Saturday Morning Swampy.

§ September 7th, 2013 § Filed under swamp thing § 6 Comments

Some of you may remember my previous mentions of an early show on the Nickelodeon cable channel entitled Video Comics, in which various DC Comics stories starring the Flash, Green Lantern, Sugar and Spike, etc. would be presented panel by panel with narration. You may also remember my noting this show as one of the methods by which I was introduced to Swamp Thing, another character featured on the program.

Thanks to reader Patrick, who emailed me yesterday to let me know that an episode of Video Comics finally popped up on YouTube, starring guess who:


This episode lacks the intro Video Comics usually had (I think, probably, just for the more superhero-y installments) of the kids riding their bikes to the local market to ransack the comic racks, while Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” played. Though, I suppose if you have to have at least the music:


Anyway, thanks again to Patrick for letting me know that Video Comics finally showed up on the Internet somewhere. This hit the ol’ nostalgia button!

Now’s probably the time to put those Robin III comics back on the shelves.

§ September 6th, 2013 § Filed under this week's comics § 6 Comments


Well, here they are, the DC Comics with the 3D covers, in quantities sometimes approximating the orders retailers placed months ago. And to be fair, the covers are pretty neat, adding to the tragedy that there’s not nearly enough around to meet demand. Saw several new faces over the last day or two, folks driving from out of town trying to track down the covers their local stores ran out of so quickly. Not that we were much better, with the increased demand meaning faster departures off the shelves, and once people have seen what the 3D covers looked like, the 2D covers DC offered to supplement the allocated orders were, for some, unsatisfactory replacements.

Not for everyone, though! I actually had some people with in-store pull lists request they not get the 3D covers, and believe you me, I thanked them for that, given the allocations have left me with barely enough to cover the regulars, much less the extra demand. And employee Timmy was a step head of me, looking up the 3D covers on the eBay and, sure enough, the panic buying has set in, resulting in relatively crazy prices for books that have barely been out for 48 hours. That makes the one-per-customer signs I put on some of the 3D books seem like an even better idea now, though Timmy reported to me that some folks were buying one 3D cover and the 2D version. (I can’t really say anything, since I plan on doing the same for the Swamp Thing issue that’s coming later this month. Sad when it happens to someone you know, isn’t it?)

As for the comics themselves, I did like the ones I bought well enough, though that’s bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that I restricted myself to buying the Villains Month issues from the series I was already reading. The Green Lantern one, Relic, was probably my favorite, giving us the backstory for this new villain, as well as finally providing full context for the story being presented on the 1:25 ratio black-and-white sketch variant covers being offered for the GL family of books over the last couple of months.


“Based on George Lucas’s original rough-draft screenplay” says the blurb on the cover, both a warning and an enticement to the remaining Star Wars fans still devoted to the minutia of the property despite it all. That would include me, apparently, since I bought this comic, more out of a deep-seated need of the Young Mikester still within me to draw a narrative thread through all the memories of the preproduction images I absorbed back in my Starlog-and-such days. I’m not the only one, it seems, since I saw more than a few new customers around my age showing up just for this comic, thanks likely to its presence in the real-world news media.

The comic itself is, well, what it is. It certainly gives the impression, whether or not this is what actually happened, that there was once a time someone could tell Lucas “no,” resulting in his beating this rough draft into the lean, mean fighting machine that is the original Star Wars movie from 1977. The emphasis in The Star Wars #1 on political intrigue, the lack of a central sympathetic “point of view” character (at least one as strong as Luke Skywalker)…you can see where the prequels came from. That said, it’s still an interesting comic, with familiar names and concepts not quite in their final form. We’ll see if that novelty carries us through eight issues.


A combination of the writing of Jonathan Hickman with the premise of the book (the return of the gods of assorted pantheons to Earth) is what got me to pick this up. That title is certainly something else, though I haven’t really noticed anyone at the shop giving it the stinkeye, so the no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity strategy hasn’t really come into play here yet. Nor is there too much of the usual bit of the old ultraviolence that you usually get in your typical serving of Avatar comics. I mean, there’s some, and I bet there’ll be more in the future, so hang in there, guys!

Seriously, though, I like the set-up here, and am hoping it pays off and isn’t just an excuse for over-the-top gore. But, you know, c’mon. I mean, I might still read it, but I’ll cast a socially-responsible upturned eyebrow upon the proceedings, see if I won’t.


The first issue of this series came out in the first week of January of this year. It is now the first week of September. There have been seventeen issues of this comic in eight months, and that’s not counting the recently launched companion series, or the Age of Ultron one-shot tie-in. But that’s okay, since you’re all rich, right?
 
 

A little context for the post’s subject line.

I too have a savage fighting ability and an incredible wit.

§ September 4th, 2013 § Filed under found art, x-men § 8 Comments


Found in that blue X-Men box, this coloring book from 1994.

 
 

The only image in the entire book upon which
a coloring attempt was made.

 
 

That is one stern-looking (or poorly “referenced”) Kitty Pryde.

 
 

We are very disappointed in your sense of mutant duty, Strong Guy.

 
 

Goodbye, Tiny Wolverine…

 
 

…goodbye.

Not as Terror-ble as things may seem.

§ September 2nd, 2013 § Filed under retailing § 8 Comments

So reader Egmont commented on this site over the weekend, in which he asks if there still any demand for St. George #2.

For folks who don’t remember, and to be fair, I barely remember and I 1) sold these things when they were new, and 2) still have them all in stock (tragic details on that momentarily), St. George was one of the titles in the Shadowline Saga imprint, published under Marvel’s Epic line, that was intended to be a new “mature” line of superheroes, because sure, why not. Anyway, St. George #2 introduced a character named Shreck (no relation; also no relation; totally a relation) who would later be apparently retooled and introduced into the Marvel Universe under the name Terror, in the series Terror Inc.

I am totally working on 20-year-old memories here, but I do recall some referencing to, or some minor contention over, whether or not Shreck from the Epic/Shadowline Saga comics was in fact the same character as Terror in the Marvel Universe. According to Wikipedia, which is right and true in all things and whose authority should never be questioned, that despite early editorial insistence that they were not the same being, one of the Marvel Universe handbooks later established that they were. And don’t get me started on the MAX version.

I don’t think anyone really cared all that much, “he said just prior to the influx of hate e-mails from the Terror Inc. fan club.” A glance at the most recent Overstreet guide shows no mention of anything special happening in St. George #2, where I was expecting at the very least “1st Shreck, later Terror (see TERROR INC.).” A Near Mint copy of this will set you back a whole three bucks, according to the guide, and, well, about that….

Let’s take a look at that Terror Inc. scan up there at the beginning of this post. Well, here, let me give you a larger scan of what I want to talk to you about:


So that’s one of our old price stickers (with my writing on it, in case you were wondering) (The newer price stickers has the proper apostrophe in “Ralph’s,” also in case you were wondering). That was the standard back issue markup for a back issue just pulled off the wall, and the fact that it’s my writing on the sticker means that it was priced either the day it was pulled off the shelf after its four week (or so) sales cycle, or within a few months of that time. If it had been an old back issue pulled out of the backroom storage during one of our regular restockings, it would been bagged and tagged and sorted into a box for Ralph to grade and price (mostly for grading-and-pricing consistency’s sake).

Seeing that sticker on that comic tells me that particular issue of Terror Inc. has been sitting in our back issue box since, oh, the early 1990s. And so had the rest of the series. The best case scenario is that maybe, say, through the early to mid 1990s we did sell some Terror Inc. issues and restocked them repeatedly, and that the last time we restocked them, I went ahead and priced the issues to help Ralph keep up with his pricin’ ‘n’ gradin’ duties. I suspect, however, that isn’t what happened.

Now, I should say we were missing one issue when I checked our Terror Inc. section over the weekend…we didn’t have #13, guest-starring Ghost Rider. Relatively recently, I did have someone looking for Ghost Rider appearances, so maybe that’s when we actually were able to move a copy of this. No worries, we had another copy in our backstock that I pulled out to replace it. By the way, the MAX series Marvel did a couple of years back didn’t move the earlier series at all.

Looking in the price guide, most of the issues are priced at three bucks a pop, except for the two issues with Wolverine ($4 each). A quick glance at the eBay shows a #1 “in high grade” selling for a quarter, and a run of every issue except #1 selling for 99 cents. And judging by how few copies we have still in our backroom, I’m guessing a number of them ended up in our bargain bins, and we may sold a few that way to any folks willing to search through those boxes.

And that’s okay. Sometimes the fate of certain series is to end up in the bargain bins, where folks are willing to throw down a quarter or a buck to take a risk on some oddball forgotten title, or to take home a shiny-covered Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1, oh God please buy more of those. And then we have copies of those same comics, sorted and guide-priced in our regular back issue bins, for anyone who would rather have the convenience of finding the book right away without having to search through long boxes of unsorted cheap books. Not that this is something that’s happened much with Terror Inc. anytime recently, but you never know…that day may come. Weirder things have happened.

It’s also a matter of marketing, too. We simply haven’t got around to getting those Terror Inc. issues priced and graded and put on our website listings, where any Binging or Googling or Veronica-ing Terror Inc. fans can find it. Or maybe when we get that #13 I just pulled out of the backroom priced, I can put it in our Recent Back Issue Arrivals boxes where it may get more eyetracks than it would in the ol’ Terror Inc. section in the regular back issue bins.

I know that this seems like a direct contradiction to my recent post claiming that there still is a back issue market, but the comic market at any time will have more than its share of dead stock. Or slow movers. Like pitch-drop level slow movers. And the quarter boxes, the dollar boxes, or whatever…that’s a partial corrective tool that doesn’t solve the problem, but does lessen it slightly. Very slightly, judging by the number of Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1s I have still. …Anyone need any?

Mint in box.

§ September 1st, 2013 § Filed under found art § 5 Comments

We recently acquired a collection of X-Men comics
that were stored in this handpainted box:


It is ideal for storing your X-Men comics…


…or, you know, whatever.

Progressive Ruin presents…the End of Civilization.

§ August 30th, 2013 § Filed under End of Civilization § 7 Comments

It’s issue #300 of Diamond Previews! And it’s also, like, installment #2800 of this, my End of Civilization series of posts. Not sure how the math worked out there, exactly, but oh goodness those numbers feel right. Anyhow, grab your own copy of Previews for September 2013, and follow along as I peer at a few of the goodies contained within:

p. 139 – Scooby-Doo Team-Up #1:


Hopefully we’ll eventually get the Kamandi/Scooby-Doo team-up where Scooby is revealed to be the progenitor of all the talking animals from Kamandi’s future.

p. 141 – The Sandman Overture Special Edition #1:


“Hey, remember that Sandman #1 you bought last month? Well, you’re a sucker, because here’s a much better Sandman #1 out this month! Will there be another even more special version of #1 out next month? I guess you’ll just have to wait and find out!”

p. 153 – Batman: Hush Batman and Catwoman Kiss Statue:


Oh yeah, Batman and Catwoman want to rock and roll all night, and party every da…wait, what? Not that kind of KISS? …Well, damn.

p. 171 – Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time #12:


I’ve been waiting for the last year for an issue of this series to have a Peter Cushing cover. I’d better not be disappointed.

p. 174 – My Little Pony Micro-Series: Spike:


At long last, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover you never expected!

p. 181 – Mars Attacks: The Human Condition:


Looks like the Martians are taking on our awareness of our own mortality as well as our general interest in the universe around us and our desire to perpetuate ourselves either through our offspring or through our works or both. I guess you got us, Martians.

p. 267 – All New Fathom #5:


Whoa whoa whoa hold on there, issue 5? That’s just crazy talk. You guys really need to start over with another Fathom #1.

p. 396 – Inside Seka The Platinum Princess of Porn:


Comics, everyone!

p. 397 – The Death Star Owner’s Technical Manual:


“Errata: There is a minor design flaw involving the thermal exhaust port and its direct access to the reactor core. However, this should not interfere with the enjoyment of your new Death Star.”

p. 397 – Star Wars Frames HC:


Each frame personally hand-altered by George Lucas. Oh, hey, in this one, the rancor shoots first! Awesome!

p. 397 – Star Wars A Very Vader Valentine’s Day SC:


“‘I’m all choked up over you!’ Ah, Padmé, you shouldn’t have!”

p. 415 – Thanos “Infinity Indeed” Black T-Shirt:


I am sure there is an explanation for this. I am sure I could Google it. I think I am probably better off not knowing.

p. 416 – Alpha Flight Red Heather T-Shirt:


“Excuse me? Do you have a brightly-colored t-shirt featuring the heads of members of a no-longer-published superhero team the name of which I forget, each member with a gunsight target superimposed over their heads, and the promise of one of their deaths emblazoned below the image?”

“Hmmm…lemme think. The Champions? Primal Force? Team Youngblood? Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen? Help me out here.”

“Oh, yeah, they’re Canadian.”

“Oh, Alpha Flight! Right this way, sir.”

p. 433 – Lost in Space Minimates Robot and Dr. Smith Two-Pack:


Dr. Smith comes with three heads, with presumably three different expressions: “prissy,” “very prissy,” and “extremely prissy.” Or “alluring,” “very alluring,” and “extremely alluring.” Your mileage may vary.

p. 445 – The Lone Ranger 7-Inch Series 2 Action Figures:


For those of you who needed to recalibrate your personal definitions of “high hopes,” here is a second series of these figures to help you out.

p. 448 – Skele-Treks 5-Inch Action Figures:


Surely this will be the creepiest item based on a popular sci-fi franchise that I’ll see in this month’s Previews.

p. 459 – The Walking Dead Daryl Dixon Walker Ear Prop:


Not that Walking Dead is uniquely guilty of this, but apparently there’s just an automated rubber stamp machine that just pounds a “YES” onto every merchandise suggestion memo that passes through it.

p. 471 – Mr Potato Head Doctor Who The Eleventh Doctor:


Forget what I said about the Skele-Treks. This is the creepiest item based on a popular sci-fi franchise that I’ll see in this month’s Previews.

p. 474 – Kick-Ass 2 400% Bearbricks:


Now, this movie people might have gone to see.

p. 509 – Minecraft The Game That Changed Everything HC:


Even as we speak, the publisher is currently rushing collected sugar cane back to the crafting table to make paper for all these books. Please appreciate the efforts they’re going through, and of course mourn the interns lost to Creepers and Endermen.

The End of Civilization will have to wait ’til tomorrow…

§ August 29th, 2013 § Filed under blogging about blogging is a sin, how the sausage is made § 7 Comments

…as I have been too short on time in the last couple of days to give it the proper attention it deserves. It will be up Friday, I’m reasonably certain.

In the meantime, a few clarifications:

  • It sort of dawned on me that perhaps I wasn’t clear about the origins of that “Mike Sterling is a jerk!” image that Bully, the Little Photoshopping Bull, made for me and I linked to at the end of this post. It was created in response to this Twitter post of mine in which I quote Employee Aaron expressing his opinion of me, based of course on the famous X-Men comic splash page. So, to be very clear, Bully does not actually think I’m a jerk, nor did I ever think he did. I know he was just teasing!

    However, Bully does think Professor X is a jerk, and for good reason!

  • For this post, my example of Power Pack #27 was used almost entirely at random. In fact, as I was writing the post, it was originally New Warriors #27, until I decided to write a little something about New Warriors #1 at the end. I thought “well, that’s two mentions of New Warriors in one post, clearly that violates some sort of zoning law” and Power Pack was the first thing to pop into my head to replace it. So, I wasn’t really making any kind of specific point about Power Pack #27, just a general one about guide-pricing versus real world sales potential.

    However, in response to my mention, this nice person (who also says a few much-appreciated kind words about my goofy site) takes a more in-depth look at the comic in question.

  • MrJM was only kidding with the “Thanks, Obama!” comment. Honest!

  • A few of you have noted that Howard the Duck #1 was a comic that was once red hot and inflated in value, due to its 1970s popularity, and remained fairly pricy up until a certain movie of some note was released. I wish I’d remembered to dig up some of the old guides while I was at the shop to double-check pricing, but in general I do recall a sudden dip in demand and value on the comic. Exactly how much, monetarily speaking, I am not sure, but yeah, it certainly happened. In recent years prices have been creeping back up, partially because those comics are sort of crawling out from under the shadow of the film and regaining some critical appreciation again, and partially because it’s a noteworthy series that’s approaching its 40th birthday and it’s getting more difficult to find high-grade copies.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I’ll bring a proper end to civilization tomorrow, I (mostly) promise!

Happy birthday, Jack Kirby.

§ August 28th, 2013 § Filed under jack kirby Comments Off on Happy birthday, Jack Kirby.


 
 

from Destroyer Duck #1 (1982) by Steve Gerber, Jack Kirby and Alfredo Alcala


 
 
(updated 8/2017)

My dream-casting for the part of Cable in an X-Men movie is Rob Liefeld himself, in case anyone’s wondering.

§ August 27th, 2013 § Filed under retailing § 5 Comments

So Mike L. asked about Uncanny X-Men #201, a comic for which there was a brief flurry of demand during the high-flyin’ Wizard Magazine-fueled comics market times of the early 1990s. For folks who may need a brief reminder…in 1990, New Mutants #87 was released, featuring a new character called Cable, co-created by rising star Rob Liefeld. As both Cable and Liefeld grew in popularity, demand for and prices of New Mutants #87 began to rise.

Now, Cable’s deal was that he was the son of a couple of members of the X-Men, Cyclops and…um, is it still Madelyne Pryor or has that been retconned away? Anyway, he was from the future, and still only a child in present times, and then someone had the evil thought “hey, wait, that means the baby born to Cyclops and Madelyne in Uncanny X-Men #201 back in 1986 is technically Cable’s first appearance!” So, in the rush to create yet another “rare” collectible UX201 was pushed as the New Big Thing, and, like Mike L. said, sold for about $30 (or more!). And it did sell.

Cut to a couple of decades later. The most recent price guide still lists that issue for $30 in near mint condition, but let me tell you, it ain’t selling for that anymore. I can’t remember the last time anyone asked for “that comic with Baby Cable,” and a quick glance at online sources show copies selling as low as 99 cents, and some allegedly high grade copies going for as much as about $15 (not completely unreasonable for an actual mint copy of a 27 year old X-Men book). The $30 guide price may be the result of simple inertia…people pricing their copies at thirty bucks because they’ve always priced their copies at thirty bucks, and hey, it’s a “key issue” even though realistically nobody cares any more. Maybe if Cable pops up in an X-Men movie someday, there will be some demand for it.

I’m still trying to come up with an answer to pal Dave‘s question from the end of yesterday’s post, about which pricy comic took the biggest dive. I’m still thinking about it, though I believe it’s more a matter of “shifting demands” than “huge price drops.” There was certainly many comics that sold well in the ’90s which don’t any more, though few of them really got that expensive in the first place. There are even a few items that retained some value: New Mutants #87 still guides at $45 in high grade, which, if the book actually is in high grade, isn’t too far out there of a price, in my opinion, and in fact still sells for us, when we can get them. However, it’s greatly overshadowed by an issue later in the run, #98, which features the debut of current flavor-of-the-month Deadpool. That guides at $100, but I’ve seen sales well in excess of that price.

One thing I was reminded of, thinking about ’90s back issue sales, was the Punisher. Boy oh boy, was that character popular. Multiple titles, all sold great, and then suddenly the market crashed and / or people burnt out on the character, and the sales on, and titles for, the Punisher dried up. I remember being stuck with a pile, a literal pile, of Amazing Spider-Man #129, featuring the Punisher’s first appearance. We had loads of them, in a variety of conditions, priced at the then-inflated-by-Punisher’s-popularity values we had been selling them fairly regularly for. Once we realized we were in for some rough times after the collapse of the comics market, we slash-priced those books and moved ’em out best we could.

Kinda wished I had them now, as the market has recovered somewhat and people are looking for the book again and the current guide has near mint copies at nearly a grand, even though we could probably sell them in any condition. But if we could see the future, we probably wouldn’t have sold all those New Mutants #98s for about five bucks a pop all those years ago. Or put all those DC Comics 100-Page Giants in the 50-cent bins way back when…I mean, those are mostly just reprints, who’d want those? Anyway, that kind of backwards-glancing and second guessing can drive you crazy, so we just price ’em, file ’em, show ’em to customers, and hope for the best.

There is still a back issue market.

§ August 26th, 2013 § Filed under retailing § 17 Comments

Well, at least for us. We still sell plenty of back issues at our shop. Lots of them. Across a whole range of prices. Of course, after 30+ years in business, plenty of collectors in our area and environs beyond have learned that we’re a good and well-stocked source of reasonably-priced and accurately-graded old comics. That drives plenty of folks to our shop, turning over our stock and giving us the impetus to continue acquiring even more old comics to offer to our customers.

Of course, the situation described here is not new…there are some comics that are just common as dirt, that have a “book” value of some amount, but realistically, will not sell for anything. It wasn’t that long ago that we divested ourselves of 100,000 copies of that very kind of comic, a bulk sale to a wholesaler who paid a nickel each for whatever we wanted to unload, primarily ’90s market-crash comics that nobody will ever love, ever again. After years of nobody caring that Deathmate: Black is the first appearance of Gen 13, years of never once realizing the price guide price of $6 in an in-store sale, I was happy to get that fat nickel for every copy I was able to pass on. And the Team Youngbloods. And the Brigades. And the Valiant Comics that aren’t the first issues, last issues, or “gold” issues. And so on.

As noted in the linked article, the decrease in potential values was in part caused by the democratization of back issue sales via eBay and Amazon and the like, where vast amounts of essentially the same product is available: instead of going to your local comic shop and hoping they finally have that one back issue you’re looking for this time and paying whatever they’re asking for it, now you can search online and potentially find dozens of people competing with each other offering copies of that book in whatever grade or price range you’re looking for.

There are other factors as well, such as extensive reprinting in more convenient formats like trade paperbacks, or digital availability, or certain characters or titles falling out of favor, or the economy being terrible and nobody wanting to spend money on things they can’t eat or wear or live in.

Like I said, we still buy old comics, and we’ll still pay good money for stuff we can turn around relatively quickly. But more and more, people are unloading whole collections on us. We prefer not to take whole collections; the amount of time sorting out the wheat from the chaff usually isn’t economically advantageous. When we do buy collections in bulk, we make it very clear that while we pay real money for what we can use, we can only pay very little for the rest, reducing our costs and making it more likely for us to come out ahead when processing the bulk, even if it only ends up in our bargain boxes. In general, most people are okay with that, since they’re trying to clear room and understand that, for some comics, anything is better than nothing.

The linked article notes that the owner of the collection discussed greatly overestimated its value. Again, that’s something we’ve seen over and over again at the shop over the decades. Someone gets their hands on a price guide, dutifully marks the mint price for each book on a Post-It note and affixes it to the bag or just directly to the cover, and then hauls the lot into the shop expecting to get full retail. They don’t realize that shops can’t pay equal to what they expect to retail the book for, or that just because a book has a certain price in a price guide, that anyone’s actually going to pay that anytime soon. Yes, it’s great that Power Pack #27 is listed as being $3.00, but does anyone care? Is someone going to rush into the shop demanding to buy Power Pack #27 Right! Now! Unless I’m completely out of any copies of Power Pack #27, and if the copy is still in brand-new condition, and if I can get it cheaply enough, I’d buy it. Maybe.

So what back issues are selling for us? A whole lot of stuff! Anything pre-Code! Romance comics! Cheap Silver Age books! High-grade Silver Age books! Batman! Old Archie Comics! Deadpool! War books! Classics Illustrated! That one guy collecting Doctor Doom appearances! The first few issues of most New 52 series! Sonic the Hedgehog! Adventure Time! Avengers! Green Arrow, apparently, judging by the huge pile of them I pulled out of the backroom when restocking on Sunday! Basically, a whole lot of different titles, but those are the ones that stick out.

I’ve seen some pooh-poohing of the back issue marketability of ’70s and ’80s Uncanny X-Men, the once-red hot Byrne issues in particular, but we still get asked for those all the time. High-grade copies blow out the door. A long time ago, we were lucky enough to get a lot of high-grade #141s and #142s (the classic Days of Future Past storyline). We kept pricing them up ‘n’ up, and they kept selling, and now I’m pretty sure we’re completely out of them, or darned close. And keep in mind the bulk of these sales were before anyone even knew those issues were going to be the basis for a movie.

One trend we’ve been noticing lately is the slow upwards creep on prices for a handful of books from the post market-crash era, when sales were down on everything, from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. Stuff like the 1999 Amazing Spider-Man relaunch, or Simpsons comics, or final issues (read: even lower print runs than the already low numbers most titles were at) of certain series, or other comics published then that folks still have an interest in now, particularly if still in near mint or better condition. When I made a mention of this on Twitter, I wasn’t specific enough about what books were showing such an increase, so everyone was all like “BUY MY SHADOWHAWKS, MIKE,” and I looked down and whispered “no.”

I may have more meanderings about back issue stuff later in the week, but let me stop for today after dealing with one more bit of business:

Pal Dave asked me on the Twitterers about which once-valuable comic took the biggest dive in price and is now basically worthless. Now, I thought about that for a long time. In the subsequent discussion on Twitter right after Dave asked, Superman #75, the Death of Superman issue (I’m sure I don’t need to remind you), was mentioned. At the time, I recall hearing stories about people selling copies for $100+ the weekend after its release, though I never saw it with my own eyes. At our shop, when we finally started dealing with it as a back issue item (after sorta avoiding it for a while, waiting for the market to settle) we were charging $15 for the still-sealed-in-the-black-baggie edition, and that’s where the price stayed for years. I think now we have it at $25, and yes, they’re still selling. So, at least for us, this comic didn’t dive in price.

One that comes to mind is Harbinger #1 (1992) from Valiant Comics. I seem to recall that selling for about $100 at one point at the height of Valiant-mania. I remember having a bunch of them on the rack when it was new and thinking “we’re never going to sell these stupid things.” Well, sell they did, and I still get requests for it. There is still a market, as I implied earlier in this post, for early Valiant comics, and even before this most recent relaunch of the Valiant brand there was demand for Harbinger and early X-O Manowar and whatnot. A quick glance at the eBay revealed a couple of sales in the $30 range, only half that of the $60 price in the most recent Overstreet. While there was a drop in price, I wouldn’t say it’s worthless, and people are still looking for it.

I don’t know if this counts, the WildC.A.T.s #1 Gold Foil edition, which we sold in an in-store auction for over $100…and now we have a copy, signed by Jim Lee himself, in the shop for $15.00. I don’t know if that $100 price tag was typical for the time, or just a fluke at our shop, but that’s a big drop for us, at any rate, added to the fact that nobody’s looking for WildC.A.T.s back issues.

So I still don’t really have an answer for Dave. There were a number of titles that were briefly hot that you can’t even give away today…New Warriors #1, for example, though never worth a lot of money it did sell regularly, unlike now. If you folks have any suggestions, you know where to lay ’em on me.

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