shadroch

I read somewhere that Marvel published more Kirby books per month after he left ( with no compensation to him) than they ever did while he was with them. You'd think after going bankrupt and destroying the market once, they might have learned their lesson, but that's not to be.

I'd like to sell sales figures to show Watchmen has sold even a million copies, let alone millions. Unless you want to argue each monthly copy should count . In which case, Youngblood has also sold millions of copies. While a critical success, it was by no means a sales sensation when it came out. In my shop, I'd say less than half the people that bought the first issue stuck around for the twelfth one. Even TPB sales weren't that great for the first year or two. While it is a perennial best seller, it doesn't sell millions of copies.

Image beat Marvel in sales in the first year they existed. Marvel was on its way to being the third ranked company until Pearlman blew up the market.

They created a very successful model based on the then current market. Then Pearlman came along and destroyed the industry. Pearlman self distributed and flooded the market. Marvel put out hundreds of new issues a month and basically said either you order all our titles or you order none of them. Between the increased cost of shipping and having to buy so many extra Marvel titles, many shops had to cut down on their other stuff. Then as Distributor after Distributor went belly up after losing the ability to distribute Marvels, they went out of business owing companies like Valiant and Image hundreds of thousands. Image was creator owned and managed to survive. Valiant was run by investors who didn't know anything except that they weren't getting the returns they were promised and they bailed.

Before comic shops, other genres flourished. If you look at a DC comic from 1974, you'll see superhero comics were a minority of their offerings. They had successful War and Horror lines, and perhaps a not so successful Sci-Fi, Strange line. Detective Comics went bimonthly for a while and the JLA was published 8 times a year. For whatever reason, the Direct Market never catered to anything other than Super Heroes ,with very few exceptions.

Another fine job by our boys in Sarasota.

I would not say the industry was healthy in 1960. Far from it. Marvel couldn't even find a distributor and had to piggy back off of DC's distribution center. It took years for Marvel to surpass DC in sales. I'd argue that Image, and even Valiant was just as much a game changer when they arrived than Marvel was in 1960/61. Who knows what might have happened if Marvel( and when I say Marvel I mean Ron Pearlman) hadn't changed the rules mid game. The industry had a half dozen distributors and thousands of shops. When Marvels experiment with self distribution ended in bankruptcy, the market got stuck with one distributor and two thirds of the shops gone, taking many smaller companies with it. Joe Lisner showed that one can self publish and make a ton of money. Dave Sim and the Pini's preceded him, but they never reached the heights he did with the early Dawns. With some many people self publishing, the chances of an entire universe springing up are scarce. Kurt Busieks Astro City is an exception but its on a minute scale.

So CGC graded a book missing half the story as a 9.2. I can only imagine the uproar if one of the other grading companies did this.

Are you looking at a four, five or six figure investment?

What are 10% of your future sales? Is the person buying ten percent of your sales or 10% of your future inventory? Suppose the investor is unhappy. Can he sell his ten percent too some one else?

That's a fifty dollar book all day long.

Its not worth having it graded. If you get lucky, it might go for $10 on ebay. Almost definitely no more than that. I've bought some 80s and 90s double covers for less than you paid. My biggest concern is why you paid $3 for a beatup copper age book.

In 1966, I was living in Japan and my best friends father was a black GI who had married a German girl. He was coming up on twenty years and I overheard him talking about life after retirement. I heard him say something to the effect of" You know I can never go home to Virginia again" and not understanding why. When I asked my parents, they kind of shrugged and told me I'd understand when I was a bit older. Fast forward to 1968 and I'm living in Queens, when a new kid enters the school. They had moved up here from Alabama and he said he had been the first black kid to enroll in a school several years ago. For that they burned down the house he was living in. That summer, we went swimming and I saw the burn scars on his legs. He never said he was in the house when it was firebombed or that his grandmother died there. If you think everything is better now, consider we had a place of worship bombed this week and not a word out of our leaders.

With the water damage, 3.5 at best. Pressing won't fix that.

1) We are discussing sales tax, not income tax. 2) I have no idea where North Bay is. Is it USofA or Canada? Can't speak for Canadian tax laws.

It's finally here. I ordered it months ago from Amazon and it finally arrived. Looking forward to reading all those great Legion stories in order. While I have most of their pre- Crisis appearances, being able to read them in one source will be great. An early Christmas present to myself. Honestly, I'm more excited about this then the Alex Ross lithos I picked up yesterday.

You pay tax when you buy the book, unless you have a resale license. You collect tax when you sell the book.

3.0, maybe a very generous 3.5.

Went a bit overboard today at a local auction. When the smoke cleared, I had four professionally framed Alex Ross prints. JLA: Secret Origins, Good Vs Evil, Mythology; Superman and Mythology: Batman. Four DC statues that were never displayed. Six sealed Omnibi, four DC Archives, a Hawkman statue, three DC Absolutes, a Wonder Woman Omni, A Slipcover Crisis on Infinite Earth Set with an Alex Ross Dustjacket, a bunch of signed Frank Miller CBLDF stuff, A Dell Zorro Archive. and an assortment of minor purchases. Lots of lookers but no serious competition. Most of the online bidders were turned off by the auction house wanting $175 per print for shipping, with no combined shipping on art or statues. I got three of the prints for around $200 each, just about the cost of the frames. The JLA one cost me a bit more. https://www.proxibid.com/aspr/Collector-RARE-JLA-Secret-Origins-Limited-Edition-Fine-Art-Print-Issued-in-2003-With-COA-98of-250/37567233/LotDetail.asp?lid=37567233&rfpb=0#Top

Fun read. I wish someone had kept a contemporary diary of the events.

Glad they turned out to be real.

I've seen shops that charge sales tax on discounted back issues, so I'm not sure just what the law actually says. When I do small shows in Nevada, I pay sales tax on my total sales. To start figuring out what part of a $3 sale of a comic that was $1.25 new is subject to sales tax would be a book keeping nightmare. Some shops here say TPBs aren't periodicals, others say they are.

In forty five years of collecting, it's never come up. Not sure there is much demand for it. Interesting question though.

My Mother was born in 1931, moved to America in 1937 and often says she had no idea that word was offensive until the late 1950s. She says and Negro went interchangeable in her social circle, which didn't include any of "them".

It's funny, I just bought a box of TPBs from a local flea market vendor. He had them three months, was selling them for $5 each and unloaded the stock to me for $1.50 each. Included was a Secret Wars 2 Omnibus that sells on ebay for an average price over $150. Had eight Dr Who TPBs that seem to sell for $10-15 on the bay. Also was a Conquest Omni that goes for about $30. He also sold me some oversized( treasury sized but thinner) comics I'd never seen before. Superman/FF, a JLA and a Batman . I'll recoup my money on the SW Omni. Going to offer the rest here for a nice discount.