I was hanging out/volunteering at the shop where I bought my titles, Comics America in Clarksville, which has since vanished along with most outlets that sprang up during the boom of the late ’80s. On this particular evening I and some other aspiring geeks were helping out the pro geeks with a rush of speculators and helpless geeks (there’s a substantial difference, if you care to know), at least 30 deep in line. A media blitz had guaranteed that a copy of Superman’s “death” would shortly fund a nice chunk of a minivan or the youngest’s college education, at least at a state school.
“It will never be worth anything,” we kept telling them. “D.C. is printing like 4 million copies, and they all are coming in a plastic bag. You are wasting your money.”
It’s not always fun to be right.
As of July 4, Superman #75 is up to $12 in near mint (basically, perfect) condition, I’d guess bolstered by the release of the painfully stupid new Superman movie. I was surprised to see it doing that well, particularly when some other really good Superman issues are languishing near cover price 15 or 20 years after publication.
My interest in the price of Superman #75 is not merely nostalgic. I spent much of the July 4 weekend pricing out the comics collection I built in my 20s, with the notion that I might test the waters on eBay if the books’ appreciation merited the hassle. I even went so far as to buy a spiffy piece of professional comics inventory software with automatic price updates.
After about 30 hours of shuffling books and clumsy data entry, I’m now seriously considering taking up the collecting habit again. The smell of slightly moldy pulp never gets out of your blood completely, and what the hell, comics are cheaper now than they were 15 years ago.
Howard Chakin’s four-part Shadow miniseries: 50 cents over cover.
The Killing Joke, media darling Alan Moore’s defining Batman/Joker story: $7, down from $40-$50 six months after its initial release in 1988.
Superman Annual #11, which includes Moore’s revered “For the Man Who Has Everything” story: $4.
And despite a reasonably successful movie adaptation, the ‘88 U.S. release of Moore’s V for Vendetta is priced a just a few pennies over cover.
It’s like we said back in ‘92 -- as fan interest in comics exploded, companies churned out 10 times or more the number of issues that were being printed in the 1960s. (I had the good fortune/taste to snap up the full run of The Amazing Spider-Man back in the ‘80s, so my weekend was not a complete fiscal flop.) And each and every one of those ‘80s books went straight into an archival polymer bag, which weren’t introduced until the ‘70s.
Collectables maintain value because they are rare, and late ‘80s comics are never gonna be rare. Add to that the publishing houses’ new passion for “graphic novels” -- re: cutting back-issue shops out of the market with glossy collections now sold in bookshops, hipsters’ latte-drenched comfort zone -- and the demand for my old, smelly comics is thin.
The big winner in my ‘80s collection is Milk & Cheese #1 ($65), a weird indi book I picked up because I, too, was enraged by Merv Griffin in my more passionate youth.
Still cracks me up.
The good news for today’s collectors -- although it doesn’t profit me -- is that some of the best comics ever printed are out there on the cheaps.
Mike Baron’s Nexus, one of the smartest super-hero titles, runs about $3 an issue. Moore’s Swamp Thing, which created D.C.’s Vertigo approach before the marketing guys slapped a label on it, are about $4 an issue for most of the run. Even Neil Gaimain’s incomparable Sandman is near cover for most issues (#1 is $25, about half of what it was moving for 10 years ago). Almost the entire library of Valiant titles, thought to be the next big thing in superheroes 15 years ago, are now about $1.50 a pop, although Harbinger #1 -- a sharp take on the whole teen mutant thing -- has bounced back to $30.
Of course, most of these books are available as “graphic novels,” so there’s no need to humiliate yourself by actually going into a comics shop.
But newsprint smells a lot better than double-mochas.
No comments:
Post a Comment