Comic Books

30 years ago we lost a hero!


Same. Still have the Death of Superman issue as well as all of the Funeral for a Friend issues.

I even have the Doomsday and Superman action figure pack with the paperback book that has all of the issues included in it.

I had been out of comics for about 12-18 months. Kinda thought I was done. News of this and getting a preview of Spider-Man 2099 brought me back into the stores. I was pretty much a Wednesday Warrior from then until about 2012.

I sold my set a few years back but just recently rebought the whole thing (Death/Funeral/Reign) for the 30th so I can read them with my kids in real-time, one issue per week, over the next year.

I will chronicle their take on it on my IG @read.your.comics and maybe start a YouTube channel with it.

What’s funny is I was looking at my phone Calendar back to 1992 so I could see when to start. Saw my mom’s bday and she was turning 44… thirty years later amd I am 44 gearing up to reread it with my kids. 🤯
 
Another thing collectors are looking for are newsstand copies from the late 80s through the 90s. Those books that were not sold in comic shops but in grocery stores and such. By that time the Direct Market was the primary sales outlet for comics so newsstand copies have a lower print run and tend to be harder to find in good shape. They have a barcode on the cover.

Spawn #1 for instance is not a rare book. It sold millions of copies.... BUT not on the newsstand. So those copies that have a barcode on them and are considered rare variants.

That is so funny because at the time, I was totally turned off by the barcode and avoided them like the plague.
 
That is so funny because at the time, I was totally turned off by the barcode and avoided them like the plague.

Me too.

Variants are such a big thing with collectors and that newsstand barcode is considered a variant. Seems silly to me but at the same time I understand it.
 
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Recently I’ve been reading the Black Hammer series by Jeff Lemier. Published by Dark Horse.

It’s about a group characters that are analogs of traditional Marvel and DC. It opens with them on a farm in a small town in what appears to be hiding or retirement. So a mystery brews as to how they got there and why are they unable to leave.

After that initial story is told it spins off into different books that explore the larger world of Black Hammer. It’s very character driven but also very meta. It has a lot of zigs and zags.
 
If anyone is interested in books from Golden, Silver, Bronze or Copper age, check out my friends Instagram sale @elite_comics11 Thursday night (July 28) at 7:00pm eastern. Lots of cool stuff up for grabs.
I think I am done buying collectibles for a while. I spent way too much buying all of the variants of the first issue of East of West lol.
 
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I dunno… way too many copies out there.

Maybe if they would actually make a good movie version that does Justice to the story it would give it a boost.

I would really love to see DC delve into "Injustice: Gods Among Us" as an offshoot movie series. That was one of the freshest DC series I had read in a while. Very entertaining. They tease it in the Justice League movie and in Batman vs. Superman with the dream sequences and such. But I would really love to see them swerve off into that alternate universe where Batman and Superman build their superhero armies to battle each other. I wasn't a big fan of the Injustice video games though as I am not big on the fighting type games like Mortla Kombat, Street Fighter etc.
 
Me too.

Variants are such a big thing with collectors and that newsstand barcode is considered a variant. Seems silly to me but at the same time I understand it.
All Newsstand copies aren't considered variants. Early on most comics were sold as Newsstand but at some point distribution changed to where local comic shops and dealers became the preferred method of distribution. Dealer comics had a picture instead of the barcode such as DC logo for DC comics and Spider-Man for Marvel. This happened relatively quickly and the number of Newsstands from that point diminished to like only 10% or less depending on publisher. The other thing making them more valuable aside from the low print run is the fact that Newsstands were notoriously handled and abused by browsing comic readers who would pull them out of the racks. We've all done that. Finding a NM copy of many key comics in a Newsstand version can bring a huge bump in value.
 
I traded all the comics of my youth when I was barely 20 years old but got back into collecting a couple of years ago. I don't know exactly what prompted me to do that but it was more than one thing. I'm sure the MCU played a big role. In any case, I now have accumulated 70+ graded comics, all keys, and some are pretty valuable. I'm kind of hooked now. Long-term goal is to leave them all to my children one day. I'll get to enjoy them until then and hopefully they will really increase in value and leave big smiles on their faces.
 
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