Market Spotlight: Batman 2000!

As mentioned on the latest issue of Chronic Insomnia, I went digging into John Jackson Miller's website to see if I couldn't find some hope in the macro sales data.  Which I did.  Find hope, I mean.

The truth is we have some very real, very pressing issues currently with reader retention and the remarkable collapse of the top of the chart.  But we're nowhere near as far in the gutter as we were in 2000.  That was a bad time to be publishing or retailing comics.  If you're interested in retailer war stories from that era, I highly recommend Brian Hibb's book Tilting At Windmills.

Batman # 582

Anywho.  I dug into the data and discovered that yes, things were quite woeful in 2000.  Sales were way down, probably at historical lows. I got to thinking: "How can I make some money off that"?  That's because I'm a giant, giant whore.

It sounds counter intuitive, which is why I'm extra sure the play will work. Imagine life in the year 2000 as a comic book fan or retailer.  Everything is in the tank, and you might blame Marvel's bizarre Heroe's World distribution catastrophe on that.  But mostly you're still nursing the wounds attributed to a glut of chromium enhanced die-cut overprinted monstrosities.

Speculation?  Blasphemy.  The idea of comics as collectibles is anathema.  If you're seen with a bag and board, I imagine ruffians would instantly appear to punch you in the face.  You take great pride using your comics as toilet paper so that everyone knows you're a purist.  The poop stained pages are a badge of honor.

So not only are print runs as tiny as they have ever been in the history of comics, but nobody thinks of them as collectibles.  They're too new, and the whole concept is just out of vogue.  There aren't many comics from the year 2000 to begin with, and what's there isn't protected.

Batman # 588

Don't take my word for it, go visit your comic shop and try to dig some up.  Assuming that your LCS sells back issues at all.  Most don't, and for good reason - it's not a good value, pound for pound.  They take up a lot of space, and not enough people are interested.  There's just a couple, at least for now.  People like me, looking at Batman books.

In 2000, "No Man's Land" is just finishing up.  DC then changes the cover dress on both Batman and Detective.  I don't know if it's good or not, but it sure is distinctive.

Larry Hama gets first crack at Batman post-No-Man, and then they hand over the book to a couple mooks you may have heard of.  Ed Brubaker.  Brian Vaughan.  Greg Rucka, who also gets Detective.  It's like a murderer's row of the up-and-coming, on the the premier figure in the secondary market.

Listen, you may have noticed, but people like Batman.  He's going to be around for awhile, probably long after we have print comics being published.  That means there will be collector's, completists.  The myth right now is that the material is too new, too protected, and too plentiful to be worth bothering.

I think that myth is wrong on all counts.  Those books are eleven years old now, nobody would have been treating them as though they might be valuable, (which is exactly how things get valuable) and nobody really has them in any great quantity.  When the collectors come to reap these Batman issues, there won't be much wheat for them to harvest.

So I'm advocating a little speculating on Batman # 575-600.  You've got Batman, you've got premier writers, and you've got the entire collecting public thinking backwards on value.  I think it pays to be very picky on condition if you decide to get in on this.  VF is going to be all too common, which is why you're going to want to cherry pick better than that.  But the VF/NM and above?  I'd pay $3 an issue for sure, and maybe go up to $5.  I'd still load up on that run in the VF range if I could get them for $1.  I don't think it's out of the question to find some of this material in "buck bins" at your local convention at all, and I think they're a really nice long term investment.


- Ryan

Chronic Capsule Reviews: Crap I Read Today!

Let me kick this off by saying that I WON'T be reading Secret Avengers, even though it seems to me that Brubaker's little shadow team is by far the most intriguing of the relaunched Avengers nonsense.

If this book were $2.99, I'd be all over it. But it isn't. I've been making far too many excuses about that lately, and it needs to stop. We simply can't afford (literally!) to reward this behavior. If the trend on trades continues, I won't be buying that either, regardless of how well it gets reviewed. Suggested retail on that collected Psylocke mini? If you thought the $3.99 on the floppies was bad, wait til you get a load of the $4.99 per issue they think it's worth in trade form. No. Nononononononononno you don't.

We're watching, Marvel. And we're pissed. Lots of people sitting at the breaking point, Mr. Buckley. We can live without that Psylocke book, trust me. Hell, the fact you're pushing us toward is that we can live without any of it. That's not a bitter threat any more, that's becoming the undeniable reality of it. We're at the breaking point. Tread carefully.

War of the Supermen # 4
Nothing much for me to rave about or complain about, I guess. I hadn't been reading the Superman books prior, so this is resolving issues that don't resonate as much for me. My sense is that if you went through the whole "New Krypton" stuff, this paid off fairly well.

There's nothing here that would compel me to pick up Superman from here on. I'm thinking about doing it simply because of the Straczynski factor. I'm really enjoying Brave & The Bold (more on that later) and I've been re-reading some Rising Stars, too. JMS is pretty good. So yay for him on Superman, his dream project.

Green Lantern # 54
This title has been on the cusp of the "drop zone" lately. It isn't that I feel it's a bad title. But there's a general feeling you carry around about each of the books on your pull, and inevitably certain books stop feeling like urgent reads and you start to wonder about them. If you're smart.

Thing is, every issue of Green Lantern tends to redeem itself upon closer inspection. I mean, in this issue that Red Lantern cat threw up on a bunch of people in a subway, and how can I deny that? There's no way. Every time that cat pukes rage blood on something, I'm in love all over again. Speaking of love, Sinestro has a delicious little one-liner he fires at Hal Jordan regarding his aching loins over Carol, too.

And that's the juice for me. I don't want to say that I can't care about the whole "sword in the stone" white lantern conundrum or the search for the missing "entities"...but I don't care, so I guess I'll say it. Green Lantern stays for now. Next!

Brave & The Bold # 34
The previous issue may end up being the best comic of 2010. It's certainly # 1 in my heart right now. I guess no system is perfect, but this is such a classic example of how broken the system is, and how quality never quite seems to translate into sales. And that, folks, is what is KILLING the industry.

Because there's no "Brightest Day" banner or some event connection, the rotating cast pretty much demands that nobody buys this title. And it's awesome. Every month, it's quality story after quality story. Straczynski takes full advantage of the freedom inherent in a "what if" type framework and just runs wild with interesting crap.

This month the Legion runs into a problem - primordial black hole make Earth go bye-bye. Now THAT'S a problem! Do you see how fun this stuff gets? Lightning Lad concocts a scheme to go back in time and fix that, and he needs the Doom Patrol's help to do it. And here's where it gets really weird, folks. Straczynski sets it up in the story so that internally it makes sense to need Negative Man! Revolutionary!

Now, JMS has been teasing for months that he's going to do something funky with the title that should make it a "Top 10" selling comic. Something feels slightly awry at the end of this issue, and I think that the ramifications of saving Earth are going to open up that can of worms next issue. Something from the future or another dimension, I don't know. But I think we'll see the ace Straczynski's been holding up his sleeve next month. Yay!

Fantastic Four # 579
As usual, so much to say about this comic, and I'm not sure this little blog entry is really the place to get into all of it, but here goes.

With what went on in # 578, this is a real button-hook. Last issue ramped up the stakes to Factor 11, and then this issue behaves as though none of that Inhumans stuff ever happened. It's a "breather" issue, if you will.

First of all, I don't want to say that Neil Edward's art sucks, but it sure gives a strong inhale. Eaglesham is missed, and that's a fact. Reed gives a speech about the future at the Singularity conference, and basically tells everyone (except She-Hulk) that they're old people with no vision, and he's bowing out of the group.

It's an interesting case he makes, and (as usual) an interesting path to explore. I happen to not agree with much of what Reed believes. He sees expansion as inevitable and hopeful, touting
"one trillion human beings spanning an entire galaxy." To me, that's not a message of hope. I believe in quality, not quantity. If you really liked the galaxy, you wouldn't be spreading people as we know them about it. That's littering.

But Reed is more optimistic than I, so it makes sense in that regard. His response is interesting, daring, and quite in keeping with the "Heroic Age" of optimism. He ditches the stagnant old white dudes and sets up his own think-tank with his children, the moloid kids, Artie, and Alex Power. There's your new Future Foundation!

Hickman spends a lot of time acknowledging plot threads in scattershot form. (Nu-World, Sue as ambassador, the Wizard) There's a TON of balls in the air right now, and Hickman is basically letting you know that he knows this stuff is out there. And all of it is entertaining. All of it.

Does it feel weird to me that the Inhumans stuff just went "poof"? Yup. Was it a bad issue? By no means. This is still the must read Marvel book of the lot, hands downs.

Tales of the Dragon Guard # 3
This was the best comic I read today. The super sad part is that it concludes the series. Are there more Tales of the Dragon Guard out there? I don't know. For all I know, there are reams of this stuff in France as I type. But I'll never get to see it, because the sales figures will not have Marvel ordering more of this, I wouldn't think.

And what a shame. There's a little box in the bottom right-hand corner of the comic that says "mature content", and for once that's accurate. Dragon Guard is a hokey little hook about half-dressed virgins killing big lizards, except it dresses itself in poignant characters, and gripping drama.

Wherever these dragons set up camp, they cast of field of corruption called "The Veil". It taints the people inside of it like a disease, and to watch the progression is always a trip. I'm really going to miss this book. A lot.

- Ryan