Future of Comic Book Collecting

[Bugaboo-migration]

Good question gunsmoke. I rememer as a kid running down to the local drugstore and carefully picking out all the issues I wanted every wednesday. Or, occasionally picking up a few from a rack in a grocery store when I just wanted something new to read. I'm in my 30's now and the only place I see them now is at a local shop that sells mostly just comics.

[comicinvestor-migration]

Look at what happens when the mainstream media learns about a comic event... Spider-Man gets married... Superman dies... Batman gets crippled... Robin dies... Wolverine's Origin gets told.... the sales spike, people come looking for those books.

 

But why is there a spike in sales during these times? Are people honestly looking to get a copy for reading purposes or to put some away for investment?

 

All those still-sealed black editions of Supes Death I constantly get emailed about make me think that these were not high on the buyer's reading list. :>

[dam60]

In all fairness, I think you have a little of both. People who hadn't collected books for the last 20 years came back to read the death of Superman. I remember as a kid my grandpa took me to 3 different comic stores that day to get an issue, and it wasn't just because I wanted one — he very much wanted to read the issue himself!

[lighthouse]

Man, you are in serious need of an MBA program...

 

I'm already in $83,000 for my higher education, with the framed toilet paper to prove it...

 

As far as the six items you listed, four are choices to be made by the individual retailer and are therefore not a function of the industry as a whole. Most of us on this forum would already describe comics as an addictive substance. And perceived value is exactly what I am talking about...

 

If the comic industry spent a little money telling the general public how great the product is, people would happily come in and purchase. Customers don't spend $150 on basketball shoes because they are 'worth' that. They spend that much because they have been convinced that to keep up with their homies that's what they need.

 

I am not suggesting Super Bowl ads... but some targetted advertising to the 18-24 demographic would make a lot of sense. The industry has already decided that young kids are not the target market for their product, so why not spend some money hyping the product to the people who are?

[Kevin Boyd]

Story I've heard the most about Superman 75 is that when the casual buyer went to get the book for interests sake the store owner/staff specifically told them not to open the bag or it would lose all value.

 

They were told to buy multiple copies because of the singularity of the event and that he would never be coming back.

 

The speculator buzz was so high during those contrived events in the early 90's that the point that was driven into these people skulls was that comics were not entertainment but primarily investment collectibles.

 

I had my uncle, a respected doctor who is a Superman fan, tell me a week after it had come out that he had bought a case of 100 copies of Superman 75 because he was told that it was a sure fire investment by his local comic shop owner. He had heard about the story on the news and taken time to go down early to the local shop the day it came out.

 

I wish he had called me beforehand as it was a no-brainer that Superman would be back in a few months and this would settle down in price.

 

So I think casual interest that would have seen a sales spike anyway, was whipped into a stratospheric speculator frenzy because of the greedy and ill-informed strategy of some comic shops to get the quick buck over making a new customer.

 

Kev

 

 

[CosmicBob]

I can't believe that anyone believed Carlin or Jurgens when they claimed that Superman wouldn't be back. "Yes, we're going to kill off the most recognizable and longest running character in comic books and keep him dead. Yup, that's what we're going to do, slit our own throats."

 

I remember going to my comic shop and Jurgens was signing them the day they came out (he lives around here). I'm reasonably certain I only bought one of the comics, there may be a second one somewhere, but I certainly didn't spend huge dough on the extra-special, super-duper edition. I stopped falling for that trick with Spider-Man #1.

[Kevin Boyd]

I agree, I can't believe that anyone who read comics regularly at the time would have believed that. I think I bought two copies myself, a bagged one and an unbagged regular cover.

 

However, people that didn't read comics might have, and obviously did, believe that he was gone for good, perhaps to be replaced by another character with the same name. Those that collected in the 80's knew that death issues like ASM 121/122 and X-Men 137 were highly collectible comics.

 

Not to many store owners were turning people away and saying that this was a contrived event meant to spike sales in the Superman titles and that Kal would be back in action mere months after the death issue. They shut up or went with the lie that he really was gone for good.

 

Kev

 

[Joanna]

People who hadn't collected books for the last 20 years came back to read the death of Superman.

 

Or sometimes even longer. I came back to comics with that issue. I hadn't seen a comic in 30 years, but I heard about it on the news and one of my best friends was a comic reader. He'd tried to get me interested before but I just laughed at him. Read comics as an adult? C'mon!

 

Then Superman died and it hit me in the gut because I bought as many Super books as I could afford when I was a kid. I loved Superman, Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. I couldn't believe they'd kill him off. So I gave my friend some money and asked him to buy one for me.

 

I read it, and wanted to know more. So he loaned me all the Doomsday issues that led up to it. I read them and wanted to know more. So I went to the comic shop with him the next week and bought the 1st Funeral For a Friend issue. And kept buying. My friend told me to buy "Man of Steel" by John Byrne. I loved it, and embarked on a mission. I bought every issue of the Superman books from Crisis up. I discovered that some comic shops had back issues all the way back to the silver age, so I started buying those like crazy. Meanwhile, my weekly pull list was huge, buying nearly every title from DC, lots of independants, etc.

 

In short, you may dismiss "big events" and hype, but they work. Yes, in the beginning I played the speculator game because I didn't know any better (and my friend was a terrible influence). But I soon gave that up and put the bulk of my effort into collecting the books I wanted to read, like silver age, golden age, specific runs, etc. I never cared much about condition, because it was all about getting the most books for the least amount of money. I wanted lots of comics to read, and I got them. The brief speculator phase had died a complete death. This forum is skewed toward condition because it's a CGC forum. It gives the false impression that people are only looking for mint spideys, and nothing else. That's not the real world.

 

Not everyone's life revolves around money and speculation, CI. Even if they start that way, they might just read a little and get hooked. Comics have that power.

 

-- Joanna

[dam60]

Nice post . . . I too after that issue went and got the DD set (or what I could afford, namely the second and even third prints, but I wanted to read it too, so what did it matter?) I then started buying every Superman comic for the next three years without missing an issue. Then around 95, it all just faded for me. Maybe it was because then I was a sophomore in HS, maybe it was because comics were starting to get expensive and really weren't worth the money. I haven't picked up Superman again, but the Bryne run of Superman and the classic Golden/Silver/Bronze truly holds a valued spot in any fan's collection.

[FlyingDonut]

Wellllll

 

I've got an MBA, in marketing/brand management, from a top-15 school. The comic book industry is a case study in how NOT to effectively manage a brand. Just a couple of random examples.

 

1. Amazing Spider-Man 36 was a "breakout of the norm" issue with crossover appeal to non-comics readers. Was it promoted as such? Was there any sort of decision to make the monies from it available to the terrorism victims?

 

2. Spider-Man (the movie) grossed, what, a zillion dollars? Where was Marvel to capitalize on the movie with push marketing of the comic to the "rest of the world"?

 

3. The Daredevil movie is coming. Whatever board members think of it, it is still going to be huge the first week it comes out. Where's the push marketing of Daredevil?

 

4. The X-Men movie is coming...anybody seen anything?

 

and finally

 

5. The insane "no reorders" policy that Marvel has. This is the single worst decision Marvel has made in the past 10 years. The reorders policy drives random buyers away from comics in comic shops, and makes it more difficult to have impulse buys of comics in stores.

 

The comic industry is like baseball - actively anti-marketing their product. Feh!

[Kevin Boyd]

I really wish DC would reprint the Byrne Superman and Perez Wonder Woman issues in TPBs. Byrne's 2+ years on Superman were probably the best batch of Superman comics I've read to date, and certainly made the character accessible to a former Marvel zombie like myself.

 

Kev

[aardvark88]

At least DC kept Superman 75 in print w/ multiple editions. The Death of Sman trade paperback was my best seller at fleamkts to the general public who wanted to read the entire storyline in 1 volume. Most of them did not want a thin, flimsy 3rd print of Sman 75.

[CosmicBob]

I liked Byrne's work in Supes, but in terms of post-Crisis, I prefer most of Jurgens' Supes to Byrne's. And I stopped buying all new comics a couple of years ago, the cost was getting absurd and I was running out of room. None of the comics really thrilled me much except for a couple of titles (I liked Buffy, Wonder Woman and Superman and David's Supergirl was interesting). Plus I didn'thave the time to read them, unread comics were stacking up.

 

None of the recent Marvel movies (Spidey, X-Men) made me want to go read comics, and it's likely that Daredevil and Hulk won't do the trick either. But I was always a DC fan anyway.

 

The Birds of Prey TV show came close to getting me back to new comic reading, but not quite. I liked some of the original BOP mini-series' they did.

 

I just don't care what DC or Marvel does anymore because I'm unlikely to read it. They can kill off Supes or Spidey or whatever. So for me, the future of comic book collecting is building up my core runs of Superman, Action and Superboy as back issues.

[Kevin Boyd]

It really doesn't bother me because they reprint the hell out of the comics that would have been reordered anyway as TPBs/Hardcovers and has helped to increase sales of recent issues on the secondary market. So the issues that I picked up off the rack to read are suddenly in-demand on the secondary market and if I want to sell them I can pick up the collected edition.

 

On the one hand, this policy sucks if you get people wanting those issues, but helps the secondary market by making the recent Marvels more valuable. Overprinting and reordering has made most comics published in the late 1980's and 1990's all but worthless. It does put all risk on the retailer though, as they must decide in advance whether or not the book will be a big seller or not.

 

It is my belief that Marvel is actively deterring people from buying monthly books by catering only to their loyal previews ordering customer base and the store owners that engage in speculative ordering. Everyone else is being directed towards the TPBs and hardcovers instead where Marvel will hopefully connect with a wider audience and potentially stronger sales and maintain a healthy back catalog of material that doesn't have to rely solely on sales at comic shops.

 

I don't have a store, but if I did and people were walking in off the street after seeing the DD movie and wanted some DD comics to read I doubt that I would be directing them to the monthly. I would point them to the DD tradepaperbacks first. They've tried to prepare for the movie by making sure that there is a wide catalog of DD TPBs available for purchase. Most of the new Bendis run has been reprinted already, as have the Kevin Smith issues, the Miller issues, DD: Yellow, etc.

 

Kev

[lighthouse]

The comic industry is like baseball - actively anti-marketing their product. Feh!

 

I am glad to see I am not the only one who feels this way...

 

I look at the differences between Marvel-DC as competitive partners vs Coke-Pepsi as competitive partners, and it sickens me...

 

Coke and Pepsi spend 90% of their marketing on telling people how great their own products are with general audience pitches, and in doing so succeed in growing the cola market as a whole.

 

Marvel and DC spend 90% of their marketing on fighting over each other's customers in trade publications, and in doing so succeed in shrinking the comic market as a whole.

[FlyingDonut]

It really doesn't bother me because they reprint the hell out of the comics that would have been reordered anyway as TPBs/Hardcovers and has helped to increase sales of recent issues on the secondary market. So the issues that I picked up off the rack to read are suddenly in-demand on the secondary market and if I want to sell them I can pick up the collected edition.

 

Right there you answered the question as to why the policy is ultimately self destructive.

 

On the one hand, this policy sucks if you get people wanting those issues, but helps the secondary market by making the recent Marvels more valuable.

 

The secondary market isn't the market Marvel is selling to!

[dam60]

I'm right there with you - I only buy USM, JLA, Batman, Detective and Green Arrow every month whereas the back issues is where I focus, trying to fill a few gaps to get my full runs and picking up some key books that I want to own. Back issues are becoming the future of comic book collecting for me. The new issues for the most part just really don't keep my interest. Although if you like Batman and if you like Jim Lee, Hush is looking pretty good so far.

[comicwiz]

I agree with pretty much everything you said Kev; especially the points on the comic industry using a laissez-faire attitude towards advertising. With the release of Spider-Man, I think it would have served Marvel well by Including an ad in the theatre, and/or a free giveaway comic with their video and DVD packaging. Such cross-selling methods may have gone a long way in encouraging children to buy comics (or rather, get their parents to pick up comics for them).

[Joanna]

I really wish DC would reprint the Byrne Superman and Perez Wonder Woman issues in TPBs. Byrne's 2+ years on Superman were probably the best batch of Superman comics I've read to date, and certainly made the character accessible to a former Marvel zombie like myself.

 

Perez's WW is the second half of my story. After I bought all the post-crisis Superman issues, I read them all straight through. It's really fun to do that because you get a sense of the big story being told. It was suprisingly cohesive. Really interesting and I was so hooked at that point. But when I finished reading, I was really depressed because it was 'over'. No more comics all in a row.

 

My friend suggested I read Wonder Woman. He told me it had the same sense of "heart" that Superman had. Heroic, about good people fighting for what's right, etc. (I am not an anti-hero kinda gal). So I bought all the post-crisis WW comics and fell more in love than ever with comics as a whole. This series really spoke to me, especially Perez's run. I thought it was phenominal. I've never had quite the same experience with any other series.

 

When I finished those, I collected some other runs, but my focus became WW, so I went on a pre-crisis back issue hunt of epic proportions (for me). I managed to buy every comic from 100 up, and about 40 pre-100 issues. Read those straight through, as well. Man, that was a ton of fun. I'm going to have to do that again.

 

By the end, I had a full Flash post-crisis run, and I think I had Green Lantern, as well. I had Detective and Batman, Green Arrow, and tons of other books. If anyone needs a run, let me know.

 

-- Joanna

[snizzenfixit]

With the release of Spider-Man, I think it would have served Marvel well by Including an ad in the theatre, and/or a free giveaway comic with their video and DVD packaging.

 

I think a reprint of Amazing Fantasy 15 was included with the collectors edition DVD

 

Phil