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So some local high schoolers contacted me about doing a little filming in my store for their film class, which brought up the question “why didn’t my high school have a film class?” I mean, probably because you can film things on your phone now, versus having to carve a movie into rock frame by frame back when I a teen.
Anyway, they were good kids, held a brief interview with me (asking questions like “why did you decide to sell comics?” and “what’s changed in comics since you started in this business?”), and they even bought a small handful of funnybooks. It was bit of a fun diversion on a day where I needed a little distraction.
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One final reminder:
Free Comic Book Day has come ’round again, and hie yourself hither to your local comicks shoppe and get yourself some fistfuls of free books. Retailers have to pay for the freebies, so if they’re having an associated sale (and they really should be), buy a thing or two if you can to help them out!
Most of all, have fun and spend the day enjoying comics!
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So long,
Butch.
EDIT: Things change fast in Comicstown, as here’s breaking news about Dimaond’s status…and it’s not good.
So I’m 1) feeling a little under the weather, and 2) have a medical thing in the morning, so I’ll try to keep it (relatively) short today. I’ll get back to the Final ’90s Countdown in short order, honest.
Anyway, I’d somehow missed that Alliance, the company that had put in the winning bid to acquire Diamond Comics Distributors, and then went to court when Diamond tried to sell to the second-highest bidder, has now backed out of the deal. Not sure of the reason, though I’ve seen speculation here and there, none of which is my guess that they saw the giant mound of Funko Pops on which Diamond is sitting.
Now, like the article says, the company may go to the next bidders, if they’re still interested, but who knows at this point. I do get asked a lot if Diamond’s travails are causing any issues with my shop, and honestly, as time wears on and I get less and less dependent on Diamond for product as companies depart for greener pastures, the answer is…no, not especially.
Not to say that Diamond doesn’t have stuff, still. I mean, Dynamite Entertainment is still hanging on to them for dear life, plus plenty of other indie publishers. And they carry merch like action figures and tchotchkes not available at the other distributors. Plus, while I can get most of my comic supplies from Lunar, at lower shipping costs, my customers (and me as well) prefer the thicker-walled comic boxes still available through Diamond.
But I’ve noticed having a delayed shipment from Diamond is no longer the huge pain in the rear it used to be, when, oh, nearly all my comics came from them. The news of a delayed shipment now generally elicits a small shrug. I’d rather have it all out for New Comics Day, but it hardly impacts my income and the books’ sales if they arrive late. Even Dynamite and the indie books will still sell fine if my Wednesday crowd doesn’t seem ’em ’til the following week.
So, in short, I am curious as to what happens with Diamond, but I don’t feel like my livelihood depends on their survival…especially with the attrition of publishers they’re seeing. I’d miss some of their product lines and services, which I’m sure would show up elsewhere. And that is all jumping the gun anyway, since they’re not dead yet. I do wonder what changes will be in store once another company takes control, but at least I can watch and not worry overmuch about how those changes could impact me…I mean, so long as they keep the indie comics they have left comin’, which is the big potential loss, of course.
One final reminder about leaving your pick for your favorite 1990s indie comic in the comments to this post here. Just read the rules first! I’m shutting down the comments after this weekend (I think I can do that) and I’ll start tallying the votes.
I haven’t really been monitoring the comments there, except for when I was asked to rule on Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell (nope, sorry, it began serialization in 1989) so I don’t know how far off the rails everything got there. I trust everyone behaved themselves.
In other news…sorry my entries have been a little on the brief side this week. A combination of some long days at work and a sudden new eyeball issue have been bit of a distraction. (No biggie on the eye thing…the main problem is under control, but apparently I’m now allergic to one of the eyedrops, in case anyone here has seen be in person and wondered about my irritated eye with the swollen lids.) I should be back up to speed soon. Especially if I’m about to discuss a couple dozen different 1990s comic book series.
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In other news:
There you go, All The News You Already Knew About. Thanks for reading, pals, and with any luck I’ll be back to normal blogging next week.
Okay, I ultimately decided not to continue the search for the most ’90s comic for the moment, as picking up from where I left off there was…well, weird. But I do have more 1990s comics content in the works, so check back next week for that.
But, speaking of the 1990s…here’s DC Comics with a big ol’ announcement regarding the forthcoming variant-laden first issue of Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s “Hush 2” storyline:
So here’s what Batman #158 entails.
Cover A – the main cover.
Covers B, C, D, E, F, G – cardstock cover artist variants
Cover H – the blank sketch cover
Cover I – foil cover by Jim Lee and Scott Williams
Cover J – a connecting fold-out cover by Jim Lee
Cover K – wraparound foil cover by Sean Gordon Murphy
Cover L – the 1 in 25 ratio variant
Cover M – the 1 in 50 ratio variant
Cover N – the 1 in 100 ratio variant
Cover O – the 1 in 250 Jim Lee pencils “virgin” cover
Cover P – the 1 in 608 (get it?) black and white variant signed by Jim Lee
Cover Q – the 1 in 608 black and white variant signed by Jeph Loeb
Cover R – the 1 in 1000 signed by Lee and Loeb
Then there are the Giant Size (probably Treasury Size) editions, with a regular cover edition and a foil one, as well as the Glow-in-the-Dark foil “Launch Party” variant. And this doesn’t count stuff like a special bundle of ashcans for sale/giveaway, or whatever retailer-specific variants there may be for this comic.
Obviously that 400,000+ copies are divided up amongst all these variants, and I wonder what the print run per comic would be…probably 125,000 or so for the main cover, and the balance spread out over the rest of the covers.
Now, it seems unlikely that Batman is suddenly going to quintuple in sales for this comic, and dumping 400,000+ into the current state of the direct market does seem like quite a lot. Retailer orders does not always equal sales (no matter how much the Rob may brag about the order numbers on X-Force #1 back in the 1990s, a solid chunk of those went directly into stores’ back rooms), but I suspect this particuilar Batman comic will do reasonably well. It really depends on how many different covers any one customer may end up buying.
In its favor, there have been a couple of decades’ worth of sales of the original “Hush” story in trade paperback building up an audience for it. (Never read it myself, beyond flipping through an issue or two, but people seem to really like it.) Can DC get people who read this as a trade initially to come back to pick up a comic book series for six consecutive months, or will that specific audience just wait for the eventual hardcover/paperback release?
Will customers already buying single issues in the direct market suddenly flock to “Hush 2” pushing the already (relatively-speaking for today’s market) high numbers on Batman even higher? Maybe for a while, and orders may be up there for the first couple of issues, but I imagine we’ll see a huge correction in orders by part 3.
Another point in its favor is the artist, Jim Lee. He’s been a popular artist for decades, but the extra push of “THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER OF DC COMICS IS DOING A RARE ART JOB” will probably grab eyes. “Hush” has always been a Jim Lee art showcase, the story being relatively superfluous beyond “Batman fights all his villains,” and the prospect of new Lee art is a big sales pitch. Whether it’s 400,000+ copies big, we’ll find out soon enough.
First off, let me extend my condolences to my blogging pal Johanna on the loss of her husband, K.C. Carlson. K.C. had been an editor on Legion of Super-Heroes, and on the comics-retailer specific publication, the appropriately-named Comics Retailer. I’m very sorry, Johanna, and I hope you’re doing as well as you’re able.
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Okay, I apologize for the delay in this entry, but we’ll wrap up our look at the Bud Plant October 1985 catalog and the ordering tips for comic shops detailed within. Here’s
part one and
part two…and speaking of part two, I have a few notes from my former boss Ralph in regards to a couple of entries from last time.
Surprisingly, he tells me that the P. Craig Russell opera comics sold surprisingly well for him. He says it was likely the excellent art on these books that boosted sales, but I’m holding out for a secret conclave of opera singers living in our area. Whatever the reason, they did do well, and, y’know, good! These are good comics.
In regards to Jon Sable Freelance and American Flagg!, there wasn’t an immediate drop-off on sales, according to my former boss, as the series changed hands or, um, declined in perceived quality. He said there was just a general and natural decline as the series ran on, with no new readers coming on board as things progressed.
And as to comics’ eternal question, “which sold better, Death Rattle or Tales of Terror/Twisted Tales, the answer is…well, kind of a push, really. Neither one really stood out versus the other.
Now, onto the last batch of books from this tip sheet (this time, with some info gathered from Ralph in advance):
Yes, absolutely Frank Miller coming back on Daredevil boosted sales. His initial run was highly regarded, and this return has since become a classic in its own right. Even with the new Disney+ series taking its name from this storyline.
Contrary to this column, Ralph informs me that Firestar, at least for him, didn’t sell worth beans. BEANS, I say. I do recall rarely having to restock this book in the back issue bins. I don’t even her eventual inclusion in the Avengers title did anything to perk up sales. We’re just not a Firestar town, I guess. Maybe if she sang opera….
I mean, yeah, sure, it’s a special issue of Amazing Spider-Man, it’s gonna sell. Still sells even now on the occasion I get one in a collection here at the shop. To this day, I couldn’t tell you who Hobgoblin is or what his deal was — yes, I know that’s only a Wiki link away if I really wanted to know — but that orange weirdo still has sales power even now.
While Secret Wars II wasn’t quite as popular as the original, it still sold awfully well, and interest in the tie-ins wa strong. And this may be among the best of them, an ad-free Avengers story drawn by John Buscema? Sure, let me at it! And it’s still a good seller today…had one in the shop briefly last week before being snapped up.
Ralph tells me that G.I. Joe was largely dead at his shop. Probably one of those books that sold better on newsstands, as folks going into comic shops turned their noses up at those “cartoon comics.”
By “a few issues yet,” they mean “’til #319, which is Byrne’s last issue after quitting the book over a story they didn’t want to run until they ran it in Marvel Fanfare.” Anyway, sales were strong on Byrne’s run, and when Al Milgrom took over the story/art chores with #320, my former boss sez sales didn’t drop as much as one might have thought. Byrne’s arrival on the book sorta rejuvenated interest in the character. I know the story is that Peter David got the gig writing the book shortly after this, as “nobody else wanted it,” but at least in our neck of the woods Hulk was doing okay.
Yeah, I got lazy and just lumped all of these together. For Punisher, this is the Grant/Zeck/Beatty mini-series, which, with issue #5, Zeck is replaced on pencils by Mike Vosburg, and while Grant is still credited with the plot, the script is by Jo Duffy. I did forget to ask Ralph if that did anything to sales, but my feeling is that if you were in for four issues, you were probably going to see it out with the fifth.
Marvel Saga The Official History of the Marvel Universe I did ask about…if you’re not familiar, it’s a retelling of the history of the Marvel Universe (hence the overlong name), with panels taken from various sources, connected together with text, and I’m sure someone wanted this, but not enough to make it sell a whole lot at the old shop. I think I personally bought the first two issues, and I was all “yeah, I don’t have the patience for this.” Kind of a dud as a back issue seller, with the possible exception of the issue focused on Mary Jane Watson since it’s a tie-in to the whole wedding thing. And the Galactus issue had some brief demand at one point.
X-Factor was a big seller…at first. There was a lot of excitement for the original cast of X-Men returning as a team, but enthusiasm dropped a bit once they actually saw the book. I mean, sure, eventually, Louise and Walt Simonson took over the series and things began to look up about a year later, so there’s that.
Again, my old shop was apparently the weird one out here, as, like G.I. Joe, this was one o’them “cartoon comics” for kids and not a serious adult book like Green Lantern. Anyway, probably a big newsstand seller. Boy, I wish I had lots of copies of this comic now, though.
By “Santa Claus #1″ I presume what’s meant is Marvel Comics Special #39, adapting the 1985 Santa Claus movie starring Dudley Moore and John Lithgow. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have ordered too high on this either. I think the few times I’ve had them in back issue bins since, they were…not big sellers.
As to Young Astronauts…yeah, like this feller here, I didn’t know what this was. A quick Googling shows this was intended to be part of Marvel’s children’s imprint Star Comics, a tie-in to a new Saturday morning cartoon. However, the Challenger space shuttle disaster kinda put everyone off the “kids exploring space!” nature of this property, and the whole thing, cartoon and comic book, was canned. That link will give you all the info you need on this, including the few pics that exist. The “good creative team” included Denny O’Neill as writer, and June Bringman on pencils, and yeah, that was good. Too bad it’s all languishing in some file drawer somewhere.
Man, all these cartoon tie-ins are being pused as “HOT!” while my former boss’s recollection is that they didn’t do well at all, due to the “kid’s book” stigma. And, I mean, it’s not like kids weren’t going to his shop…I was a kid then, and I saw other younger kids there. Just these TV comics weren’t moving, I guess. Ralph noted that he’d see a lot of newsstand editions of these books show up in collections, where, again, these sorts of books were probably selling.
Just wanted to point this out because I liked this comic. An alien stuck in Victorian England, solving mysteries to occupy his mind and not be bored into literal suicide? Sure, I’m in! Written by David Michelinie, illustrated by Bret Blevins and John Ridgway. Apparently it was collected into a trade just a few years ago, and I recommend you read this however you can find it!
One of the classic indies of all time, and it’s a shame that aside from a recent cover for another comic, no new Carrot has graced us in quite a while. I pestered my old boss about sales on Flaming Carrot Comics (use the full name, please), and he said it wasn’t a huge seller compared to, like, everything else, but as black and white indies go, it did relatively well.
Just seeing all these titles together gave me a real nostalgic flashback to this period of comics. Not that I was a big reader of any of them (I think at most I may have flipped through an Elfquest, but I have read a few Blood of Draculas). For a while there, we were doing pretty good custom in the Elfquest line of comics, both in new and back issues, including this annual. I see Elfquest is doing a new push on collections, so maybe we can get interest up in this material again. Oh, also, Elfquest‘s creators Richard and Wendy Pini dropped by the old shop a couple of times, and they were very nice.
I loved both Paradax and Strange Days…don’t think they sold very well for the shop, but boy I thought they were neat.
These were oversized (about magazine-size) reprints, featuring, of course, the always-classic EC Comics stories of the 1950s. I remember having one or two kicking around the shop when I started working there, but no real backstock on them. I’m presuming they did sell well, at least for the old job. The noted sales trouble may come from their magazine size, as by and large anything bigger than a standard comic book could be a harder sell, or at least not sell in quantities equal to their smaller, floppier brethren.
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Phew, that was a lot. And I suspect I have comments that’ll need responding, so there’s maybe one more post in this series. Thanks for reading, everything, and stay safe out there!
Okay, back to the Bud Plant October 1985 distributor catalog and its ordering tips for retailers! Part one is here, part two is being read by you right now!
First off, I spoke to my former boss Ralph about a couple of the titles discussed last time. For example, I was curious if Hex was as hot for him as it apparently was for the person writing this tips sheet. He says that the first issue sold very well for him, but it petered out pretty quickly. “It was on its way out with issue #2,” to quote him.
I also asked how 3-D comics did for him, and it was sort of how I figured…popular for a while, ’til the market got flooded with them and the novelty wore off. I remember getting asked for the 3-D back issues on a relatively regular basis over the next couple of decades I was at that shop, so there was still some demand, anyway.
Booster Gold was also discussed, and again apparently it sold very well at first, and gradually slowed down as the series wore on. As DavidG mentioned, once the mystery of his origin was revealed, folks were done apparently.
And just on a whim, I asked (even though I worked at the store at the time) if the Fish Police TV show did anything for sales of the comic. The unsurprising answer is “no.”
Now let’s get into this new batch of books:
We were still in the early years of the “Put Alan Moore in Anything to Make It Sell” era, and I definitely picked this up. Of course, I’d later learn “D.R. and Quinch” was, um, inspired by O.C. and Stiggs from National Lampoon (later made into a film by Robert Altman), but I think it became enough of its own thing to still be enjoyable.
As I recall, the reprint quality was…not great. I think the images were resized from their original British publication to fit the American comic book format, but I might be thinking of other Eagle/Quality reprints. Regardless, if you want to read D.R. and Quinch, find yourself one of the trade paperback reprints.
Also, yes, while Dredd was popular, Brian Bolland-drawn Dredd was even more so.
I’ve said before, probably here, maybe on social media, that these horror and sci-fi anthologies from PC and Eclipse were, along with the Warren mags, the real successors to E.C. Comics. I really enjoyed these series, which I inexplicably only sporadically purchases, and would enjoy a nice reprinting of the whole shebang.
Oh, man, Mr. Monster. This initial 10 issue run was great, but then proceeded to never really quite find the same traction afterwards. That serious “origin” series from Dark Horse was…okay, but I never really reread it like I did those original run. And every following attempted revival of the “funny” Mr. Monster was fine, but just not the same. (I did really like the Airboy/Mr. Monster one-shot, though.)
(Actually, it’s Night Music #4 and #5.) I mean, kudos to sticking to the bit, but I was always a little surprised they kept doing these opera books as long as they did. Like this fella says, beautiful art, and primary selling point of the books…but I still sold a few of these out of back issues every once in a while. And yes, I have had opera aficianados come and ask for these. So…there, I answered my own question. That’s why these comics lasted so long…for opera fans who like comics! THEY DO EXIST
Ah, yes, the speculation days of yore. Miracleman was sold in very large numbers early on, frustration folks who wanted to invest and flip ’em, though #1 had some printing issues as I recall leaving near mint copies harder to find. Anyway, prices don’t really start going up on these until #9 and up, with #15, the special All Violence issue, being the peak. I haven’t checked lately to see if the later Neil Gaiman issues, once hot commodities, have seen a decline in demand due to the writer’s current troubles.
Sun Runners was one of those series I was intrigued by due to a write-up in an issue of Amazing Heroes but, for some reason, I never got around to getting the actual comic, like a dummy. The issue #7 is the final issue of the run, probably thanks to me not buying it, but the title would return for a couple of short runs just a coupld of years later. I liked the look of the elephant guy.
Lloyd Llewellyn was, of course, the first ongoing title by Dan Clowes, he of The Occasional Fancy and Really Good Graphic Novel of late. These old wacky stories, more often than not inspired by Silver Age superhero comic craziness, are great. I actually bought this series at the time and it remains an old favorite.
And Love and Rockets is, of course, what it is. Nice that it’s recognized for attracting lady readers early on.
I don’t think I realized #1 and #2 were that much harder to find, I bought this graphic novel, since I only had the color issues at the time. I’d later buy a copy of #3 for the flexidisc back then, and I got #1 and #2 not long ago, just to fill that ol’ hole in the collection.
Here’s another thing I need to ask my boss…how American Flagg! did post issue #12. That first year is about as classic as classic comics get, but, no offense to other creatives who came onto the book, the less Howard Chaykin there was, the less the AF! comic was. I read the whole series, and it was mostly fine, but the series was not at its peak here.
RIPPED FROM TODAY’S HEADLINES! pretty much. Even though the original creator was still writing and drawing, I think interest was slipping from readers and him for the book. Again, gonna ask the former boss about this but I’m guessing “it was in its decline” is the answer I’ll get.
Boy, Whisper seems to be the forgotten title of the Captial Comics trifecta, with Nexus and (to a lesser extent) Badger having more of a life after that publisher’s end. Ah well, just one of those things, but don’t get me wrong, it had its run, just surprised there aren’t continuing attempts at revivals. Plus, I don’t recall any back issue sales on First Adventures, much less #1.
Death Rattle is a great name for a book, and the comic (in its various incarnations) was a pretty good horror anthology. I am…not sure how it sold, so it’s another question to put to the former boss. I know I had more back issues requests for Tales of Terror/Twisted Tales than I did for Death Rattle.
I don’t have much to say about Megaton Man except it was still pretty great even if at this point it wasn’t quite as good as the earlier issues. Once it moves to shorter-run minis and one-shots, the energy comes right back.
Now the Raphael one-shot was still in that same weird magazine-esque format as the first four issues of the regular Turtles series, which I think helped it sell really well in part of its novelty and the gereral hotness of the franchise. Michelangelo came out in the regular comic book format to which the other series had since moved. ‘ve seen a lot more of Raphael in collections since.
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Yup, I’m stopping here and will be back with Part Three on Friday! There were more tips here than I thought! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.
Okay, trying to not worry about problems about to hit the comics industry, between a distributor’s ongoing collapse and tariff-caused price and supply issues, so I’m going to look back at relatively happier times. Like, the October 1985 Bud Plant retailer catalog and its ordering tips for shop owners!
As I’m sure most of you know, since I keep bringing it up, I started working in comics retail in 1988. However, even prior to that I had an interest in the goings-on behind the scenes in the industry and other people’s commentary on same, hence my early adoption of ‘zines and mags like The Comics Journal. As such, I’m always looking for more information from that period, as to what perceptions were of certain titles and publishers and such.
As always, going through these tip sheets raise questions that I want to ask my former boss Ralph, from whom I was buying comics during this period. I’ll post follow-ups next time, if necessary.
This time I’m going up through the DCs, and then I’ll do the rest of the list later in the week. Okay? Okay! Then away we go:
First, here’s the great logo for the column this issue, “The New Mutips,” which is high-larious.
The first tip here, for the Robert Williams 3-D comic from Ray Zone:
…reminds me of what a big deal the 3-D gimmick was at the time. A later entry in this list (not pictured here) notes that the market for 3-D comics is “saturated,” but apparently a wild Robert Williams 3-D comic would stand out enough to be recommended so highly here.
At my Previous Place of Employment, we had a section in the back issue bins just for 3-D comics, and it was pawed through on the regular. We even had a large stock of 3-D glasses that we gave out with each purchase of a 3-D comic. (And when that old shop shut down, did I claim all those 3-D glasses for my own self? Maaaaaybe.)
Now, Fish Police was, for a time, a very hot comic. Hot enough to eventually become a…well, short-lived TV show, but hey, how may small-press comics from the mid-1980s got on TV? …Um, aside from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Like, I’m sure TMNT goosed some executive into looking for other possible hit comic-to-other-media properties, and thus Fish Police.
Anyway, this is one of those comics I wish I’d read at the time, because it does look like it’d be right up my alley. Ah well, maybe I’ll luck into a run of it here at the shop someday.
Speaking of lucking into a run, that’s exactly what happened with Elementals, where about 90% of the series showed up in a donation to the store, and I pulled them aside to read, someday, in the far off future when I can actually find the time. It was always one of those series that intrigued me, but just never jumped on board as it was running. Ah well, at least I have (most of) them now.
It’s interesting reading here that there were delays in production and a perceived drop in quality in one of the early issues. So much so that the ordering recommendation is not based on that “lower quality” issue, but on the one before it. Now, I have read at least the first half-dozen issues of the series, and I don’t recall #4 being “off” from the others around it, but maybe I’ll take another look with this in mind.
Hoo boy, on the topic of late books, I knew Continuity had its timeliness issues even as a mere Comic-Buying Member of the General Public, and not the aloof and powerful comics retailer I am today.
As a fan, I didn’t really follow anything by them, as none of it appealed to me. The anthology book Echoes of Futurepast may have been the one title I would’ve read, due to Arthur Suydam’s involvement (I was a big “Cholly and Flytrap” kid, having read those stories by Suydam in Epic Illustrated), but I just never got around to picking it up.
I do recall that some of the Continuity books did have their followings and sold well, like the two mentioned here. Plenty of folks had them on their pull lists when I started working at the shop. The eventual Deathwatch 2000 crossover event kinda put an end to all that, I believe.
Gasp! I read DC Digest, at least occasionally at the time! I’m guessing these did better on newsstands than in comic shops, hence the reaction in the tips column here. Anyway, when my eyes were up to it, these digests were nice little collections, and many of the early ones helped catch me up on DC’s history.
Textual evidence that Hex (the post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventures of our favorite weird western cowboy) was in fact a not-unpopular book! It’s remembered as a freak occurrence today, a bizarre footnote in Jonah Hex’s history, but for a while there, people did buy it. Heck, I bought it! Still have ’em all! Of course, the series ended 10 issues later, so not enough people bought it for long enough, but for a brief period of time, the beauty of Hex graced our shelves.
Omega Men #38 would be the last issue, sadly. And this person ain’t wrong…this was a really good sci-fi superhero series. Actually, the whole series makes for a good comic, but once Todd Klein and Shawn McManus come on board with #26, it becomes something great. It’s so hard to believe this run of theirs was so short.
The first issue featured, of course, the Golden Age Superman, recently given the bum’s rush out of DC’s continuity by that self-same Crisis on Infinite Earths. But, you know, they got classic Superman artist Wayne Boring to draw this, so I’m not complaining.
I honestly don’t recall if Booster Gold was perceived as A Hot Item at the time. I know it got a little more promotion than most DC debuts (I still have my “Go for the Gold – BOOSTER GOLD” pinback button), but I feel like it’s probably more appreciated in retrospect than it was at the time. (In fact, if you want to know more about Mr. Gold, you can’t do better than this site right here.)
Pretty sure these were all unused inventory back-up stories that longer had a home after the main Atari Force series ended. Regardless, this, and the parent series, were outstanding comics and went away too soon. Even the original digest-sized comics that came packed with Specially Marked Atari 2600 Game Cartridges were fun. I would gladly have read a hundred more issues of this, but am happy with the few that we got.
Oof, harsh burn on the Seven Soldiers. In fairness, All-Star Squadron, a book devoted to the World War II adventures of super-heroes on Earth 2, floundered a bit following Crisis‘s removal of any extraneous Earths beyond the one featured in all the other DC Comics.
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Okay, I’ll wrap it up next time, along with some extra info from Ralph should he be willing to tolerate my grilling. Everyone stay safe out there, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.
So I know I was going to start my 2024 prediction review today, but some stuff has turned up that takes some precedence, I think.
First off, Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In short, that’s allowing Diamond to reorganize and sell off assets to stabilize its business. Those assets include Alliance, the gaming distribution company, and Diamond UK.
And, as noted in the press release quoted at that link, their “main comic, toy, and collectible distribution lines” are also up for sale. Which sounds a whole lot like the company trying to keep things going until they can sell off everything and close its doors.
Or maybe they’ll get their act together and go back to business as usual. I have no idea.
Now, when there was a major collapse of comic distributors in the 1980s, a number of publishers were left being owed payments by said distributors. I imagine if Diamond goes away, the same may happen now, hurting especially the smaller publishers and possibly taking them down with them. Which is the main reason I’m hoping Diamond pulls through, not leaving those vendors holding the bag.
According to Diamond, business will continue as usual while they’re going through this process, including the weekly shipments, reorders, damage replacements, etc. Amusingly they emphasized the fact that yes, retailers with Diamond accounts are expected to keep paying their invoices, in case anyone thought they didn’t need to keep exchanging money for goods from a company in Chapter 11.
Diamond also informed retailers that they’re still supporting Free Comic Book Day for the year, at least as far as things look now. That leaves me to wondering, of course, who would take over the FCBD event should Diamond eschew the responsibility.
And that leads me to wondering just how Diamond can survive, and what may rise up in its place. I’m picturing a much pared down Diamond, carrying only comics, supplies, and maybe some comic related merchandise. No nudie books, no Japanese schoolgirl statues, no tchotchkes that have nothing to do with comics. Catalogs are 32 pages long, shipments all come from a single warehouse. It all depends on whatever comic publishers are left over, and if they get enough orders to keep Diamond’s doors open even at this minimal level. I feel like Dynamite and its multiple covers for everything would be doing the heavy lifting here.
If the comic distribution end does get sold to another company, then I guess I’d have to apply for an account there if the old accounts simply don’t transfer over. Would there be a gap in shipments caused by this? Possibly. The most convenient solution would be for one of the other existing distributors to the Direct Market (Lunar or Penguin Random House) were to take over the comics end of Diamond.
Otherwise, if Diamond just closes up shop, leaving publishers high and dry, then…well, I’m picturing the ’80s again, with a half-dozen distributors all carrying their own selection of items. Which is fine, if increasing the “paperwork” (or computer work, rather) at my end.
The very small press books are the ones that’ll be hardest hit, as a weird one-off book that’s easy for me to say “yes” to as a line item with everything else in the Diamond catalog, may get missed or overlooked entirely if they’re only available from some tiny distributor with not enough for me to bother opening an account.
Ideally, whatever happens my customers don’t see any problems from their end, that the comics continue coming out, regardless from where I get them. We’ll see how things shake out over the next few month.
Now, I’ve long ago transferred as much of my business as I could away from Diamond to other distributors. Diamond had just too many problems over the years…poor packing resulting in damaged comics, items being shorted entirely and not having the stock to replace them, getting a single copy of Comic Shop News instead of the full bundle (the most baffling shipping error). Getting alternative distributors was an outright relief, where (aside from a disastrous damage-ridden initial shipment from Penguin Random House) my shipments have been relatively damage-and-shortage free.
Since the advent of distribution competition, Diamond actually fixed most of these problems. Too little too late, I’m afraid. The vast bulk of my orders come from the other two distributors, with Diamond’s shipments being only a fraction of the size they used to be. The weekly payments to Diamond are so much smaller now than before, and I’d wonder “if everyone’s invoices shrunk this much, I wonder how Diamond is able to survive?” And, well…I guess I have that answer.
This is just a smattering of thoughts I’ve had on the topic. I’m sure I’ll throw more at you when I’ve had more time to process the situation, and as we experince the continuing ramifications.
• • •
The other big news of the week is
this article (may be paywalled, but you can find other articles covering its contents) with its in-depth look at the sexual assault claims against Neil Gaiman. WARNING: the descriptions therein are very explicit and upsetting, so you may be better off finding someone else’s summary.
This situation is very disappointing and disillusioning, to hear that such a talented force admired by so many is an alleged creep credibly accused by multiple victims. And it doesn’t help that Gaiman’s own statement, posted on his official site just yesterday, smacks of the same meaningless platitudes that Warren Ellis threw out there when he was outed as a sex pest.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” I know, and Gaiman claims his relationships with all these women were consensual. But…man, this doesn’t look good for him. Even Scott McCloud, who had a longtime friendly relationship with the man, is like “hoo boy.”
I’ve written before about the possible impact on the comics publishing end, which now seems like an inevitability. DC’s challenge is divorcing the Sandman franchise from its creator, and Marvel’s challenge of wrapping up Miracleman, while on a much smaller and less impactful scale, is still one they have to face.
But like I said then, this is the least of the issues at stake here. It’s an ugly situation, leaving some very hurt women in its wake, and one hopes some justice may be found here.
Going back to my ramblings about the influx of back issues of a certain age from newly unearthed collections:
philfromgermany has some germane thoughts
“These Byrne X-Men books always command high prices and I don’t count on ’em dropping off a whole lot. It’s great reading and if you get into collecting chances are you will want as many of these as you can.”
There are few perennials in the back issue comics market, but it seems like the Byrne-era X-Men books (and the Cockrum ones that just preceded) are always in demand. Even at my previous place of employment, with had a much larger backstock than I’ve yet to achieve at my own store, our Byrne issues were running a bit thin near the end of my tenure there a decade ago.
So…I may have been “worst case scenario-ing” the idea of a sudden price drop caused by people’s collection suddenly being dumped in the marketplace. I can see maybe a local price fluctuation given a large enough pile of a certain comic showing up at a particular outlet. (“What am I going to do with 1,000 copies of Unicycle Tragedy #14? Well, fifty cents each on ’em, I guess.”) It’s gonna take a warehouse find like the Heroes, Inc. thing I mentioned last time, with just thousands upon thousands of units showing up in a back issue market that couldn’t absorb them.
I think at this point it seems unlikely an Uncanny X-Men #142 treasure trove, many times the size of the batch I received, is still lurking in some as-yet-unexcavated storage until. But one can’t be entirely sure that’s the case.
“But is all that Venom/Carnage spec gonna remain strong? Early Wolverine after the mini? Signal? Gwenpool? Ghost Rider Punisher or Weapon H?”
That’s the continual question about “hot” books, how long ’til they cool down a bit? In most cases it’ll be a conditional thing…Punisher’s first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #129 will likely always be in demand. However, I’ve told the story before about, at the previous place of employment, slashing the prices on our giant stack of this issue as they were gathering dust following the 1990s decline of interest in Punisher.
At this point, though, that #129 has passed some…event horizon, I guess, moving from “conditional hot book” to “perennial,” both as a Key First Appearance of a Major Marvel Character, and as a Bronze Age Amazing Spider-Man issue. Barring an overall industry crash relegating all comics to be of interest only to people who need paper after all the trees have died out, interest and prices will probably remain high.
The Venom thing has its own likely perennial, Amazing Spider-Man #300 (pictured above, if you couldn’t guess) with the first full-length appearance of that large-jawed, big-tongued adversary. Plus it’s got the extra perks of being 1) Amazing Spider-Man, 2) an anniversary issue, 3) an anniversary issue with that striking cover, and 4) a comic with Todd McFarlane artwork.
Later Venom/Carnage appearances may wax and wane, but that #300 feels like it will always be in demand. Maybe slightly less certain is the first appearance/storyline with Venom tie-in character Carnage, also appearing in Amazing Spider-Man. I mean, demands high now, but will that stick? Well, to be fair, 30 years on the kids still like Carnage comics, and hearing a kid that can’t even pronounce his “Rs” yet ask for “Cawnage comics” never fails to slay me. Anyway, I successfully talked myself into thinking that, yes, that first Carnage story will likely retain its interest and collectability.
Those other characters, though? Well, pretty much any first appearance turned into hot commodities, especially during the opening years of the COVID pandemic and speculation was rampant on just about everything that hit the racks and even slightly looked like it had a first appearance of someone in it. And…have people been looking for Weapon H books? hat’s new on me and I sell these darn things.
In short, some in-demand comics stand the test of time, some don’t. And some just remain pricey despite the reason for its value being pretty much negated (like that one issue of Uncanny X-Men with “The Death of Colossus” who, I’m pretty sure, is hale and hearty now).
There’s a half-joking observation I’ve made, in-store and later shared on Xwitter (R.I.P.) and repeated on Bluesky, in which I said that someone bringing in Grandpa’s collection used to mean Golden Age books when I started in this business, but now it usually means the same twelve or thirteen issues of Spawn everyone seems to have.
The dichotomy is not always quite that drastic. There were times at the previous place of employment in the ’90s when we’d be told on the phone “oh, I have a bunch of really old comics my grandpa used to own!” and they’d come in with, like, post-Liefeld X-Force.
And at my current (and hopefully final) shop, I’ve seen my share of older books, but more on that in a moment.
For years there was an opinion, one I believed first voiced to me by pal Dorian and that I shared, that there would soon be a huge influx of Golden Age books into the general funnybook population as their older owners…uh, went to that great quarter box in the sky.
And…I never saw it. At least not around here, not locally. I’ve had Golden Age books come in dribs and drabs, usually Disney books. But by and large if there was a sudden injection of these books into the secondary market, they all probably got snapped up from estate auctions or otherwise dumped out of the inheritors’ lives and went straight to gradin’ and slabbin’.
So I don’t see a lot of Golden Age books come through. Even 1960s Silver Age comics seemed like they were in short supply, though I’ve had some really good collections come through the door over the last couple of years. One collection held 1960s first issues on up through the 1970s of many major Marvel series (including an Amazing Fantasy #15 and an Amazing Spider-Man #1), a good handful of which were in beautiful VF to NM condition.
But that’s the exception. Most collections for sale that come in that have any age to them at all are generally 1970s-1980s. (I do see a lot of books more recent than that, too, of course.) “Bronze” and “Copper” Age books, as the Comics-noscenti would dub them…all those issues of Ka-Zar and Human Fly and Tarzan and sometimes even comics people would want, like X-Men and Spider-Man and Batman.
In other words, it was beginning to look like it was the Bronze Age collectors who were now…um, divesting themselves of their own collections and going to live on a farm upstate to leave their relatives to deal with the books.
I mean, I’m extrapolating a lot from my singular data collection point of “guy who once managed one comic shop and now owns another comic shop.” But it’s the trend I’ve been seeing over the past few decades, that as older collectors sell off their books, there is a general movement forward in time of the general age of their comics. Just, y’know, overall, when dealing with original owners buying books new off shelves and restricting back issue purchasing to the “more recent stuff” of their time.
I was thinking about this because yet another large collection made it into my hands over the weekend. A nice lady with eight longboxes that belonged to a recently passed family member brought them in for me to peruse and this is what I acquired:
That works out to about three longboxes’ worth of stuff, by the way. It was primarily 1970s through mid-1980s books (the most recent I believe being some issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths), with a smattering of 1960s books (a handful of Daredevil, some of DC’s space comics).
What was interesting was that this also appeared to be someone’s Investment Opportunity. To wit:
…that John Byrne Silver Surfer oneshot from 1982…
…this issue of Wonder Woman guest-starring the New Teen Titans…
…and shockingly, a whole bunch of part two of that “Days of Future Past” story from Uncanny X-Men. And believe it not, there were more copies of this comic than pictured here.
I realize those photos may be slightly reminiscent of this ancient post, but hoo boy, just look at those. It wasn’t all duplicates, but there was a whole lot of obvious speculation goin’ on. I didn’t buy the 1/3rds of a longbox full of New Teen Titans #16, featuring the Captain Carrot insert. And that issue of Wonder Woman pictured above? That’s only 10 copies out of the 30 or so I could have bought.
This is on top of another collection I bought not too long ago, which was another investment accumulation, filled with ’90s books like the X-Men #1 with the gatefold cover, of which there were about 20 copies.
Once again, I’m just one guy with one small comic shop, so I’m working with a small dataset here. But these collections, both owned by folks no longer with us, could be an indicator of a possible trend. As blogging brother Andrew put it on Bluesky:
Is there a burgeoning influx of investment books about to enter the market? In a way, we’ve already seen it with the dumping of heavily-speculated ’90s books that are basically just landfill waiting to happen, like Brigade or, well, most short-run and forgotten Image and Image-a-like titles. But that sort of thing isn’t going to affect the price of books that already hold no value in the seconday market.
But what’s going to happen when, say, collections with three dozen F to NM copies of Uncanny X-Men #142 start getting dumped on the market? A comic that traditionally is a pricey book suddenly theoretically facing an increase in supply.
Likely, I’m worrying about nothing…now. It’s possible even as speculation stocks from private collections show up in the back issue market, it may increase local supplies here and there, but no single book is going to be hit hard enough to affect value industry-wide. Especially since most comics collections are preserved poorly and NM copies can remain harder to acquire. Even this newest collection, where most of the duplicated investment books are nice, very few grade at a NM.
What I’m saying is that we’re not likely to have a repeat of the Heroes, Inc. situation, where an enormous warehouse find in the 1970s of uncirculated copies drove the price down to essentially nothing. But your local retailer may soon find himself with, say, four dozen copies of Moon Knight #1 (1980), or 50 copies of 2001: A Space Odyssey #8, and more similar acquisitions.
Maybe in the long run we’ll experience a repeat of the Shazam! Effect, where a heavily speculated book (DC’s Shazam! #1 from the 1970s) is dumped into bargain bins, where it primariy stayed for years. Then suddenly it was realized “hey wait, nice copies of this book are hard to find now!” and they were pulled out of the bins and if they could find any mint copies, those were slapped with premium prices.
Not that anyone’s going to dump Uncanny X-Men #142 into a dollar bin…I’m certainly not, and even as many copies as I’ve acquired I don’t expect them to last long. But maybe the day will come when even, say, Brigade #2 is a rare find in NM and my 152-year-old self will price it up at 50 space-credits and put in my case.
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