90's comic bubble burst

[spidrvacc]

I remember the death of superman issue. Everyone in my office knew I was into comics. Everyone asked me to get them a copy. About 9 co workers. All had the same reason. Hold for 20 years and sell to put there kids through college. I wonder what college tuition is around $5 now.

[dupont2005]

I don't see how you can blame the industries crash on being late. Pitt didn't suck because it was behind schedule. It sucked because the contents inside the comic weren't worth looking at. Liefeld isn't ridiculed relentlessly because of his schedule, it's because of the lines he puts on bristol. Some very good comics only come out once a year, and every year they win an award, and they have their dedicated following spanning decades of print. Very few monthly comics are actually any good, in my opinion. Loose schedules isn't what made the 90's suck. Comics being viewed as a commodity and not as a source of entertainment is what made the 90's suck. The collectible virtue of comics actually influenced the contents. More #1's, more deaths, more resurrections, more first appearances. Double shipping, multiple covers, ridiculous crossovers, and so on. All that stuff was (and is) cash grabs. Before the 90's it was simply write and illustrate a good story (and for mainstream comics, do it in a timely manner). From the 90's to today, in mainstream comics at least, the strategy isn't "Create a great comic and people will read it forever" but instead "Kill this guy, insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will by the issue by the crate, we can bring him back in ten issues when we reboot another first issue." That's what sucks, not comics that take longer than a month to come out.

[dupont2005]

I remember the death of superman issue. Everyone in my office knew I was into comics. Everyone asked me to get them a copy. About 9 do workers. All had the same reason. Hold for 20 years and sell to put there kids through college. I wonder what college tuition is around $5 now.

I have to admit, I got suckered into the Doomsday stuff. I was never a Superman fan, but when I heard DC was going to kill off Superman, their most iconic character, I thought comics would never be the same. I couldn't believe DC would put a cash cow like Superman to rest. I thought there would never be any new Superman stories. So I started buying them. I wasn't quite investing, but the thought had definitely crossed my mind that they would eventually be valuable. I just wanted to see the end. When it didn't end, I was pissed. One of the main reasons I can never follow Marvel or DC super hero comics ever again.

[joecgcmaniac]

I don't see how you can blame the industries crash on being late. Pitt didn't suck because it was behind schedule. It sucked because the contents inside the comic weren't worth looking at. Liefeld isn't ridiculed relentlessly because of his schedule, it's because of the lines he puts on bristol. Some very good comics only come out once a year, and every year they win an award, and they have their dedicated following spanning decades of print. Very few monthly comics are actually any good, in my opinion. Loose schedules isn't what made the 90's suck. Comics being viewed as a commodity and not as a source of entertainment is what made the 90's suck. The collectible virtue of comics actually influenced the contents. More #1's, more deaths, more resurrections, more first appearances. Double shipping, multiple covers, ridiculous crossovers, and so on. All that stuff was (and is) cash grabs. Before the 90's it was simply write and illustrate a good story (and for mainstream comics, do it in a timely manner). From the 90's to today, in mainstream comics at least, the strategy isn't "Create a great comic and people will read it forever" but instead "Kill this guy, insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will by the issue by the crate, we can bring him back in ten issues when we reboot another first issue." That's what sucks, not comics that take longer than a month to come out.

 

I didn't blame it all on the books that shipped late, but the delays did play a part of the Image collapse.

 

Sure Liefeld is ridiculed these days, but back then when he was "hot" there sure as hell weren't that many people complaining when they were buying his books because they were the "hot" thing at the time. It was his run on Captain America, with the now infamous "Cap has size GGG man-boobs" that really started the Liefeld ridiculing.

 

Anyone that lived through that time period remembers the frustration of wondering when the next issues of Image books were ever going to come out. Heck, Spawn even skipped two issues then printed those books at a later date. I know that a lot of people got fed up with the delays and dropped out of collecting because of this type of nonsense.

[Logan510]

I don't see how you can blame the industries crash on being late. Pitt didn't suck because it was behind schedule. It sucked because the contents inside the comic weren't worth looking at. Liefeld isn't ridiculed relentlessly because of his schedule, it's because of the lines he puts on bristol. Some very good comics only come out once a year, and every year they win an award, and they have their dedicated following spanning decades of print. Very few monthly comics are actually any good, in my opinion. Loose schedules isn't what made the 90's suck. Comics being viewed as a commodity and not as a source of entertainment is what made the 90's suck. The collectible virtue of comics actually influenced the contents. More #1's, more deaths, more resurrections, more first appearances. Double shipping, multiple covers, ridiculous crossovers, and so on. All that stuff was (and is) cash grabs. Before the 90's it was simply write and illustrate a good story (and for mainstream comics, do it in a timely manner). From the 90's to today, in mainstream comics at least, the strategy isn't "Create a great comic and people will read it forever" but instead "Kill this guy, insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will by the issue by the crate, we can bring him back in ten issues when we reboot another first issue." That's what sucks, not comics that take longer than a month to come out.

 

I didn't blame it all on the books that shipped late, but the delays did play a part of the Image collapse.

 

Sure Liefeld is ridiculed these days, but back then when he was "hot" there sure as hell weren't that many people complaining when they were buying his books because they were the "hot" thing at the time. It was his run on Captain America, with the now infamous "Cap has size GGG man-boobs" that really started the Liefeld ridiculing.

 

Anyone that lived through that time period remembers the frustration of wondering when the next issues of Image books were ever going to come out. Heck, Spawn even skipped two issues then printed those books at a later date. I know that a lot of people got fed up with the delays and dropped out of collecting because of this type of nonsense.

 

To be fair, Liefeld was ridiculed by fans and pros alike WAY before then. Nobody could argue with his success, but a lot of people wondered about it

[joecgcmaniac]

I don't see how you can blame the industries crash on being late. Pitt didn't suck because it was behind schedule. It sucked because the contents inside the comic weren't worth looking at. Liefeld isn't ridiculed relentlessly because of his schedule, it's because of the lines he puts on bristol. Some very good comics only come out once a year, and every year they win an award, and they have their dedicated following spanning decades of print. Very few monthly comics are actually any good, in my opinion. Loose schedules isn't what made the 90's suck. Comics being viewed as a commodity and not as a source of entertainment is what made the 90's suck. The collectible virtue of comics actually influenced the contents. More #1's, more deaths, more resurrections, more first appearances. Double shipping, multiple covers, ridiculous crossovers, and so on. All that stuff was (and is) cash grabs. Before the 90's it was simply write and illustrate a good story (and for mainstream comics, do it in a timely manner). From the 90's to today, in mainstream comics at least, the strategy isn't "Create a great comic and people will read it forever" but instead "Kill this guy, insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will by the issue by the crate, we can bring him back in ten issues when we reboot another first issue." That's what sucks, not comics that take longer than a month to come out.

 

I didn't blame it all on the books that shipped late, but the delays did play a part of the Image collapse.

 

Sure Liefeld is ridiculed these days, but back then when he was "hot" there sure as hell weren't that many people complaining when they were buying his books because they were the "hot" thing at the time. It was his run on Captain America, with the now infamous "Cap has size GGG man-boobs" that really started the Liefeld ridiculing.

 

Anyone that lived through that time period remembers the frustration of wondering when the next issues of Image books were ever going to come out. Heck, Spawn even skipped two issues then printed those books at a later date. I know that a lot of people got fed up with the delays and dropped out of collecting because of this type of nonsense.

 

To be fair, Liefeld was ridiculed by fans and pros alike WAY before then. Nobody could argue with his success, but a lot of people wondered about it

 

Yeah, the ridicule was there, but until the Internet came along, it wasn't really known just how wide-spread it was Heck, according to Wizard he was one of the all-time great artists

[dupont2005]

Image had a collapse? I mean apart from the guide prices of their back issues, which I'm sure they never cared about.

[zosocane]

I collected from '78 to '86 as a kid, then because of college, law school, life, I was out of the game until about 2002, slowly got back in to collecting. Happily I missed the 90s. But reading all these 90s stories about variant covers, new this, new that, speculation, reminds me of the garbage Marvel is putting out today. I'm glad to see DC (with it's total reboot of the New 52) is really focusing on the quality of writing and art. Marvel seems totally chaotic with its titles. I wonder how many readers they have put off over the last couple of years with their endless variant covers, death of this, death of that, cross-over here, cross-over there . . . .

[joecgcmaniac]

Image had a collapse? I mean apart from the guide prices of their back issues, which I'm sure they never cared about.

 

Well when you go from being the hottest, most-hyped thing in comics, to the laughing stock of the industry, then yeah, I'd say they had a collapse.

[DeliBebek]

I don't see how you can blame the industries crash on being late. Pitt didn't suck because it was behind schedule. It sucked because the contents inside the comic weren't worth looking at. Liefeld isn't ridiculed relentlessly because of his schedule, it's because of the lines he puts on bristol. Some very good comics only come out once a year, and every year they win an award, and they have their dedicated following spanning decades of print. Very few monthly comics are actually any good, in my opinion. Loose schedules isn't what made the 90's suck. Comics being viewed as a commodity and not as a source of entertainment is what made the 90's suck. The collectible virtue of comics actually influenced the contents. More #1's, more deaths, more resurrections, more first appearances. Double shipping, multiple covers, ridiculous crossovers, and so on. All that stuff was (and is) cash grabs. Before the 90's it was simply write and illustrate a good story (and for mainstream comics, do it in a timely manner). From the 90's to today, in mainstream comics at least, the strategy isn't "Create a great comic and people will read it forever" but instead "Kill this guy, insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will by the issue by the crate, we can bring him back in ten issues when we reboot another first issue." That's what sucks, not comics that take longer than a month to come out.

 

I didn't blame it all on the books that shipped late, but the delays did play a part of the Image collapse.

 

Sure Liefeld is ridiculed these days, but back then when he was "hot" there sure as hell weren't that many people complaining when they were buying his books because they were the "hot" thing at the time. It was his run on Captain America, with the now infamous "Cap has size GGG man-boobs" that really started the Liefeld ridiculing.

 

Anyone that lived through that time period remembers the frustration of wondering when the next issues of Image books were ever going to come out. Heck, Spawn even skipped two issues then printed those books at a later date. I know that a lot of people got fed up with the delays and dropped out of collecting because of this type of nonsense.

 

To be fair, Liefeld was ridiculed by fans and pros alike WAY before then. Nobody could argue with his success, but a lot of people wondered about it

I had bought 99 of 100 issues of New Mutants off the stands, missing only issue 93 because Wolverine was supposed to fight Cable and the issue disappeared before it appeared. (I think the man who put the comics on the rack was speculating, or something) So when X-Force 1 came out, I wanted to like it, but what I remember most is that I, rather optimistically and a bit naively, wrote a letter to Liefeld, pleading with him to develop his visual storytelling and to give us characters we could care about. Basic stuff, but I'm afraid in Rob's world, characters are about costumes and poses and nothing else. Well, I should say variations on one costume and two poses.

 

As a newsstand only guy, having given up the Image guys' Marvel books before they decided to leave Marvel, I was oblivious to their departure. I can only recall one Image book showing up on the newsstand, and that was Spawn. Between not knowing Image was supposed to be big, and not knowing Valiant existed, I was down to one book a month - Incredible Hulk - through most of 1992 and 1993. It was the only comic I could still endure.

 

This is anecdotal at best, but I recall newsstand comics being around as late as 1996-1997 in my area and still seeing them in places as late as 2002. Wal-Mart had comics racks for a couple of years after the crash, late to the party. Although the comic shops "crashed," newsstand distribution took several years to taper off to practically nothing.

[dgarthwaite-migration]

The industry was already steering in the wrong direction, but I think the tipping point was the baseball strike. Card dealers that were doing poorly in the card market jumped into comics with both feet and ordered comics in the same manner they ordered cards. There simply weren't enough customers to consume the extra comics and it burst the balloon of speculation when supply outweighed demand on every level.

 

DG

 

The baseball strike started in '94, and the comic market had already tipped and was going down the tubes by then.

 

I'm thinking the nail in the coffin was the Deathmate debacle that pretty much sealed Valiant's doom and sent Image into the dumps.

 

You are correct which makes me go back and look up the timeline. Fear of a strike started as early as July 1993 and card dealers were ordering billions of cards pre-strike. I recall card dealers expanding into cards as early as 1993. I don't remember why, but it could have been because:

 

1) Fears of a possible a strike

2) The unbelievable volume of comics selling

3) The card dealers knowledge that "hot" cards are tied to a players stats.

 

The fear of a strike would have been enough to get card dealers expanding their focus.

 

Other factors were very real...

1) Manufactured collectibles (Gold Books, limited versions)

2) Low or non-existent quality standards.

3) Overusing key characters and therefore producing too much product for collectors to own a complete set.

4) Hype often equaled lies. People would say "This book will be hot" and collectors found out otherwise when dealers were selling the comic below cost months later.

 

I knew there was a problem when Warriors of Plasm #1 came out and a local retailer was selling it to me at 55% off cover price just to recoup his cost. He was actually taking a loss. His discount at the time was only 52%.

 

DG

 

 

[dgarthwaite-migration]

Image had a collapse? I mean apart from the guide prices of their back issues, which I'm sure they never cared about.

 

 

Image had a huge collapse about the time Gen 13 #1 came out which is why the comics appreciated in value so quickly. By todays standards, there are no shortages of Gen 13 #1. By 1990 standards it was in short supply.

 

DG

[joecgcmaniac]

The industry was already steering in the wrong direction, but I think the tipping point was the baseball strike. Card dealers that were doing poorly in the card market jumped into comics with both feet and ordered comics in the same manner they ordered cards. There simply weren't enough customers to consume the extra comics and it burst the balloon of speculation when supply outweighed demand on every level.

 

DG

 

The baseball strike started in '94, and the comic market had already tipped and was going down the tubes by then.

 

I'm thinking the nail in the coffin was the Deathmate debacle that pretty much sealed Valiant's doom and sent Image into the dumps.

 

You are correct which makes me go back and look up the timeline. Fear of a strike started as early as July 1993 and card dealers were ordering billions of cards pre-strike. I recall card dealers expanding into cards as early as 1993. I don't remember why, but it could have been because:

 

1) Fears of a possible a strike

2) The unbelievable volume of comics selling

3) The card dealers knowledge that "hot" cards are tied to a players stats.

 

The fear of a strike would have been enough to get card dealers expanding their focus.

 

Other factors were very real...

1) Manufactured collectibles (Gold Books, limited versions)

2) Low or non-existent quality standards.

3) Overusing key characters and therefore producing too much product for collectors to own a complete set.

4) Hype often equaled lies. People would say "This book will be hot" and collectors found out otherwise when dealers were selling the comic below cost months later.

 

I knew there was a problem when Warriors of Plasm #1 came out and a local retailer was selling it to me at 55% off cover price just to recoup his cost. He was actually taking a loss. His discount at the time was only 52%.

 

DG

 

 

The 3 card shops around here got into comics with the McFarlane Spider-Man and Jim Lee X-Men #1 launches. About 6 months after Superman returned and Batman #500 came out, they were all out of business.

[Prince Namor]

Sales levels were good before the boom. Then the speculators came and the publishers catered to them. More and more product of lower quality was produced, but nobody cared because it was all "hot". Once the speculators realized they weren't going to make a fortune speculating on "rare" issues with print runs in the hundreds of thousands or higher...they left.

 

The publishers thought sales would go back to pre boom levels, but unfortunately they hadn't realized that publishing tons of krap had driven away a lot of their bread and butter....the readers.

 

 

 

+1

Marvel ran me off and never really has been able to fully get me back.

I think I currently read 3 of their books: Hawkeye, Daredevil, and FF (because Allred's drawing it).

And that's easily the MOST monthly Marvel's I've bought in over two decades.

 

I've enjoyed some titles that friends have lent me; that last Guardians of the Galaxy series was fun and Remender's Uncanny X-Force was interesting (though the art gave me a headache at times), but overall I just refuse to put my faith (and money) in Marvel.

 

[stroszek]

I remember the death of superman issue. Everyone in my office knew I was into comics. Everyone asked me to get them a copy. About 9 co workers. All had the same reason. Hold for 20 years and sell to put there kids through college. I wonder what college tuition is around $5 now.

 

A man came into the LCS to buy all the remaining copies of the Walking Dead 100 Chromium the day it was released; there were only two. Once he had pulled one over on the rest of us who were just hanging out and not buying this gem, he said "I''ve been all over the place today buying these. Each one of these is gonna buy me a jet ski in a few years."

 

I wanted to offer him one of my Gatefold X-Men #1 in exchange for one of hisWDs, but I don't think he would have gone for it.

[Speedy-D]

Why did he want so many jet skis?

[stroszek]

Why did he want so many jet skis?

 

For the harem he would purchase with the other variants, I guess.

[jimjum12]

Why did he want so many jet skis?

 

....really. Everyone knows that with ONE jet ski the hot chick has to ride WITH you.....with two, she'll just steal one....GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[bb8]

Fascinating thread. I was 12-14 about when this happened, so I didn't really experience it like many here. It's great to hear your thoughts and experience of the time. One thing I will mention: the Incredible Hulk was a title that I collected before, during and after the collapse, and I read and re-read them over and over. Point being that it wasn't all bad. Peter David churned out solid stories month after month, and he wasn't the only one. There were still a few gems to find amidst the drek.

[Junkdrawer]

Greed.

You have to think back into the 90s to remember what you had to do to make a buck. The answer is anything. Comics, sports cards, heck even beanie babies were on fire. This brings me to my point that its possible for an innocent fun hobby such as Beanie Babies to emerge as a rapid and widespread frenzy back then. I was never a collector of these originally, but banked big bucks and rode that wave till the hobby was dismantled. People still collect beanies but I doubt it will ever get back to its wallstreetesque ways. I also recall several baseball card shops in each town and you could attend shows several times each month. Comics took a back burner in my world. I hvealways been passionate about them, but I like making money and there was other hobbies on the move, more buyers and more opportunities. Comics as a result of the 90s fared no worse than any other hobby, looking back from this point. Unless you got lucky to hold the right stuff an dump the right stuff, you today can say you have a lot of it (cards comics and some beanies dormant in the cellar.