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When I'm at home thinking about things that happened in the past fifteen years since I left collecting comics, it got me to wondering; what all have I missed from the time I quit collecting comics (1993) until now (2008)?
Here are a couple of examples.
First, when I left way back when, people were going bananas over the likes of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino and other artists that were taking over the new X-Men title and New Mutants (which later became X-Force). I did fall for the hype at first, but when I saw little substance to go with the hype I promptly quit collecting the books. I guess my question here is, do artists play as big a part in the mindset of people who buy now rather than they did over a decade ago?
I'm going to say no.
It seems, to me, like a lot of the people who buy comics now are buying them for the storyline rather than art. I have looked at the sales figures over the past year (Jan 2007-December 2007) and found that storylines like Marvel Comics' World War Hulk (Incredible Hulk), Civil War (Multi-book crossover), Brand New Day (Spider-Man) all took Marvel to take the top selling slots in the sales lists over the past year. DC Comics was no slouch either but they had the likes of the Amazon's Attack Storyline and the end of 52 and the beginning of Countdown. I know that some of these storylines had big name writers attached to them, and I think we've seen a transition from people buying comic books for the art to the comics being purchased for the writing/storyline.
Second, when I left comics way back when, the big deal was that special covers were a big sales gimmick. I remember the first cover gimmick I picked up was Silver Surfer #50. It had a shiny foil embossed cover, and it also was a good issue to read as well. Then there was Valiant Comics' use (although some say it was overuse) of the chromium cover. Again, yes I did get suckered into purchasing some of them, but I think it was only the #0 issues of Rai, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and X-O Manowar. I have noticed this special cover trend coming back in a couple of ways. The first way is in the Previews catalog produced every month there are a few companies like Marvel, that will get a special big name artist to do covers for one of their big name books like Amazing Spider-Man that are only available to retailers who order X amount of the regular cover. The comic book store that I like to get my books from always orders enough of them to get at least one of the special covers and the price on some of them is reasonable (between $6 and $8) but some of them are outrageous (like $20). I'm not so obsessed at having a complete set that I WANT them all, but if something comes out down the line that I might want for one of the series I collect I'd be more than willing to pay $6 or $8 for them. The other way is something Marvel comics did around Halloween last year and that is the Zombie covers for its books. The zombie covers were packed 50-50 with the normal covers and did help sales for some of the books that were down in the dumps, but I can't see people buying both covers with the idea that the Zombie variant cover was going to be worth any more than the regular cover.
Those were some of the big sales gimmicks that I can remember about the past and how they translate into sales today, and I want your opinion of some of the sales gimmicks that have been going on between the 1980's and today.
Just e-mail me at the address below with the subject: Comic Gimmick Opinions, and I'll try to work them into a future column.
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