Exactly. No one considered comics a serious art form until the 80's, and the collector mentality didn't mature until the 90's. Man, I remember how Marvel played to the collector market with variant embossed covers and all sorts of stupid shit. All I wanted was to read the comics. That was it. I do happen to have issues 1-50 of Spawn, but that's because I bought the first 50 issues of Spawn when they came out. I got McFarlane to autograph issue one, which was cool, but I'll bet even now that's probably only worth $50, maybe $100 tops.

Your wife runs an LCBS? That's awesome!

Here's the photograph I was talking about:

http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dli...one&z=none&s=1

In the lower left corner, you can see both Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27! Just. sitting. out. in. the. open.



(Looks like they're sorting through old comics they recently bought, and they probably just didn't leave them sitting around like that all of the time, but it's still a striking image.)

15 year anniversary next month.

Short term minor cash flow, long term drive away customers. Doesn't sound too smart to me, but to each their own...

That photo (with the $30 price stickie on Batgirl and Detective #1s) looks like it came from some comic show with comics sitting on tables being offered to the general public. Perhaps the dealer also owns a LCBS, perhaps not.

I'm pretty sure bookstores and newsstands are slightly delayed.

Maybe I'm lucky, but every comic shop I've ever been in has been good to great. No dungeons here in Baltimore that I've ever been to. Sure, some shops capitalized on speculation in the 90s, but I never felt like it went over the line.

I don't know hot it works now, but when I was younger and buying comic books at Kroger, the grocery stores were always about a month behind the direct market stores.

Bookstores/newsstands are typically 3-4 weeks behind your LCBS. If it's something you really want, your LCBS is sold out with only 2nd prints coming, and you *really* have to have/want a 1st print it's best to start looking after 2 weeks just in case. Keep in mind that many bookstores/newstands put new comics out on Tuesday instead of Wednesday.

I stopped into my LCS yesterday for the same reason I always do- to pick up the latest issue of Illustration Magazine the owner holds for me (i'm the only one he orders it for, sadly). I chatted a few minutes about how the new DC relaunch went for him- and he was still thunderstruck by the response. He said he upped orders on some titles, like Detective, and he still had 100 copies sold out within a day. Unfortunately when I asked if this was from new interest from new customers or speculation from old customers, he said without pausing to think about it, "speculation". People buying up multiple copies.

Smells just like the early 90's to me- all over again.

Not for nothing, but has everyone noticed the hooded woman who has appeared in every New 52 comic released thus far?

Action: In the bullet train, after Supes catches it, before it hits the ground, you can see her in the bottom panel with Jimmy Olson and Lois Lane.

Animal Man: Bottom panel of the "bleeding eyes" scene. "We need a doctor in here!"

Green Arrow: you can find her behind GA's left arm when he says "This ain't no disco." (groan)

Detective: The phony Joker bomb goes off, Batman's narration "Those men. All dead." She's in the crowd.


According to Newsarama, she's the entity from Flashpoint #5, perhaps the guardian of the new timestream? I'm sure I could look up some more but I found this kind of interesting.

Now I'm going to have to go through the issues I got and see if I can find her.

Is it the same woman who was on the early images of the JLI #1 cover, but was mysteriously removed from the final cover? I remember people thinking it was either Gypsy or Mary Marvel.

I had to read through Batgirl three times until I spotted her. But she's there.

The She-Monitor!

SPOILERED FOR SIZE:

This is the "bar" for violent Joker stories in my book.

A lot of speculation around the mystery woman thinks she might be connected to the next big crossover event or is a Flashpoint character that could possibly bring back the old universe if/when the reboot flops.

Harbinger!


Her 13 appearances from last week's comics.

Bleeding Cool has been keeping a look out for her since the Justice League appearance.

Took me two tries to find her in Batgirl. Well done on that.

She's at the football game in Justice League.

She's really obvious in Swamp Thing. Can't believe I missed her, actually.

She is obviously some kind of time traveler since she appears in multiple time streams, like Flashpoint, and also JLA and Action which are set in the past, as well as the other titles set in the current time.

She wears a purple cloak. The Time Trapper wears a purple cloak. I think she may be the new Time Trapper. She is either going to be the main plot point of an upcoming crossover event or she is going to be the get out of jail free card to go back to the old DCU if the DCnU fails. Didn't Didio say they would try to avoid crossover events for awhile at least?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Raven unaccounted for in the relaunch?

I don't think it could be Raven since the mystery girl was shown in Flashpoint, which was old DCU. I think it would therefore have to be someone entirely new, and hey if Galactus recently had a daughter I don't see why Time Trapper couldn't have a daughter too...

I was also just thinking, since it was Barry in Flashpoint that created the DCnU won't the Barry in the DCnU technically be the same old Barry? If so, then he should still have memories of the old DCU and realize that something is still wrong and that he didn't fix the timeline. Maybe the mystery girl will be the cause, and Barry figures it out and stops her, which restores the old DCU. That would mean that the DCnU really is just an Age of Apocalypse kind of thing.

That Joker story is fantastic. That, along with Azzerello's Luthor makes me wish he would just write minis looking at popular villains all the time. He's so goddamn good at it.

In Flashpoint, Barry was slowly but surely losing his memories of the "real" timeline.
Spoilers for Flashpoint. If you haven't bought it yet, don't bother...
Flashpoint was the Age of Apocalypse. DCnU is Heroes Reborn. Now what about the DCnU is going to be so fundamentally broken that it will cause Barry Allen to change the timeline back (besides sales, of course)? In Flashpoint, as in AoA, it's obvious that the real timeline was a much better situation. I doubt he would change it back from DCnU just to get Iris back.

As for the crappiness of Green Arrow... someone just pointed me to the end of the last Green Arrow series where it was revealed that he bought headless, limbless cadavers to use to refine his arrow shooting techniques. Surely it can't be worse than that. And the more I read about it, the more I feel like the decision to alter WW and the decision to let JMS run his "Grounded" storyline (which he couldn't even complete) were part of the reason that these franchises were buried so deeply that they had to be rebooted (don't even get me started on the fall of the JSA or JLA). It still amazes me that people have hope that this same editorial team and creators that caused the old DCU to implode on itself are going to somehow build something magical.