slop101

Does anyone have a link to a story that thoroughly explains the comic "bust" of the '90s?

I still don't get it. I've been reading comics for over 25 years. And I didn't eve notice this "bust" until I heard about how sales dropped off well after the fact. I do remember all those bagged and "collectable" comics, but I wasn't really into those types of books by then anyways.

Dimension X

http://www.tcj.com/journalista/zarch200211Ba.html

Breakfast with Girls

That's a fantastic article, thanks for the link.

fujishig

I agree, good article.

I collected comics since my childhood (my mom loved them, and it actually taught me a lot of vocabulary). I stopped in my teenage years, as it stopped being "cool" but picked up again during the speculator boom. Although I've seen few people admit it, I was one of those people buying multiple copies of books, buying foil covers, and issues that I had no interest in reading, but that I thought would somehow raise in price. I still collected a lot of series that I liked, but I found myself caught up in the business of it all... checking priceguides every month to track my "investments"

After a while, you realize that collecting such things won't really make you much money, especially if everyone already has 10 copies. The print runs were just too big... and my enjoyment of the artform was waning. I passed on the deathknoll of the industry... the death of superman, polybagged in black. I bought the "normal" version. Just wanted to read it.

Now, the market is slowly dying. There's very few ways for a kid to get comics other than going to specialty shops, so there's no new blood. I work with a lot of teens, and comics are prohibitively expensive for them for the entertainment value... do they want 12 comics, or a PS2 game? Ironically, quality is 200 times better than during the speculation boom...

Ah well. I missed the special, but I hope to catch a repeat sometime...

Pac-Rat

Just a reminder that it's re-airing tonight (Sun 6/29) @ 6pm.

Future airings:
Jul 07 10:00pm
Jul 08 02:00am
Jul 10 08:00pm
Jul 11 12:00am

All times are Eastern Daylight.

Jackskeleton

the sad thing about this series is it really lacked any of marvel's history through the 70-90's. a lot of x-men stuff over looked

BJacks

Considering they only had 90 minutes they fit in an incredible amount of stuff, and even better didn't talk down to the audience. I just wish they had my columnist John Byrne on, although they did mention him a few times (such as his revamping of Lex Luthor).

Chew

Great special.

But, like everyone has said, they had to cover a lot of history in a very short amount of time and they skipped a lot. But, still fun to see everything/everyone.

MJKTool

I was never really into comic collecting, but found this program very interesting.

kidindy

That's why I wish it would have been a two night event. I found the stuff in WW2 period great, but the they went forward mach 1.

Iron_Giant

I am going to record this to my PC and burn it to DVD.

If it could have been 30 minutes longer, there is so much more they could have covered.


Does anyone know how the comic sales are going today. I used to collect in the 70's and the early 90's. My collecting days stopped when I could not let my kids read the comic books, to much almost nudity and graphic violence.

fujishig

Comic sales are way, way down from the boom of the early 90's. The speculators up and left, and the inflated market collapsed under the weight of polybagged chromium covers.

The content of comics, for the most part, is a lot better, though. There are comics that cater to older readers, younger readers, and readers that don't like superheroes at all. Though you wouldn't know it from perusing through the monthly order catalogs, there isn't as much emphasis on boobs and violence.

sho kosugi

Really great show!

That was the first I've ever heard by Mr. Sterengo, just the few bits of his art looked incredible. I really need to track some of it down, may replace Berni as my favorite.


On another subject, I kind of thought the whole 90's trend of ten million different covers (which people feel contributed to the sales drop off) started with Spiderman #1.

Grenadier

Jim Steranko. It'll help your search to get the spelling. :-)

Quote:

On another subject, I kind of thought the whole 90's trend of ten million different covers (which people feel contributed to the sales drop off) started with Spiderman #1.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #1 had multi-covers before that. That's why McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 had a tag line of "Legends of the Arach-Knight" on it.

Of course, Legends covers were basically the same bat silhouette, with different background colors. They didn't really have different covers so much as different shades of the same cover.

fujishig

Nah, it wasn't the 10 million alternate covers that contributed to the sales drop offs for comics. That was just an indicator that a lot of comics were now being bought by speculators en masse. People saw how "hot" creators made even recent issues raise in price. Comics were an investment now. This had been true for a while... but for some reason, in the late 80's early 90's, a lot of people got into comics not because of the stories or art, but because of the potential to make a profit.

The Spiderman covers were basically the same, too... I think there was the regular one, the special Platinum and silver ones that were the same cover with different ink, and the gold one that was the second printing. X-Force number one came polybagged with different cards. When X-men number one came out, they had five different covers. Mind you, all of these were titles created because the artists on them (McFarland, Liefeld, and Lee) were "hot" and then they all left to form Image and print even more comics...

Pac-Rat

IMO, it was because of the oversaturation of sports cards in the market. There were so many being produced that people got out of it. The transition to comics was made easier because (at least near me), many places were comic/card stores.

I never thought of myself as a comic collector. I read characters I liked and, if I had some extra cash, would pick up something I normally wouldn't read. Unfortunately , the ones I liked never really got into the gimmick stuff and hence were never HOT (sans Ghost Rider), which I guess is why they died off.

sho kosugi

Thanks, the spelling will help. : )

I argree about the Legends #1 coming first, but like you said it was just bakground shades on the...I don't know what to call it because the cover was inside. Spiderman on the otherhand had different colors as well as some that were sealed if I recall correctly. At least Jim Lee's X-men #1 made a nice mural.

Anywho, the special was excellent. I thought it did a good job of giving equal time to many people, characters, and events.

Draven

I really enjoyed the program, as I "collected" during the speculator rush of the 90's and got sucked into that stuff. I did latch on to some decent books (TMNT and the early Spawn stuff was decent.)

The special made me interested in looking into "Watchmen" as it's a comic I've seen in the store but never looked at. So who knows, maybe I'll get back into it