About two or three times every day I get a phone call from someone trying to sell their collection of comic books.  It almost always begins something like this:

“I have a really old collection of books, still in their plastics and I’m sure they’re worth a bunch of money,” states the eager seller.
Juett (my excellent general manager) responds, “Oh really?  Are they in pretty decent shape?  About how old are they?”
“Oh, we bought them in the 90′s.  We have Brigade issue 1′s and Cyberforce Scratch n Sniff Berry Flavored Die-Cut Gold number 4′s!”

At this point we have to politely let them know that most likely their collection isn’t worth that much and they hang up very disappointed.  So I figure it would make a good topic to discuss what makes an “old comic”.  Comics have been around since the 1800′s in one form or another but we’ll skip all of this because these books aren’t what most people would relate to as a comic book.  The Golden Age of comics started in the late 30′s and runs until the early 50′s.  During this period we see the first appearances of Batman, Superman, Captain America, along with quite a volume of children’s books, westerns, and pulp comics.  Quite frequently even the most dog eared, rat chewed, coffee stained issues are going to be worth something.  If you come across a collection of 80 year old comics that are complete (no missing pages or panels cut out) you are probably looking at money.  These can be legitimately called “old comics”.

So now we can roll right into the silver age with a little book called Showcase #4 which is the first appearance of the silver age Flash.  During this period of rather anemic superhero titles (there were really only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman of note during this time) it was refreshing to see something new.  Sales were great so we saw a huge relaunch of DC superhero books.  It took Marvel a few years to eventually get up to speed with Fantastic Four, Spider-man, X-men, etc.  The silver age runs up until 1970 and there are a lot of valuable books from this era.  There are so many first appearances, origins, epic battles, etc during this time period that it’s very easy to have a collection with a number of big money issues.  Condition becomes much more significant because high grade issues are more common than in the golden age.  These can also be legitimately called “old comics”.

After the silver age we have the bronze age which runs from 1970 to 1985.  There are quite a few key issues that can be found during this period.  First  appearance of Wolverine and the Punisher…random awesome horror books like Supernatural Thrillers and Werewolf by Night.  BUT…in general there’s a whole lot of poop during this period that’s not worth much of anything.  You can pretty much roll everything from about 1980 to 2012 into one big pile of financial mediocrity with few exceptions.   The 90′s saw such a huge explosive growth in speculation that not only were there a lot of crap new titles…but the print runs on them were gigantic.  Spawn #1  from the early 1990′s had an estimated print run of over 1.7 million copies.  In today’s market it’s considered significant if a book sells over 100,000 copies.  Huge supply plus low demand equals no value.  These books are not considered “old comics”.  Matter o’fact I’d consider most books from this time frame as “kindling” or “toilet paper”.

In conclusion don’t be surprised if you can only get 10-20 bucks a long box (250 comics) for your “old” comics from the 1980′s and up.  There’s just too much volume that can never be absorbed by our current number of readers.  Even worse, I can’t even predict a time when they’ll ever go up in value.  It’s true that we’re in a huge upswing in the comic industry right now due to movie and television exposure…and we are seeing new people get into comic collecting…but most of these guys are getting into current stuff and they aren’t collecting dusty 20 year old runs of Avengers.  It’s very easy to tell someone, “Go grab a copy of Saga or Mind the Gap or Hickman’s New Avenger title.”  Marvel and DC are both doing an excellent job of maintaining great “jumping on points” for many of their titles.  It’s really difficult to convince someone to get involved in the Herculean task of putting together 200 issue runs of Fantastic Four or Action Comics by going through back issue bins in comic shops.

So bring me your comics.  I’ll buy pretty much anything that’s not water damaged or full of roaches.  Just please be aware of what your comics are most likely worth to avoid overwhelming waves of disappointment.  I love buying stuff…I just hate hurting people’s feelings.

For the last 3 years one of the major concerns in the comic book industry is digital media.  You folks all remember back in the day when there were music stores on every corner?  Or when Blockbusters was a household name?  Bookstores in all the malls?  And then along comes that devil….DUN DUN DUUUuUuUhhh (yeah, that’s about as good a sound effect as I can make):   DIGITAL MEDIAAAAA!!!  Music, video, and bookstores all packed up their wagons and headed into the sunset….some going quietly and some going kicking and screaming.  For a while now it has been a concern that both comics and video games will be going in that same direction.  Industry scuttlebutt is that the next generation of consoles won’t even have a drive.  I can hear all the Gamestops collectively pooping their pants.  So am I concerned?  Do I feel as though digital comics will proliferate to the point that the old brick and mortar store will all go down the tubes?  Well…I hope not.  Actually, I’ll go one step further and state that “nah, we’re safe…at least for a while”.

There are a certain number of comic fans who are evacuating the physical media format.  This isn’t really a quantifiable number because once people stop coming in to my store I have no idea if they are doing it because they had to cut back because of having a kid, buying a house, or having their leg fall off and are in need of expensive medical care.  I can say with a fair amount of certainty though that I haven’t seen a noticeable drop off in old clientele.  Old timey collectors love the feel of paper.  They love that stinky ink smell of a fresh-off-the-shelf comic.  Wood pulp is the Drakkar Noir of comic nerds. 

So if there isn’t a noticeable drop off of customers, then how are digital comics affecting the industry?  Well, from my store’s point of view, it’s been very positive.  The thing about digital media is that it’s all pervasive.  Whether it is on a smart phone or a pc or a tablet, digital content is everywhere and easily accessible.  Couple this with the fact that you have billions of dollars worth of new fans manifesting with each new movie/tv show and you’re getting a whoooole lot of exposure to the comic industry and that translates into brick and mortar sales.  Wha?  Huh?  You might be asking yourself, “how did Tony make that leap from vast digital exposure equating to increased brick and mortar sales?”  Well…here’s an example:

Consumer A bows down to the media hype and watches the Avengers and really enjoys it.  Now, whether it is from childhood nostalgia or just increased interest in the Avengers, that person hits up a few digital sites and starts enjoying comics.  I’m seeing this kind of exposure as the “gateway drug” of comics.  Consumer A then goes to www.comicshoplocator.com and finds the nearest store and “BAM!!” there’s potentially  a new customer.

Consumer B is just goofing around at work and while cruising Facebook for Boondock Saints fan fiction he sees one of the hundreds of advertisements for Digital Comics.  He tries a few…gets intrigued and then goes to his nearest comic shop and starts buying some trades.

Now I’m not saying that everyone who goes digital eventually goes physical…but let’s look at some numbers:

Avengers made 600 million domestically.  That’s approximately 60 million tickets sold.  Let’s say there are quite a few repeat viewers so this equates to, conservatively, 40 million unique viewers.  Let’s assume that just 1 percent buys a digital comic…that’s 400,000 digital comics.  If just 10% of those digital viewers walk into comic shops then Avengers alone created, potentially, 40,000 new comic customers.  From the exposure of just one movie.

I keep on using “potentially” because you can’t equate a person walking into your door as a customer.  But really about 90% of the battle is getting new blood into the store.  Once they’re in the store if you have a pleasant shop staffed with competent people you’ll generate sales.

So, in conclusion, the number of people who are dropping physical comics in favor of digital media is less than the number of new customers being generated from digital media.  The comic fan base is just so incredibly small compared to the fan base of avid generic readers that it just doesn’t take a very large percentage of non comic readers to get into comic books to drastically affect the industry.  I have no idea how long these trends will last…but I imagine that as tablets and e-readers get cheaper and the current youthful generation gets used to reading things predominantly in a digital format you’ll eventually see physical comics go into a decline…but I really feel as though this is probably a decade or two away.  Time has a way of changing all things.