House of Eratosthenes

Jonathan V. Last writes at The Weekly Standard about what happened to the comic book industry twenty years ago. It is the anatomy of a mostly typical economic bubble:

The comic-book bubble was the result not of a single mania, but of a confluence of events. Speculation was part of the story. Price gains for the high-value comics throughout the 1980s attracted speculators, who pushed the prices up further. At the retail level, the possibility that each new issue might someday sell for thousands of dollars drove both the sale of new comics and the market for back-issue comics. It was not uncommon for a comic book to sell at its cover price (generally 60 cents or $1) the month it was released and then appreciate to $10 or $15 a few months later.

But the principal cause of the bubble was the industry’s distribution system. Comic books are created and released by publishing houses. There are two giants (Marvel and DC) and then a raft of much smaller independents, which come and go with great frequency. All of the publishing houses left the task of physically getting comics from the printing presses to the retailers to a group of middlemen—the distribution companies.

These distribution companies determined who could and couldn’t sell comic books. They imposed requirements on retailers, demanding that they demonstrate financial reserves and guarantee certain numbers of orders each month. The reason comics were so slow to migrate from newsstands and five-and-dimes to dedicated comic book shops (a process that took nearly 50 years) is that it was hard for these small start-ups to muster the resources needed to secure distribution. These hurdles are why, in 1979, there were only about 800 comic-book shops in the entire world.

Looks like I’m one of the speculators. I never thought of myself that way, I thought I was a collector. The three big cartons downstairs, which total maybe something around a hundred pounds, begin with the John Byrne reboot of the Superman storyline which was part of the same thing happening to the entire DC universe. That was in 1986…the carton chronicle stumbles and creeps forward in time, past the famous “Death of Superman” storyline. Those particular issues were set aside someplace special where I’d never lose ’em…which I did…grrrrr…

And then they peter out in 1997, when I became a Dad. Couldn’t do any more collecting/speculating. Once the boy was old enough to appreciate my collection, well, he didn’t. So they sit. Big, bulky, Death-of-Superman-less. I have contributed to the bubble and I didn’t even come out on top. It sure didn’t feel like it at the time, but with the wisdom of hindsight, I see what I was doing was participating in something that happened to be talked about by everybody at the time. Highly unusual for me. The lesson shows it to be a good thing that I don’t do it much.

Hat tip to Professor Mondo.

Morgan, I’d put all those on Ebay and cash out (thus not only making money but getting them to somewhere they’d be appreciated), or sell them to A1 Comics down here in Sacramento…but that’s just my opinion.
- cylarz | 06/10/2011 @ 12:14
Yeah, right where I got most of ’em.

I actually got in ahead of this game, now that I think on it more carefully. I had a graph where I was checking off all the issues as I managed to get my hands on them. There was this four-part story arc where Superman got exposed to Red Kryptonite, back in 1990…I ended up driving to San Francisco to get hold of one of those. I paid a buck for it and the arc was complete — sweet! Probably shelled out eight or ten times that much in gas. This was sometime in ’93. Those should still be in the box somewhere.

The balance of what remains, I scored almost entirely at A1 on Madison and Manzanita. Honestly, it would break my heart to unload them there all over again.
- mkfreeberg | 06/10/2011 @ 12:27
Or maybe you can’t. Just finished reading the article.

I feel a bit sorry for the people who speculated the cost of comic books through the roof, then lost their shirts. The exact same thing happened in 2008 and 2009 with ammunition because everyone thought Obama was going to crack down. Boom…bust.
- cylarz | 06/10/2011 @ 12:37
I wonder if the collection is worth more if you’ve got the complete set of a story arc. I would think so – any collection is worth more if you have “all the pieces.”

I guess it all depends on how hungry you are for cash and how much you want to free up the space taken up by the boxes. I’m sure my kid will grow up and ignore a bunch of things I cared about, too.
- cylarz | 06/10/2011 @ 15:11
I’m pretty sure Death of Superman would hold some value. Provided it isn’t all dog-eared.

Not sure about these story arcs…I’m sure you’re right to some extent, it just seems to me like four or five issues is on the low side. Also, how many times did they do that. They had the one where Clark and Lois got banished to an island, they had the red Kryptonite, there was “Panic in the Sky” which I think was six parts and then there was a “longest night” cross-over where the sun was extinguished…oh and there was “Funeral for a Friend” which I still have. That might be worth some bucks.

I do think there was some good quality that kicked off the whole bubble in the first place. The quality diminished sharply because it had a long way to fall. John Byrne put lots of Give-A-Damn into his work. Oh, and I’d single out Tom Grummett as well. He is an amazing pencil artist. He’s the only guy I’ve ever seen draw Clark Kent and Superman so that all this stuff is perfectly believable…yes, that’s the same guy, Clark Kent is a musclehead and 6’2″ but even the people who work closely with him suspect absolutely nothing. It’s a real tough act for the penciller to take on, if he makes it his business to do so. I always looked forward to the Adventures of Superman title to come out just because Grummett was the artist.
- mkfreeberg | 06/10/2011 @ 15:21
Yeah, I got to wondering about that while I was reading the article by Mr Last. He really didn’t mention the artists or writers who actually produce comic books; the focus was entirely on the middlemen (distribution houses for comic books, mortgage bankers for houses) whom he holds responsible for making a mess of both markets.

It was really interesting how he pointed out that while all booms are the same, each bust or collapse is bad in its own way. It reminds me of something my dad said a number of years ago, when it was trendy to raise ostriches and sell them for meat:

“The problem with this sort of thing is that it gets popular and profitable…so everybody gets into it. Then you’ve got these things walking around in your pasture and they’re worth so much money that nobody wants to kill and eat any of them. Then, the bottom drops out of the market…” and everyone involved loses their shirts.

While I said earlier that I felt sorry for comic book speculators, that sympathy only goes so far, because these people also serve to make the hills and valleys in the price of…anything…more severe, it seems. They go and buy up a bunch of something or other, and the price skyrockets…then it suddenly collectively dawns on the market that this is unsustainable, or there’s some tech breakthrough that makes the whatever-it-is obsolete or less profitable, or something else happens….and then whammo, it all comes crashing down.

I suspect both the meteoric rises and the catastrophic collapses would be milder and slower, if you didn’t have all these other people getting involved in some market only for profit – if people only bought things that they actually need or can use. And then actually, you know, used them, instead of buying stuff and trying to “flip” it. Admittedly I tried to do this with a certain type of antique rifle (buy a bunch of them with the hope of profitable resale), and while the price didn’t collapse later, it stopped rising and plateau’ed. I’m a bit ashamed and am going to refrain from such behavior in the future as best as I can, only buying things I actually need, with capital gains as an afterthought.

How many people who do such things actually come out ahead…and how many wait too long and are left sitting on a big pile of worthless whatever and/or have to sell at a big loss?
- cylarz | 06/10/2011 @ 15:32

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The Crash of 1993Friday, June 10th, 2011

The Crash of 1993
Friday, June 10th, 2011