For those of you that were around in the 90s, was the 'crash' a good thing?

[sterlingcomics]

I stopped buying comics in 85, didn't really start back up till 2000, so I missed it as well. I had heard about the gimmicky nature of comics, and I didn't take to the new format / artists of the time.

[porcupine48]

A crash weeds out the posers from the collectors. So in that sense it was good. The problem is the glut of product that to this day, 25 years later, you still see in the dollar bins. It seems like that stuff never evaporates.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, the 90's crash weeded out thousands of comic shop owners, most of whom were long time, Non posers, and some great people. We still haven't rebounded and lost a ton of great shops that we will never see again.

lost four stores here in Ottawa..Aircel too.

[Moondog]

I agree with Chuck.

 

IMO, the worst outcome of the Great Glut was losing every distributor but Diamond. Speculators come and go, there will ALWAYS be people who chase the newest hot trend, and get burned with a lot of unsaleable product when the trend doesn't have any legs.

 

But losing competing distributors? I'm confident that this has given us worse product, at a higher price. I expect that the only thing that has saved our beloved hobby is the twin push from massive quantities of quality reprints, and the raised public interest from the successful movie franchises.

 

When Marvel was thaaaaat close to bankruptcy, and EVERYBODY'S bottom line took a huge hit, I'm really kind of surprised the industry survived at all.

 

 

I closed on the sale of Moondog's to CIE in April of 1994. I had 6 profitable shops and 30 employees - many of them with 10+ years of employment. Add that to the Dream Factory stores and there were 21 shops in 5 states with a total of 110 employees.

 

By the spring of 1996 all the stores were closed and all the employees were out of work.

 

Screw Marvel and Heroes World and Toy Biz and Fleer and Ronald Perlman and all those blood-sucking Wall Street a s s holes.