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Avengers 93 - I say it's the HARDEST Bronze Marvel "key" to find...

Started by jordanabigail,

40 posts in this topic

JohnBull

JohnBull

Posted
Posted
bumpit.gif

 

Hey bronze and Joe CI...

 

OK I found my source and I'm partly wrong and partly right. Stan the Man is not implicated... it's Martin Goodman who is the heavy in this story, and there's also no indication the move was premeditated. But I still personally find it hard to believe Marvel could turn on a dime (heh!) within a month based on sales figures. Maybe it was the distributors who pushed back as soon as they heard about the 10-cent price hike?

 

Anyway, here is the source from pg 112-113 of the first Comic Book Artist collected edition.

 

Roy Thomas is speaking (to Stan Lee):

"You may recall that in 1971 Martin Goodman suddenly made the decision to jump the page count to 48 pages for 25 cents. Then, after one glorious month of these big books, they were suddenly dropped back down to 32 pages for 20 cents."

 

Then later Roy says:

"I remember that one of the few times I met with Martin Goodman...Goodman was talking about how suddenly we were going to cut all the books down in size and that DC was going to take a bath if they didn't follow suit right away-- and they did take a bath, because they kept the giant-size books for a year and Marvel just murdered them. So it was a very smart move..."

 

All for now...

Z.

 

"One of Martin's outrageously successful business moves during the last years of his tenure at Marvel was to trick the industry's top company, DC Comics (then called National Periodical Publications), into committing an ultimately disastrous page-count and pricing change for the publisher of Superman, resulting in what then DC editorial director (soon to be publisher) Carmine Infantino characterized as a "slaughter" committed by Marvel upon his company. In an audaciously daring move, the House of Ideas raised the page count of its regular titles 75% from 32 to 48 pages, accompanied by a 75% price hike from 15¢ to 25¢ on its October and November 1971 cover-dated books. Immediately DC followed suit, though significantly increasing their page count 100%, from 32 to 64 pages. But within a month, in a move that sent shockwaves through the industry, Goodman immediately dropped page count back to 32 pages yet only reducing the price per book to 20¢, still a 25% price increase from two months prior.

 

"The results of Martin's gambit? Marvel was able to give wholesalers a 50% discount off the cover price of their line, as compared to DC's mere 40% price break. And whose titles would the retailers be more likely to push, do you think? Plus, what kid could resist getting five snappy, all-new Marvels for a buck, compared to four DCs, padded with moldy, old reprints? Also, as DC had to lock into ordering huge quantities of paper-a full year's supply-the publisher was trapped at the 25¢, 64-page format for an entire year. (Historian Carl Gafford has surmised that the Wage and Price Controls of President Richard Nixon's Administration may have also played a factor in the DC debacle, a proposition CBA intends to examine with Gaff in the future.) Those 12 months were all the time DC's competitor needed to come out on top and, for the first time in their decades-old rivalry, Marvel surpassed DC in sales, only rarely looking back in the quarter-century passed since that fateful year. The DC supremacy on the comics racks ended in 1972 after an astonishing 35-year reign, a dynasty suddenly in disarray, scrambling to get back on top, while Martin Goodman sat very prettily indeed, ensconced in his new role as the King of Comics in this New Marvel Age."

 

http://www.atlasarchives.com/history.html

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Norrin_Radd

Norrin_Radd

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Posted
In an audaciously daring move, the House of Ideas raised the page count of its regular titles 75% from 32 to 48 pages, accompanied by a 75% price hike from 15¢ to 25¢ on its October and November 1971 cover-dated books.

 

Neither of these increases are 75%. I can accept one math error, but not two. makepoint.gif

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greggy

greggy

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Posted
How about 50% and 66.67%? confused-smiley-013.gif

 

ok, so you know basic math confused-smiley-013.gifpoke2.gif

 

apparently, whoever wrote the article doesn't acclaim.gif

The calculator is your friend. But you need to know how to apply it properly! tonofbricks.gif
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uclapeterg

uclapeterg

Posted
Posted
How about 50% and 66.67%? confused-smiley-013.gif

 

ok, so you know basic math confused-smiley-013.gifpoke2.gif

 

apparently, whoever wrote the article doesn't acclaim.gif

The calculator is your friend. But you need to know how to apply it properly! tonofbricks.gif

 

I am so glad they let calculators in when I took my CPA exam. It helped calm me down. I was doing easy calculations on it, like 3 x 10 27_laughing.gif, because I didn't want to make a mistake.

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rjpb

rjpb

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Posted
They did have reprints, which personally I loved collecting as back issues and made me a lifelong DC fan. But they probably did turn off a large portion of the current comics readership. Some of the strips reprinted included:

 

Simon & Kirby's Sandman, Manhunter, Newsboy Legion, Boy Commandos in the Kirby 4th World books

 

Golden Age Batman (plus some New Look Silver) in Batman

 

Golden Age first app of Dr. Fate, Sandman, Starman, etc. in JLA

 

Animal Man, Frazetta Shining Knight, Kubert Hawkman in Adventure Comics

 

Kubert Enemy Ace in Star Spangled War

 

Infantino Flash in the Flash

 

Alex Toth & Gil Kane GLs in the back of the Neal Adams GL/GA yay.gif

 

When I was a kid I actually started collecting DCs once they went to a quarter - I loved the GA reprints ( and thought the SA ones were okay), and started losing interest when they went to 20¢ as I found the BA story and art to be inferior to that of Marvel which was declining itself. Naturally I was a complete sucker for the 100 pagers though.

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Rickdogg

Rickdogg

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This book is definetly tough above VF/NM. The problem is, you'd have to be sure it would get a 9.2 to justify the cost of slabbing. Like many bronze books, it is not tough in 9.0 or lower, so the difference in price is huge. And being that it's a squarebound, it's highly susceptible to flaws that would keep it just outside of a solid NM. Therefor, there isn't a mad dash to send copies in, and that's one of the possible resons there aren't many on the census. But in terms of overall scarcity, it's easy to find in VF or lower. Give it a couple more years and I'm sure there will be at least a couple more 9.4 copies, and quite a few 9.0's and 9.2's. Unlike the Silver age, I'm positive there are still a lot of bronze NM's that have yet to be submitted.

 

I bought your copy. Totally forgot I had one insane.gif

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namisgr

namisgr

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I don't care much for the book. I find that the people talkin' about it are tryin' to jus stir up the market a bit 'cause they own it.

 

Well I, for one, am not looking to sell my copy, and this book has always been one of my alltime faves. The subpart entitled "Journey to the Center of an Android" is perhaps the finest bit of work that the Adams/Palmer team ever did. All the machinations of the Kree-Skrull war were in full bloom by ish 93. Just fantastic Thomas plotting and Adams/Palmer art.

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Forbush-Man

Forbush-Man

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I don't care much for the book. I find that the people talkin' about it are tryin' to jus stir up the market a bit 'cause they own it.

 

Well I, for one, am not looking to sell my copy, and this book has always been one of my alltime faves. The subpart entitled "Journey to the Center of an Android" is perhaps the finest bit of work that the Adams/Palmer team ever did. All the machinations of the Kree-Skrull war were in full bloom by ish 93. Just fantastic Thomas plotting and Adams/Palmer art.

 

I remember reading this when it came out, great art and really great story. It was an instant classic, IMHO! thumbsup2.gif

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namisgr

namisgr

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Here's one that is close (to NM) but no cigar - just a bit too much LLC fuzzing and a couple of spine stresses away. Nice colors and very good registration, though. If memory serves me, I bought this from El Charro Hombre.

 

In doing the scanning, I remembered a couple of other cool things about this ish. The story begins with an intense segment entitled "This Beach-Head Earth" with a terrific rendition of a seriously ill Vision collapsing on the splash. There is a great battle between the Avengers and the "Fantastic Four" (Skrulls with FF powers). Adams must have turned in a last minute art job, because there are a bunch of coloring mistakes - Vision with a yellow head, instead of green, Antman nearly nude on page 3 (they used flesh color instead of his costume red), Thor with legs the wrong color. This book works on a bunch of levels:

 

Aveng93.jpg

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