National Lampoons, Warrens and Comics Journals

[That Ron Dude]

Recently I have taken tables at two small Toronto Conventions. The conventions were well attended and many dealers did brisque business. I did well at one of the conventions and made a profit at the second, but not a large one. I have been selling off the comics and fanzines, collected over the years, that I decided I would never look at again even if I live to be 100.

 

None of my National Lampoons, Warrens or Comics Journals sold at either convention. I have about 75 of each, I think. I am considering ways to dispose of them on mass as it seems there is little market for them locally. Even on ebay I don't see these titles moving with the exception of special or very high grade issues.

 

One of the local bookstores will buy my NatLamps at $1.00 a book and I suspect give me more in trade. I may take them up on this. The Comics Journals are probably saleable to a local comic shop but again I expect to receive very little money-- it will be more of a house cleaning chore than a for-profit activity. And I think the Warrens will sell cheaply, as a group, on ebay.

 

Any other ideas? Has the bottom fallen out of the market for these books? Was it just bad luck or the wrong crowd at the local mini-cons?

 

Don't let me get started on the OMNI's.

 

[delekkerste]

Any other ideas? Has the bottom fallen out of the market for these books? Was it just bad luck or the wrong crowd at the local mini-cons?

 

Don't let me get started on the OMNI's.

 

I think history has passed by National Lampoon magazine. I'm not sure how many people younger than I am even knew that there was such a thing. And, for those who do remember, you can get every issue on a single DVD-ROM for less than $50 now on Amazon.com.

 

I am not sanguine on the prospects for the old Warren magazines either, which saddens me greatly as I am a huge Vampirella fan (and one of the most active collectors of original artwork from the series). You won't find many post-Gen X'ers who collect or even have much of a familiarity with Warrens. Among the serious collectors of Warren art, I am the youngest by far that I know of. I see the number of Warren fans just continuing to dwindle as the years pass, and that is very unfortunate.

 

Not to go totally O/T, but I was watching the Frazetta documentary "Painting With Fire" over the weekend and Roger Reed, president of Illustration House, made a bold prediction that I was shocked was even allowed on the DVD - he said Frazetta's contributions will largely be forgotten in 150-200 years. Sad to say, it will probably be shorter than that - I was exposed to Fraz for the first time by checking out those old Lancer Conan PBs from the library in the early 1980s; nowadays, those have long been replaced by newer versions.

 

Many of the early-to-mid 20th century comic book and illustration artists are already fading from memory - Foster, Raymond, Hogarth, St. John, Brundage, Finlay, Krenkel, Herriman, etc. are hardly household names these days. Frazetta's popularity undoubtedly peaked decades ago, probably in the 1970s. Doesn't mean his artwork has depreciated, quite the contrary, but what happens over subsequent generations?

 

Think about how many comic books, comic strips and other creative properties have declined in popularity since their hey-days of the 1970s and 1980s. Is it any wonder that lesser known properties like National Lampoon, the Warren mags, etc. are falling by the wayside even more quickly?

 

It's sad, but it's reality. Enjoy the hobby while it's here and still as popular as it is, and don't count on your collections necessarily appreciating or even maintaining their value, especially not these niche areas whose times have passed them by.

[That Ron Dude]

Thanks for the excellent, thought provoking reply. I will give a longer response soon (right now I am going to bed).

[Gary Dunaier-migration]

Regarding your Comics Journals, you might want to consider posting at the Comics Journal message board ... it appears there are people posting there who are interested in certain back issues.

 

 

[The Troll King]

Here's my thoughts on Vampirella specifically and granted, like Gene, I am a little biased as I collect Vampirella.

 

When I started slabbing Vampirella's over a year ago there were many "holes" in the census. For a grading company that has now been around 10 years and to have maybe only 1/3 of a run graded a year ago and now has every issue in the census I think that speaks volumes for the popularity of the title.

 

And no, It's not me who has submitted every issue.

 

Also, if you check GPA prices on just about every issue of Vampirella all of the recent sales of high grade examples (9.4 and higher) have been breaking GPA records in many cases if not selling above the average.

 

What that tells me is... more demand for graded copies, and even higher demand for higher grade examples!

 

If you'll notice in my signature it says "extreme high grade" examples of Vampirella and it has been there for over a year. Whether it be Heritage, Comiclink, or eBay, I am frequently finding myself outbid and out-priced on more than 85% of the Vampirella's I've been trying to buy. It's safe to assume that if there is a graded Vampirella higher than 9.2 out there for sale, I've either been watching it, or have bid on it!

 

I have had very good luck in finding raw examples of Vampi's that I have been submitting myself and have successfully received the grades expected (with the exception of one that got nailed at a 7.5 when I overlooked something and thought it was at the very worst a 9.0)

 

The trend in Vampirella magazines has almost lead me to sell the ones I have as the prices have just been that good!

 

When it comes to Eerie's and Creepy's I can't speak too much for those as I don't follow them too much but from the few that I have looked at it seems to me that they remain a little more constant whereas Vampirella stands out from the crowd.

 

Other magazines that consistantly do well and what I've seen in the market:

 

Savage Tales - short run that is tough to find in grade due to the format (mags always have horrible spines) and the title is integral to Conan which more and more people are realizing.

 

Savage Sword of Conan - Bulk in any grade always exceed my expectations by double! No joke! Also, the same reasons as above.

 

Mad - A lot of issues from the 50's and 60's have been turning up lately of this title and as with Savage Sword, always do really well in bulk whereas individual issues only do well in high grade.

 

Marvel horror titles - Vampire Tales, Dracula Lives, Tales of the Zombie, Monsters Unleased, etc. Granted none of these are high price but all perform well in grade as there are books-a-plenty in low grade.

 

Magazines that don't perform:

 

Marvel Hero Magazines - Punisher, Hulk, Spider-man. None of these sell well unless they are extreme high grade copies and even then don't perform very well.

 

Other Marvel Mags not listed above - The 'Nam, Conan Saga (because they're reprints), Conan the Savage, Kull, Blade, Deadly Hands of Kung-fu, Planet of the Apes, etc. No secret why these don't do well, the regular format of these don't do well either (accept Conan of course). Also, any others I've forgotten by Marvel. Of course there are always exceptions in every title but they are normally uber-grade examples.

 

Heavy Metal - My theory on Heavy Metal is that much like a Playboy, everybody kept them. Even in bulk they don't sell well unless they are early issues. Heavy Metal was the magazine that most of us got away with buying at our local Stop-n-Rob at a young age. Plenty of copies available and I can't figure out why they even still publish it.

 

Crazy - The poor man's Mad? I always thought Crazy was better than Mad when I was young, but maybe that's because it didn't have quite the societal satire that Mad had that more mature readers understood.

 

Epic - With the exception of certain covers, these are completely flat also.

 

Famous Monsters of Filmland - Here again, with the exception of certain Gogo's covers and other covers of interest, they are flat. Bulk prices seem to do well but otherwise don't see much in the market.

 

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Hell, I sound like I just wrote a market report for Overstreet! Maybe I should put one of these: ©

 

 

 

[delekkerste]

Here's my thoughts on Vampirella specifically and granted, like Gene, I am a little biased as I collect Vampirella.

 

When I started slabbing Vampirella's over a year ago there were many "holes" in the census. For a grading company that has now been around 10 years and to have maybe only 1/3 of a run graded a year ago and now has every issue in the census I think that speaks volumes for the popularity of the title.

 

And no, It's not me who has submitted every issue.

 

Also, if you check GPA prices on just about every issue of Vampirella all of the recent sales of high grade examples (9.4 and higher) have been breaking GPA records in many cases if not selling above the average.

 

What that tells me is... more demand for graded copies, and even higher demand for higher grade examples!

 

I'm not saying that Vampi is, by any means, a forgotten character now, or that prices for Vampirella (or the works of the artists that I mentioned in my first post) have fallen. Quite the contrary, in fact. However, I suspect that much of the demand for HG slabbed Vampi issues is coming from those who grew up with the character in the 1970s and early 1980s (i.e., those in their late 30s on up).

 

No doubt Vampi's popularity has waned since the days when that Jose Gonzalez 6' poster graced the walls of many a college dorm room and when Hammer Films staked its future (no pun intended) on a big budget Vampirella film (which didn't get made as the firm essentially collapsed) in the 1970s. I remember still seeing issues of Vampirella on the newsstand in the early 1980s, and there was even a series of paperback novels in the 1970s. Nowadays, Harris Comics can't sell 20,000 copies of a new issue and they couldn't even pre-sell 500 copies of the Gonzalez poster reprint (which they finally did decide to print first and decide how to sell later), and the non-comic collector will never run into the character outside of an LCS.

 

Prices for HG copies and the original artwork are at record highs not because of record demand, but because there is a small group of mostly aging collectors with money keeping prices elevated. Being a collector of the original artwork, I know who most of the big players are, and I don't think any of them are below 40 besides myself and I think most are in their 50s or getting close to it. The farther you fast forward into the future, the more uncertain the market looks to me.

 

The peak in popularity comes first, then the peak in prices years/decades later due to demand from nostalgic collectors with money, and then the two curves both become downward sloping. And, for some lesser properties, that second peak might be lower than the first, at least in inflation-adjusted terms.

[The Troll King]

Gene, another thing to look at is that whenever a group of modern Vampirella's comes up also, it seems to do rather well too.

 

(wish I could say the same for the group I have on eBay right now, but c'est la vie)

[That Ron Dude]

Thank you all for your comments. They have given me some real perspective on my situation. After that last convention I had the feeling that I was 20 years behind in my perception of the market. The comics that I was selling were from my personal collection and I had purchased every one for a good reason. They were great comics but not too many people at the Toronto Convention Centre really wanted them. My prices were good too. Further lowering them wouldn't have gotten me any more takers.

 

It's too bad that those National Lampoons are largely forgotten. There is nothing like them today. In an era where I can say anything I want about sex, almost anywhere (except this forum) we still can't make jokes about women, race and religion. NatLamp did, and they were good jokes too. I have purchased the collected NatLamp on ebay. Even with postage it was only about $40. It is hard to read though and hard to flip through. You can't beat a magazine but there is a storage problem for the magazines.

 

Warren's were my generation's EC's. It is too bad that nobody much cares about them now, either. They had three phases, I'd say. First they had the EC alumni, then the new artists who weren't high on technique but had vision, and finally the Spanish and Philipino artists who added new life to comics before we started getting bored with them. Harris Pubs kept the memory alive for a while as did turning Vampirella into an even bigger sex-queen than she had been. As a kid I found the notion of a Vampire/Sexpot immature. Not that Creepy and Eerie was something that went over well with the more studious but they seemed less embarrassing to me and I stuck with those two title.

 

One Toronto fan, much older than me, traded all his silver age marvels for newspaper strips by Foster, Raymond and Hogarth in the late sixties. He now regrets his decision. It's true, the old illustrators are largely forgotten. What a shame.

 

Gary, thanks for the tip on the Comics Journal Message Board. It couldn't hurt.

 

Buffyfan thanks for your evaluation of the Warren comics and of the Magazine Market in general. I also have a lot of Mad Magazines and intend to keep them. I am still missing a few of the magazines from the 1950's. I am astounded at how cheap most of them are. If I do sell out one day, it will be in bulk. They too, are available, on mass, on a CDRom for very little money. I also have a full collection of Marvel's Epic Magazine. Though it has never had much monetary worth, it is a great example of what was cutting edge in comics at the time and I have decided to keep it. Was Savage Tales the first Conan-type magazine/, the one that had a Buscema cover on issue #1 the highly resembled a famous Frazetta painting of Conan with a woman at his feet standing on a mountain of bones and guts? If so, I have the first six issues, in really nice condition. I bought them off the stands. Because I had so many magazines for sale, people were making inquiries about Savage Tales. I have no idea if anyone would have been willing to pay much for them, but there was some interest at this convention.

 

 

[Jayman]

Interesting thread and has reminded me that I still need a National Lampoon - Vol. 1 No. 41 in HG.

 

Ron, have you any FS?

[FlyingDonut]

I've been watching the market for National Lampoons, and outside of a few VERY specific issues - the first issue, the infamous "Buy This Magazine or We'll Shoot This Dog" cover, and a couple others, the market has just cratered. Nobody remembers the magazine at all, and the only way the brand is in the marketplace now is in stupid high school sex comedies. When I tell people that it was the absolute cutting edge of comedy, they look at me like I've got two heads.

[delekkerste]

The craziest thing about National Lampoon is that I just discovered a couple of weeks ago is that it is actually a publicly traded company on the American Stock Exchange (ticker NLN)! It has a $16 million market cap and "owns interests in all major National Lampoon properties".

 

Maybe we can all band together and buy it out.

[That Ron Dude]

Jayman, I don't know if I have a 41. I will check tonight but if you can describe the cover, if it is distinctive, or tell me the year and month, it will be much easier.

 

I sold the issue with the cover depicting P.J.O'Rourke dressed up as a preteen biting a cherry for $62 on ebay a year ago. I sold the one with the cover depicting a college professor paddling a co-ed on the buttocks on ebay for about $20. I also sold the high school yearbook and the Animal House soft cover for more than a few dollars. When I look at the ebay listing though, nobody is selling. I don't why people even try. Runs from the early years are another exception.

 

I heard that Tim Matheson who played Otter in Animal House eventually bought the magazine. That was a long time ago though. I had no idea that it had become a publicly traded stock.

[Jayman]

Sure, it's this issue. Thanks!

[That Ron Dude]

I sold that one years ago. I sold two with Frazetta covers, on ebay, to a guy in Peterborough Ontario. If my memory serves me well, I got $12.

[Jayman]

Ah well, thanks anyway!

[50 Cent #II (1st)]

How about this one in High Grade?

[That Ron Dude]

I do have it but it has cracks on the cover, some staining (no joke, really) and spine stress.

[cd4ever]

Sure, it's this issue. Thanks!

 

Holy krap. I remember that issue. I owned it as a kid. Killer cover.

Thanks for posting it. (thumbs u

 

Back to Magazines, Skywalds seem to sell very well in HG but again that may be a select view old geezers driving up the price. And I disagree a little about the Marvel Hulk magazines. They can do pretty well unslabbed in HG. Not as well as their comic counterparts from the same era but 10-12 bucks for a standard issue, around 20-25 for the ones with Subby or the Iron Man/Avengers on the cover. Wasn't there an X-Men cover also?

 

And I think Vampirella's will outlast most Warren's because of the 'boob' factor. Works every time.

 

 

[heinlein99]

Younger people today have only heard of National Lampoon because of the movies that have it at the beginning of the title, like NL's Christmas Vacation. They probably think NL was a comedy group (a la Broken Lizard) or something.

 

I agree with Gene - though it breaks my heart! - that a lot of great creators of the last several decades will soon be forgotten. After all, there are hundreds of once-white-hot writers from the 19th & early 20th century whom absolutely no one today has heard of, even most literary professors or pulp-fiction aficianados.

[bronzilla]

I loved the magazine growing up! Mom had no clue the content. And that was fine with me.

One of my favorite issues: