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Conversely, the new "collectibles" were being churned out by the truckload. For example, the first appearance of Superman Action Comics #1 was certainly a significant moment in comics history, but there were also only about hundred or so copies of the original 1938 print run remaining at most - the rest had been thrown in the garbage, recycled through wartime paper rationing initiatives, or otherwise lost. Sales boomed based on art, often ignoring writing.īut the boom was short-lived, as publishers ignored one basic economic fact: The old comics were selling for such high prices in the first place only because they were extremely rare. Marvel then handed editorial control to the marketing department, which led to Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, where Marvel outsourced its comics for a year to popular artists' own studios. Popular artists left Marvel and created Image Comics. This was also the era of the superstar artist. In particular, the 1992 Death of Superman storyline was so hyped in the mainstream media that it sparked a massive rise in comic book speculators - and alienated many of them when the con was revealed.
Famous comic book collector series#
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Trading cards and holofoil covers, which usually popped up whenever the editor thought a series needed a sales boost.Issues sold pre-bagged in plastic, to keep them pristine - completionists often bought two copies, one to read and one to collect.These actions caused the direct market to jump from 6% of total comic book sales in 1978 to 70% in 1992.
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This led to a vast number of "comics dealers" springing up overnight, most of them young, inexperienced, and undercapitalized. Although direct-market comics distributors had existed since the foundation of Mile High Comics in 1971, the 1990s saw the two major direct-market distributors, Diamond and Capital City, drastically reduce their ordering requirements.
Famous comic book collector full#
The direct market was also a big plus for publishers instead of "stripping" and returning unsold copies for full credit, stores still had the chance to sell their extra copies by tossing them into the back-issue bin. They also served as a convenient gathering place for fans of the medium to meet and discuss them.
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These shops were not covered by The Comics Code and could thus sell books that did not have Code approval. The "direct market" was a way for comics publishers to distribute their comics directly to comic book shops. Instead, there were two main causes of the Crash: the "direct market" and the collector boom. The Crash happened alongside the emergence of The Dark Age of Comic Books, but it wasn't strictly caused by it. Actually, it lasted a number of years, from at least Deathmate (1993) to the failure of Marvel's Heroes World deal (1997), but if you need a single year, 1996 is the best one, because that's when the dawning realization that things were about to go downhill started to hit the comic world. Oxforddictionaries.The great comics crash. Read related post: Why Do People Collect Things?įor further reading: Words by Paul Dickson, Delacorte Press (1982) Scutelliphile: souvenir patches and badges Iconophile: book illustrations or engravings Below is a collection of some words that are indeed part of the English lexicon to describe different types of collectors, no matter how obscure: Dickson, a self-confessed lexiconophilist, has even coined a term for the collection of collections: “philophily.” Unfortunately for Dickson, that word never made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. The most common form of describing a person who collects something specific is to say: “He is a stamp collector” or “He is a baseball collector.” But to a word collector and lover, like Dickson, what is the fun in that? (By the way, a stamp collector is philatelist a baseball card collector is a cartophile). Paul Dickson, a prolific author of books on words, has been collecting words for decades.