Gatsby77

Sad but true. And I'm old enough to remember when # 7 (polybagged Man-Bat cover) was a $10-$12 wall book.

This is trending on Twitter right now, with tons of folks praising Skrein for stepping away. It's made for the biggest news related to the film yet.

Yeah. I first saw Superman 3 when I was 7 years old and thought it was _amazing_. Try watching it again now. It's horrible. Not Superman IV horrible, but nearly unwatchable, despite featuring Richard Pryor.

This. The main reason I think Silver Age books will fall a bit when the first generation of collectors begin to retire in 10-12 years? There's no infrastructure in place to inspire a new generation of readers. Kids today aren't reading comics like they did in generations past. Homecoming made well over $300 million at the domestic box office, yet the top-selling Spider-Man book in July sold less than 68,000 copies -- and a few hundred copies less than The Walking Dead.

Interesting - the photo of the comics doesn't show one older than 20 years old. And yeah -- 99 percent of the comics from the last 40 years (1977-present) are basically worthless, either because they're not keys or they're in VF or worse shape. But about those baby boomers? Sure - my uncle is now in his mid-70s. Three years ago he asked me to sell his childhood comic book collection - about 400 original owner books from the early 1950s. I haven't sold them yet because they're generally not worth listing. 1) They're pre-Marvel 2) 98 percent non-superhero. 3) Average condition is 3.5 -- some as high as 5.0. Most are structurally 4.0 but might have issues of tanning or brittleness that make them 2.0s. So I'm now sitting on a closetful of Golden Age books that are worth no more than $10 each. Out of the 400, maybe 6 are worth $80 or more (solid 5.0 issues of Mad 24, 25, Tales to Astonish # 1, a few others). But meanwhile it's piles of books like the Lone Ranger, Little Lulu, Lassie, Our Army at War (pre Sgt. Rock). Honestly the most valuable ones are a few dozen sub- # 100 Archie comics. My other uncle (same family, a few years older) has a similiar collection, but it's just a few dozen books from the late-1940s. Mostly Wings and other war books. Literally the only superhero one in the bunch is a Blue Beetle. Just funny -- for non-collector baby boomers who may still have a random pile of original owner comics in their basement as they now look to retirement, we've passed the generation who was collecting in the late 30s/early 40s and are now looking at those who were kids in the late 1940s/early 1950s -- when superheroes were least popular and therefore least likely to be present. In another 10-12 years, we'll begin to see the retirements of those who grew up on early Marvel superheroes.

But that's exactly my point. Collectors don't have access to 90 percent of the books on eBay right now, because literally 90%+ aren't really for sale -- they're merely posted at fanciful prices. If a $100 book is over-priced, it doesn't matter if it's over-priced at $110 or $20,000 -- it still won't sell. So in effect, it's not really for sale. Once we hit another recession or folks are actually motivated to sell (by looming retirement or otherwise), I think we'll see a massive correction across the board.

I think that "glut of a worldwide online market" is overblown. eBay's comics section today is literally 90% overpriced BIN to 10% auctions. So, in effect, the market is being improperly propped up by the illusion of books that continue to sit at inflated prices or (logical conclusion) aren't really for sale (at market) at all. All it would take for a massive 50%+ downward price correction for 98 percent of the material out there is for every book on eBay to go to true auction. That's scary.

This. I think this will happen 8-10 years from now. New physical comic sales will continue to decline, Hollywood will be largely done with comic book movies that have led to a huge boom over the last 10 years, and the core Silver Age collectors (currently in their late 40s/early 50s) will begin to retire. That's when the supply glut will happen, along with a huge downward price adjustment.

Y'all see that the cover art for this sold via Heritage two weeks ago? $11k and some change.

Sadly no. My 9.0 came from a 2011 Comiclink auction of the complete Magnus run. My 8.5 was a raw "9.2/9.4" bought from Steve Ritter (World Wide Comics). My 8.0 is a former Voldermort 9.4 that came from boardie Cloud Cloddie via last spring's Comiclink auction. I'm a decent grader who has self-subbed maybe 10 issues of Gold Key Magnus. All three of these books looked like solid 9.2/9.4s, so I'm wondering if it's got a structural defect of some sort that tends to keep it out of NM. I say that as someone who has 15 of the 46 Magnus issues in CGC 9.8.

What? What is this "bright, humor-based, traditional superhero DCEU" of which you speak? Did you somehow miss Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Suicide Squad?

Yeah. Smacks of desperation.

Excellent synopsis. But I think it under-rates III. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Felicity for the win. Brilliant film, but unfortunately released right after Cruise's Oprah couch-jumping. So Paramount head Sumner Redstone blames Cruise for costing it $100 million at the box office and fires Cruise from Paramount. So Cruise turns around and buys United Artists instead.

Good point. Let's look at some older miniseries variants. Say...Star Wars Dark Empire Gold and Platinum. Does anyone care about any issues other than # 1? Or how about Marvel's The Dark Tower: Born sketch variants? Does anyone care about any issues other than # 1?

Also - that this Spider-Man is a "failure" for just now crossing $300 million domestic is bunk. By that measure, it's done better domestically than either of Andrew Garfield's Spidey films and cost less than either. And F is for Fake nails it -- this was a rebuilding film after three bad movies. Spider-Man 3's enormous box office was due to audience goodwill built from the first two good films. This film had the opposite to overcome, similar to what another take on Fantastic Four would face. And it did!

Huh...I disagree with your premise. Even the non-comic nerds I know didn't like Iron Fist. But they didn't like it in its totality, _after_ they watched it. Many watched it at first out of curiosity, especially that of seeing a practicing white Buddhist. People tuned into Iron Fist on the strength of Daredevil 1 & 2. Of _course_ they watched it in its first month. That doesn't mean they liked the overall product, or that they'll tune in for another season. Fool me twice, after all...

I thought it wasn't. Doesn't that honor go to Iron Fist # 14 ($.35 cent variant)?

I don't see the non-key variant comics ever taking off. I think the litmus test will be in another 10 years with the current Valiant Entertainment books. How much will folks be able to sell their full set of limited 1:10 X-O Manowar volume 2 # 1-20 editions when they're currently on volume 4? Or even with Marvel and the "Mile High Comics" Star Wars variants. Let's say you have a full set of what? 12 issues? 20? 10 years from now, who will care? And what's the delta over the cost of a 1-20 normal set?

The Phelps betrayal is what *made* Mission Impossible -- nobody saw that coming. The problem that movie had is that they killed off his team in the opening sequence, so the rest of the film was more a Tom Cruise movie than a true "Mission Impossible" one. That same issue is a large reason why 2 sucked as well. (Still, we all owe a great debt to Mission Impossible 2 for giving us Hugh Jackman as Wolverine rather than Dougray Scott). They fixed this going forward, though. Mission Impossible 3-5 are all legit team films. On Tom Cruise in general, it's worth resurrecting this piece from Scott Mendselson two years ago: Tom Cruise Hasn't Had a Real Flop in Nearly 30 Years. Since then he's had two movies under-perform (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and The Mummy) but Mendelson has defended both of those as well (he notes that The Mummy has made well over 3x its production budget worldwide -- not great, but not anywhere near a flop. It's also one of the few films ever to gross more than $400 million worldwide while making less than $100 million U.S.).

Yeah - I think this is ultimately small potatoes. Because if you're using GPA as gospel for accurate pricing, you're doing it wrong. There's already a huge built-in skew with books under $100 because shipping costs can vary between $0 and $20. So one book "selling" for $60 (with $20 shipping) is the same as that same book selling for $80 (with free shipping) -- often within a few days of each other.

Watched only the first episode so far and wasn't impressed. For reference - I loved Daredevil 1+2, really liked Jessica Jones, thought Luke Cage was merely okay and _hated_ Iron Fist. I'm sure it will pick up but dang do they seem to be taking their sweet time putting the team together. Bright spot? Sigourney Weaver. Doubt she'll be able to match David Tennant but it'll be fun to see if she can...

I've been trying to build a solid NM (9.4 or better) set of the Gold Key Magnus Robot Fighter run for the last five years. About 15 months ago I basically finished, and now have # 1-46 in average 9.6, with only three books remaining below 9.4. Predictably, these are all drawn from the lesser collected 1970s reprints: # 33 (9.0) # 37 (9.2) # 46 (9.0) I posted this in the "Want to Buy" section yesterday but I wanted to highlight this here as well as a call to dealers and others who may have high-grade raws sitting in their boxes somewhere. I'm getting really frustrated with Magnus # 46 (the last issue). I've bought 4 copies of Magnus 46 and slabbed two -- nothing's yet broken the 9.0 threshhold. Despite what the CGC Census says, the highest graded copy is currently a 9.0 -- the 9.4 was a label mistake on one of my submissions that they never removed. I currently own three of the four highest-graded copies of this book (in CGC 9.0, 8.5, and 8.0). Please let me know if you have 9.4 potentials of any of these three books. Specifcally, here's what I'm willing to pay for Magnus # 46: Raw 9.2 -- $50 Raw 9.4 -- $80 If you have a high-grade copy & slab it yourself, even better. For that, I'll pay: CGC 9.2 -- $150 CGC 9.4 -- $250 CGC 9.6 -- $400

On The Walking Dead - Everything Lazyboy said. The Walking Dead wasn't even close to a hit in 2003 (or even 2005). And it didn't become a break-out bestseller until after the show debuted in 2010. Regardless, it's one title. And even Kirkman has been unable to duplicate his success so far -- which demonstrates exactly how he's not "the next Marvel" any more than was Dave Sim, with his landmark 300 issue run on Cerebus. Here's the list of the Top 300 comic book titles for May. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/37771/top-300-comics-actual-may-2017 There are precisely three non-Marvel/DC books in the top 100. The Walking Dead (# 10) Seven to Eternity (# 79) Paper Girls (# 91) And Kirkman's other title, Outcast? Hanging out # 127 with well under 18,000 copies ordered. Yup -- certainly have a challenger to Marvel there. Yup...

Huh? What broader impact has it had on the comic book industry? It's a single title that has broken into the top 10 consistently, and spawned a popular TV show (for now). The comic industry still relies on superheroes and the comic book movie arms race between Marvel/Disney/Sony/WB would still have occurred if Walking Dead had never been printed. It has had nowhere near the cultural impact that TMNT did. Hell - Walking Dead hasn't even had a large impact on Image comics, whereas TMNT led to an entire B+W self-published indie explosion and subsequent crash. *Maybe* you could make the argument that Walking Dead's success helped lead Jim Lee to sell Wildstorm to DC, which has led to comicdom being gifted by tons of Jim Lee runs on Batman, Superman, All-Star, Justice League, etc. But even that's a huge stretch. Even Kirkman himself hasn't been able to duplicate his success -- Thief of Thieves was a hot hit by speculators for a few months and then flamed out and Haunt bombed, despite McFarlane's involvement. What, exactly, has The Walking Dead done for the industry at large?

You didn't miss anything with Spectre. Disappointing and utterly forgettable.