollars, so those shelves would cost, what, one million dollars apiece now. (I rounded up slightly.) And I don’t think I knew there were two different styles of the plexiglas shelving…we had the “lipped” kind, which is what’s pictured. Just having the plain flat ones would’ve been weird, and possibly a hazard if there were any sharp corners. I mean, I’m presuming there wasn’t.
And here’s something you don’t see every day (or maybe you do, I don’t know what you get up to in your free time):
“Here, build ’em yourself if you’re too cheap to spring on the shipping.” But actually, that’s a good option, given how most comic ships weren’t…exactly swimming in coin of the realm, then as now.
Actually, looking at the pricing, I’m trying to figure out how what I did, having custom shelves built specifically for me, compares to the cost of equivalent Gabriel racks. I think it might have been less oppressive on the ol’ finances buying the Gabriels. Ah well, at least I don’t have to deal with the plexiglas shelves, which, under every day retail wear and tear, would sometimes crack or bust completely. Ah well.
Those racks served the shop well, and I know they continued using them ’til the end, at which point…I’m not sure what happened to them. I presume they were sold to another shop, or just outright discarded. Wish I had the room for them myself…maybe I’d have found a use for them, or maybe I just wanted them around as reminders of the time I spent in that old store.
Time to finish up that 1984 “Battips” distributor flyer from Bud Plant, with ordering suggestions for retailers. (Here are parts one and two.)
HARSH. This issue of Daredevil probably sold okay at the time. That’s kind of an eye-grabbing cover.
Well, that was almost two years’ worth of “Rocky Grimm, Space Ranger,” the post-Secret Wars stories of the Thing toolin’ around the Beyonder’s battleworld. Now, I recently reread those stories in ye olde Thing Omnibus, and I think they hold up. BUT using this one data point provided here I suppose in “real time,” as these issues were coming out, folks were getting a little tired of this change-of-pace storyline and wanted Bashful Ben back in his usual stomping grounds. (See also “The Trial of the Flash,” another paitence-testing storyline.)
I do still get occasional requests for both this one and the Life of Pope John Paul II, but “Pope Comics,” and this person put it, must have sold a whole lot more since I see those in collections and Mother T. — well, not at all.
Don’t know if that was a typo or a change in plans, as #265 is the actual first appearance of Silver Sable (and even got a 2nd print to ballyhoo the fact). It’s possible the story was pushed back, as #264 has “fill-in issue” written all over it. Anyway, nobody cares about Silver Sable anymore, sorry.
“Steady on” nuthin’. RAISE THEM ORDERS, TRUST ME
Interesting to see the note here that sales were “softening” on what was essential Marvel’s flagship title. And the implied “long, continued storyline (derogatory).” As far as stories being “too grim” — friend, hold onto your beanie, 1980s X-Men comics will look like the Care Bears compared to what’s to come.
This story is great, by the way. Track these down if you can.
Oh, I think this is the issue where we get Byrne’s retelling of Doom’s origin that kinda/sorta incorporated the “single scar” theory of Jack Kirby’s. Anyway (SPOILER) this is the Kristoff version of Doom (sigh…long story) and not the real Doom but it’s fairly surprising that even then, an appearance by Victor Von would be enough to get those orders bumped up way high.
Oh, come on. I won’t stand for this slander of our pal Sal. The man did fine work on Simonson’s Thor, and his style was a nice match to Simonson’s own art. The book looked great for that entire run.
Here’s a panel from this very issue:
Sal Buscema is fine.
“There’s no way this character would ever become popular with the general public via a series of movies that will literally make billions. ORDER LOW”
I admire the honesty. Anyway, big clue as to how unique a comic this was. I suggest seeking out pal Tegan on Tik Tok and seeing her short videos about this very series.
It honestly surprises me that people thought this way about Coyote. I know it didn’t last long, but thought it was held in higher regard than that. Ah, well. It seemed like an okay comic.
Whoooops, hate to tell you this about that Galactus story, but….
Pretty safe to say that Alan Davis went on to become a funnybook artist of Some Note.
• • •
And that’s it for that distributor flyer. Tune in next time, when…I’ll probably find another one to discuss!
In the meantime, I do want to note the passing of a couple of important individuals.
James Earl Jones passed away at the age of 93, which, if one must pass away, that’s a good old age to do. I know he’s done so much in so many varied roles, but c’mon, I’m the exact proper age to remember him most fondly as the voice of that most evil of heavy breathers, Darth Vader. That deep, rumbling voice epitomized Space Evil in a way very few could have.
Mark Evanier has a nice story about when he and the Garfield cartoon crew encountered Mr. Jones. And I’ve been recommending that folks check out that one episode of Big Bang Theory on which Jones guest-stars. I know comic fans aren’t…big on BBT, but Jones is clearly having a great time in this very silly and hilarious episode, and you should at least watch it for his performance. (And the other Star Wars guest star who shows up.)
The other passing is that of John Cassaday, a superior comics artist whose sense of design classed up any comic he worked on. He supplied countless covers, he drew Astonishing X-Men, he drew Planetary, he did so much, and I’m sorry he’s gone so soon. My conlences to his friends and family.
This may be my favorite cover of is…granted, it’s not the most dynamic of his illustrations, but that great Wolverine face tells a story all its own:
So, continuing the the look at this Bud Plant “Battips” insert with order suggestions for retailers…but first, let me address this one comment from adrian:
“I wouldn’t mind reading a few entries into Robotech Comics.”
Boy, adrian, I’d sure like to, except I unfortunately don’t have a lot to say. Yes, yes, I know longtime readers have come to expect when I say “I don’t have a lot to say” or “I’ll keep this short,” I’ll then launch into like a 3,000 essay. But honestly, in this case I don’t have much to talk about simply because my interaction with Robotech comics is mostly selling them and replacing back issues in the bins from the back room at the old job.
One thing I remember is that my former boss always said that Robotech comics (at least from the Comico era) seemed to sell better out of those back issue bins than new on the rack. An explanation for this may be that the primary audience for these weren’t necessarily New Comics Day regulars, instead only coming in every few months and catching up on what they missed. To be clear, it’s been too many years and I entered the comics retail biz near the end of these Comico Robotechs, so I can’t recall their sales with that level of granular detail.
However, Robotech’s always had its following, even as Malibu/Eternity picked up the franchise. Back issues of the multiple series sold relatively briskly for us, regardless of the publisher, at least ’til the ’90s comics crash.
Okay, now on to BATTIPS:
Welllllll…they didn’t sell forever, but they do remain classic comics. Interesting seeing these prices points this early on, even with the higher page counts.
A reminder that, no matter how diminished this sort of even has become over the decades, the original Crisis on Infinite Earths was in fact a Big Deal at the time. I can remember walking into the shop that would within just a few years become my place of employment and seeing that huge stack of Crisis #1 on the counter. And confirming with my former boss Ralph…oh yeah it sold well.
Gotta be honest, I totally forgot there even was this Man-Bat reprint. But you bet I bought that Deadman reprint series, collecting together all of the original stories and putting them on nice paper. Now at the time, I was in my mid-teens, so I don’t know if I counted as “an older fan,” but I ate these up. For some reason I was a big Deadman fan then (even before he started popping up in Swamp Thing so this was directly aimed at me.
Yes, this is the beginning of the Englehart run on this series, introducing new characters and concepts still in use even now (lookin’ at you, Kilowog). But this issue is also the debut of Mogo, The Planet What Is Also a Green Lantern (spoiler), in a back-up by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons,a pair soon to go on to do a particular maxi-series of some note.
Some shops at the time weren’t even ordering Sgt. Rock or any war titles, in case you were wondering why these comics are 1) hard to find and 2) expensive now. I actually bought #400, even though I wasn’t a big war comics guy. Plus, this is a nice eye-grabbing cover:
Yes, cut back on this issue featuring this new guy Todd…MacFarnee? Something like that. Anyway, we’ll never hear about him again.”
(Just pokin’ fun…who was to know, right?)
Good to see textual evidence from the time that word on the street was translating to Big Sales on the big green plant guy’s comic book. It certainly came a long way from being on the verge of cancellation just a couple of years or so prior.
Now, I read and enjoyed Sun Devils, but I feel like (aside from a story or two in some Superman comics several years ago) it’s pretty much forgotten. Surely with the periodic Dan Jurgens-mania that goes around, some attempt at reprinting this would have been made, but alas, it remains a bargain bin oddity. It does contain an early mainstream comics example of a gay couple, though (surprise) one of the pair dies in a real Women-in-Refrigerators moment. I’m sure it was just intended a Capital-D Drama, but we’re more aware of this sort of thing now, and it hasn’t aged well.
• • •
Will wrap up next time with a look at the Marvel tips!
This was a stand-alone flyer sent out to retailers giving suggestions for their comics orders. No date on it, but judging by the books discussed this is for stuff coming late 1984/early 1985.
I’ve noted before that I can’t imagine distributors today doing this without publishers quailing at length regarding any thought of cutting orders, or being less than enthused about any new releases. The modern version is, like, Marvel telling retailers “you need to order LOTS of this, trust us!” which they’ve done one too many times for people to pay any attention.
Anyway, let’s look at a few entries of note here:
Mostly pointing this out for the price-increase timeline, and that bastard child price level of 65 cents. As I recall that was Marvel’s first post-60 cent cover price when DC had jumped up to 75 cents. Kind of a “ha, we’re still cheaper!” thumbing of the nose to the cross-town competition.
This got me to look at the price jumps in this period, and this is a very rough outline based on whatever the cover dates are on the books (which may or may not align with each other. And I’m just using as examples some of the companies’ established and long-running titles.
Avengers – went up to 65 cents with #254, cover date April 1985 (so early ’84, around January or February)
Archie – went up to 65 cents with #334, cover date March 1985 (again, like January 1985). Caveat: Archie seemed to be bimonthly at this point.
Batman – jumped up to 75 cents from 60 cents with #366, cover date December 1983 (so in the fall sometime).
That was quite a long time for Marvel (and Archie) to be undercutting DC’s pricing. I think DC’s push at the time was “hey, our comics are printed on nice white paper now!”
Marvel, or at least the Avengers with issue #264, goes up to 75 cents in late ’85.
I’ll have to look more closely at this (though I bet if I Google/Bing/Ask Jeeves-it someone’s got a chart of comic book cover pricing).
At this point we just had the first issue, with this logo:
When the second issue comes out, the title has changed to the I-suppose-more-recognizable Robotech: The Macross Saga (incorporating the lettering style of “Macross” from #1):
And then with #3, we get what will be the standard logo for the Robotech Comico line:
Ultimately, in the back issue market that #1 is the most in-demand and pricey of the Comico Robotech books.
Interesting to see that Mage was getting some reader/sales demand, even before Grendel was involved. I know we had some discussion about whether or not Mage was a beloved classic, but it looks like at least for a time it was a relatively popular one.
Yes, it’s more T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Revival Talk! Some textual evidence here, backing up my former boss’s memories, that there was some anticipation for this comic given the creators involved. I mean, it certainly sounds like it should be good, right?
I like this as it shows how a distributor handled the whole PC -to-Eclipse title transfer after the former publisher collapsed.
Remember when two bucks was too much to pay for a comic? At a time when Marvel/DC/Archie was 60-to-75 cents? No idea how good they had it. I remember the first time I saw a $1 cover price on an indie book, and I was all “holy cow, I want that comic, it better be worth the money.”
And just throwing this in here just as a reminder that Badger was reasonably popular at one point. Like the PC/Eclipse thing, this was the time of the titles moving over from Capital to First Comics, though with like a year gap between issues (versus the about half-year gap on the PC/Eclipse transition).
• • •
I’ll get to the second half of this Battips flyer next time. Thanks for reading, pals!
So in The Comic Reader #87 from 1972, it was announced that some mailed Bernie Wrightson pages from Swamp Thing #2 had gone missing, with FOUL PLAY suspected. But here the next month’s issue, #88, we find…
…that the true culprit was the U.S. Postal Service all along! DARN YOU AND YOUR PERFIDY, 15-YEAR-OLD LOUIS DEJOY!
Anyhoo, let’s go back to some of the open questions we had on Monday’s post about 1986 comics ordering, now that I’d had a chance to bend the ear of my former boss Ralph about just what going on back then in Ye Olden Pre-Mike Tymes.
First off, that issue of GrimJack, #26, that had the first color Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story: yes, Ralph ordered high on this. And yes, as I said, there appeared to be plenty left over, and Ralph confirmed that it did not sell all that well off the new shelf upon release.
Here, let’s look at that cover:
The TMNT story is blurbed right there at the top, above the logo. The cover image itself is a little busy, and the blurb itself doesn’t stand out quite as sharply as it could. Plus, the font doesn’t grab the Turtles fan’s eye quite as much as an actual Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle logo would have done, I’d think. And maybe if the main cover image itself had featured the Turtles, or even an inset pic of them in one of the top corners, that might have attracted more attention.
But this is all 20-20 hindsight editing, and what’s done is done. As I said, it did move some copies out of the back issue bins in following years, but it was never a huge draw. But that’s just one store’s experience, maybe it moved tons of copies elsewhere. Every clientele is different.
Now, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents…this wasn’t a question I’d posed in the previous post or anything, but I was just curious. How, I asked Ralph, did the Deluxe Comics edition of the comic whose name is a pain to type sell?
Ralph, himself a big fan of said property, noted that the initial issues of the Deluxe series (actually titled Wally Wood’s…) did quite well. And it’s no surprise, with some solid creators as George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Keith Giffen, Steve Ditko, Dave Cockrum, and more on those early installments. But by the end of the run some of those folks had departed, and while the teams remaining on the book were perfectly fine, maybe the steam had run out a little. And the legal problems the book faced didn’t help, cutting it down after its fifth issue. Whatever the reason, interest in the series had waned by that point anyway.
And finally, that whole “Marvel’s New Universe” thing. That’s probably the subject of a whole post (or whole series of posts) just on its own, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet here. My question to Ralph was “were people excited about the New Universe ahead of its release?” and his answer was “yes, very much so.” This was an exciting event in a time when Big Events weren’t an everyday thing in comics, and the last events that had happened, Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, hadn’t killed interest. As Ralph put it, the fans weren’t quite as jaded yet.
Did that extend to ancillary products like, say, comic news magazines with articles on the New Universe project? Sure, to the extent that there were fans who bought stuff like this. Obviously, not everyone who reads comics is interested in how the sausage is made, the comics themselves being enough, but the news/views mag sales did wax and wane with featured topics and New Universe was a point of interest. Here is Something Big that Marvel was about to launch, and interest is high.
And when it did launch, yes, it sold quite well. But for various reasons, the interest dropped off and the whole initiative crawled to a halt within about three or four years. Again, there’s a lot of ground to cover in regards to the Life and Death of the New Universe and I’m not doing that today. Suffice to say, it started big, then became less so, with the occasional bump upwards (like when John Byrne took over Star Brand). Eventually the New Universe (specifically the aforementioned Star Brand) became a plot point in Mark Gruenwald’s Quasar and the whole NU concept has popped up at Marvel in various forms ever since.
• • •
Okay, next week, I’ll try to be talk about topics from this decade. No guarantees, thoough!
Hi pals! Okay, going back to that March 1986 Bud Plant catalog and looking at the second page of those ordering recommendations for comics retailers. (Reminder: I had some brief follow-ups on that first post here.)
Now I have lots of these old catalogs. I can keep doing this for weeks, but I know that would drive you all crazy, and me as well. I do plan on dipping into these on a semi-regular basis as I find them fascinating looks into comics retailing history, and sort of nudge my own brain cells a bit to remember how some of this stuff played out. (Or I bug my former boss Ralph, from whence these catalogs came, to see if he remembers.)
I know we seemed to have plenty of these in backstock, and they would sell out of the bins occasionally, but I can’t say for sure if they flew off the new comic rack upon release. The initial rush of Turtlemania had slowed a bit by this point, so I don’t think throwing a Donatello or whathaveyou into just any book equaled Big Sales Numbers. Yes, look for your follow-up on this once I pester Ralph about it.
I really wanted more March Hare than what we got. Sadly, a #2 was never to be. (I write a little about it here in this obituary for Keith Giffen.)
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is one of those properties that holds strong sway over the folks who remember (or have sought out via back issue bins) the original series and its handful of tie-ins, primarily inspired by the great artwork of Wally Wood and others. However, most attempted revivals seems to fall flat on their faces…I think DC and IDW were the latest attempts? It’s hard to keep track.
There were a lot of shenanigans regarding ownership of the property in the 1980s, such as what was going on with this very series noted in the above tip. That sixth Deluxe issue was never released.
Ouch. There was a time when giants of the past were not appreciated in the then-present, like Kirby and Ditko. It’s hard to tell exactly the tone of the tipster here, whether the world would not appreciate Ditko drawing Daredevil, or whether Ditko’s style as it was then did not suit the character.
Eh, I don’t know, looks okay to me (inks by Klaus Janson):
Okay, now this remains a very popular issue, almost just for that awesome cover alone. When that was available as a poster, it was like printing money. If Marvel’s listening (and their ears are everywhere — ew, gross) let me just say two words: FACSIMILE EDITION.
I mean, just look at this thing:
I cut that one off because the he does go into several solid reasons why the Classic X-Men reprint comic was a good idea, but that can be a whole other post on its own. Rather, I wanted to note the reference ot the Dreadstar reprints from the period, and I want to make sure I track down his comments on that because I can guess what he said. SPOILER: retailers and distributors weren’t thrilled with the Dreadstar reprints…not because of the contents, which are fine, but because of Marvel’s apparent “crowd out the competition” publishing strategy. You can read about it in Comics Journal #97 (where you’ll find a mention of my old boss Ralph in there).
While not getting the same attention as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles et al., I feel like Miami Mice is one of the better-regarded of that subgenre of the blank and white book, the “funny animal parody” comic. I mean, it was published by Rip Off Press, one of the classic underground companies, and appealingly cartooned by Mark Bodé. I’ve even sold copies of this out of my shop relatively recently.
I…I, um…that’s hard to say, honestly. One more question for Ralph: were people excited about the whole “New Universe” endeavor from Marvel at the start, or was it a whole lotta “oh, now what?” Like, was there enough interest to bump up sales on magazines with behind the scenes secrets and info like Comics Interview?
Just checked my own ‘zine collection, and I don’t have a Comics Interview #33 in there, but I do have #36, which has a big “NEW UNIVERSE” banner across the top of the front cover. So I guess there was enough interest to double-dip on the topic!
• • •
And speaking of double-dipping on topics, I’ll probably check out another one of these tips columns soon. Consider yourself forewarned!
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 I was going through some of my old boss Ralph’s distributor catalogs an’ such that he’d saved for all these years and found a new treasure trove of material. In particular, it’s the “recommended order numbers” type of thing that I absolutely adore. A while back I featured some tip sheets from a distributor published in the early ’80s (123), and on a mildly different note, remember this distributor’s suggestion for ordering future issues of Miracleman?
Anyhoo, I found a punch of mid-1980s Bud Plant catalogs with just pages and pages of ordering suggestions, and they are absolutely wonderful, a great mirror into a particular period of this ridiculous industry’s history. Like my fascination with fanzines (hopefully more on that in a future ProgRuin post), these bits of editorializing mixed in amongst the many listings of orderable products let’s us see kind of what people were thinking about comics at the time. And to my specific interest, what people were thinking from the sales/distribution side, versus the fan side (though in fairness, often the twain shall meet).
This selection of excerpts comes from the March 1986 Bud Plant catalog, under this amusing logo:
One thing I’d sorta forgotten about was that Dave Sim was trying to keep Cerebus to a very tight schedule, with the intent of the last issue, #300, coming out in a specific month and year. So, when he fell behind, he had to catch up, and he did so by just crankin’ out those issues Bill-Jemas-at-Marvel style with no regard to monthly release:
I’ll tell you, as someone super into Cerebus at the time, I wasn’t happy about those small publishing gaps, but sure liked it when a several issues came out right on top of each other.
You know, I was never quite sure what happened there. I think I figured this whole time “Eagle” and “Quality” were the same company, and just underwent a name change. At any rate, we filed their miscellaneous titles together at the previous place of employment. Just never looked into it, I suppose. I guess, despite my best efforts, I’ve learned something today.
Ooh boy, I do love me some Eclipse comics. Thought I’d just lump ’em all together here rather than doing the titles individually. Stuff like Scout and Mr. Monster are mostly forgotten today, which is a shame, but those are solid books worth seeking out. And the Mr. Monster title underwent many stylistic changes over its short run, but all were entertaining. I seem to recall that Giffen story mentioned there was pretty good.
“Hamsters 3-D #1″ is of course “Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters,” the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles knock-off out of the gate (the last one out of the gate being, I’m pretty sure, this title). This comic, flying in the face of all logic and reason, still has legs, and in fact sold some issues of it (including one of the 3-D mags!) on Sunday. It’s probably some residual effect of the Turtles’ continuing popularity, dragging the Hamsters along in its wake. And pretty much just the Hamsters…you don’t see the Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils or the Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos doing that, do you?
Champions I do not recall selling a lot of, to be honest. I mean, I started in comics retail a couple of years after this, so maybe I missed the title’s heyday, but it certainly didn’t sell a whole lot out of the back issue bins. I’ll have to ask my former boss if it did sell, and if it did get that crossover gamer audience.
And ah yes…the aforementioned Miracleman, and in fact the very issue discussed in the link I posted above. But I checked the order listing in this catalog, and it credits Alan Moore with Chuck Beckum (AKA Chuck Austen), and there’s a mention, both in this tip and in the solicitation, of the New Wave preview. This sounds like the contents of #8, as the actual published #9 is the “birth issue” by Moore and Rick Veitch. As the tip also notes, this is around the time of the flooding of Eclipse’s offices, so scheduling was a total mess at this point. Plus, unless I’m missing something, Miracleman never had a Frank Miller cover.
Okay, now here are a couple I should probably save for more discussion of the Superman reboot by John Byrne, but, eh, here they are anyway:
Now here’s the Thing: I actually have Ralph’s original order numbers for all these comics, handwritten in these catalogs. And it just so happens that I have the February 1986 catalog as well, and comparing numbers…yes, Ralph followed this advice, and ordered twice the number he did on issue #96 (with Blue Devil). Now further investigation will likely show what his average order numbers were on the title (he might have bumped it up a little for the Blue Devil issue, since folks liked that character).
What’s interesting here is the optimism for Byrne’s version of Superman, though the start of the tip almost reads like the opposite reaction. Byrne was hot hot hot at the time, so I suspect people were pretty excited for the Big Changes coming up. I mean, some people weren’t thrilled about the changes, I know, but given the Super-titles’ crap sales at the time (therefore necessitating the revamp), they weren’t reading those comics anyway. And they probably bought the Byrne issues. So there.
Okay, I love this one because of the “Better than The Shadow tag, which of course means “order more than you did on The Shadow” but for all the world looks like “hey, Watchmen might be a better comic than The Shadow, maybe check it out.”
Did Ralph follow this advice? I don’t know, I haven’t found his Shadow numbers yet. But this is referring to the Howard Chaykin Shadow mini-series, which, as I recall, was a very popular comic (even as it outraged the Shadow purists who were still alive at the time). Ralph’s Watchmen orders were high, the highest of any DC that month, but still it seems like they were lower than I expected, relative to all the other numbers I’m seeing. Then again, this was a new comic featuring new characters at a higher price point even if by admittedly a hot writer…and nobody had any idea this was going to turn into a phenomenon. Mostly just 20-20 hindsight surprise, is all.
Okay, those were just from the first page of that month’s tip sheet. Will I look at more of these in the near future? Probably! I’ve got at least two dozen or more of these catalogs here…I could probably just talk about this for the next few months. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind.
Here is a 1970 news piece on the Canadian comic shop Memory Lane, run by George Henderson:
1. George Henderson is better known as “Captain George,” prolific ‘zine publisher of mags like Captain George’s Whizzbang which you’ll see plenty of in that vid.
2. The customer they speak to in that clip is George Olshevsky, whose name I knew from somewhere in the comics biz but couldn’t place it. I meant to look it up, but hadn’t before I put the video on Bluesky, and no less a person than comics legend Paul Kupperberg reminded me. He was the person behind the various Marvel Index publications, and has sadly passed away…you can read all about Mr. Olshevsky in this obituary.
3. Just seeing the thick stacks of Silver Age Marvel on the shelves was jaw-dropping, particularly since I’ve been acquiring and selling lots of those over the last year or two. Boy oh boy I’d love to be able to reach into that clip and pull out those piles of books for my shop.
3b. Seeing the person flipping through the box of unbagged Silver Age books caused quite the reaction in me. “BAG THOSE BOOKS, reduce that wear and tear!”
4. “The first Superman can sell for as much as $300!”
augh
5. The piece ends on the very odd note of “sometimes comics get stolen but the police don’t take it seriously,” which, huh, okay.
6. I would dearly love to be able to wander around in that store at the time. I’ve been in little shops sort of like this, with stacks and rows of old unbagged comics, but alas not with material of this vintage. Plenty of black and white boom comics, though, which…come to think of it, I’d still love to paw through those.
