The Tenth Life of BSS X-Thread: Get in, Loser! We're Going to Therapy!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > The Tenth Life of BSS X-Thread: Get in, Loser! We're Going to Therapy!

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danbanana: Jun 7, 2008; OG Bell's fanboi

Skwirl posted:

There was a massive speculation bubble and the bubble popped.

X-Men #1 sold 5 million copies, there are not 5 million people who actually give a poo poo about print comics, there's maybe like 100,000.

Newsstand returnability makes it hard to get perfect reader numbers but Uncanny was in the mid 6 figures in sales at that time. Even Avengers was probably doing a couple hundred thousand and no one gave a poo poo about that book,as noted.

There was some overlap in purchasing but even taking that into account, you're looking at millions of readers over just newsstand books.

I get that in pre-internet era, it felt like reading comics wasn't popular but literally (tens of?) millions of books were sold every month. I lived in small town Iowa and had to get to the store by Thursday (Tuesday was new book day for newsstands) to get the book I wanted that week. They sold out of certain things by then. Far more people were reading monthly superhero books then as now.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:02

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# ? May 23, 2024 16:29

Air Skwirl: May 13, 2007; Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

I would say there's roughly 100,000 people actually interested in collecting comics, beyond just reading them, but even if I'm off by a factor of 10, that's still 4 million copies of X-Men #1 sold to people who didn't care about comics beyond the speculator's market.

During the clone saga my dad bought two copies of every issue of Spider-Man, one for 10 year old me to read and one to sell to pay for my college. The first issue of which is worth approximately $4 a quick google search tells me.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:09

danbanana: Jun 7, 2008; OG Bell's fanboi

Skwirl posted:

I would say there's roughly 100,000 people actually interested in collecting comics, beyond just reading them, but even if I'm off by a factor of 10, that's still 4 million copies of X-Men #1 sold to people who didn't care about comics beyond the speculator's market.

During the clone saga my dad bought two copies of every issue of Spider-Man, one for 10 year old me to read and one to sell to pay for my college. The first issue of which is worth approximately $4 a quick google search tells me.

Oh yeah, X-Men #1 probably sold 10 times a monthly issue of Uncanny, and a lot of that was clearly speculators. But there were literally millions of people buying off the newsstand, monthly. I wasn't buying West Coast Avengers or Green Lantern but someone was.

There's a reason that 30,000 print run copies of Valiant books in 1992 were considered capital-R Rare. That was 1/10th what Batman was selling.

danbanana fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Mar 13, 2021

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:17

Alaois: Feb 7, 2012

people talking about "The newstand days" of comic books just reminds me of people talking about how 80 million people watched Jim Crockett Promotions every week on Saturday nights in the 80s

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:19

danbanana: Jun 7, 2008; OG Bell's fanboi

Alaois posted:

people talking about "The newstand days" of comic books just reminds me of people talking about how 80 million people watched Jim Crockett Promotions every week on Saturday nights in the 80s

But there are sales numbers backing this up. Even if returns were 10% of orders, it's still millions of books and readers.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:21

Air Skwirl: May 13, 2007; Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

I'm getting the 100,000 actual collectors number from reading Marvel The Untold Story, I haven't read it in a few years but that's the number I remember the author throwing out when talking about the 90's speculation bubble. There's also people who buy comics and read them or buy them for their kid without any particular interest in collecting.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:23

How Wonderful!: Jul 18, 2006; I only have excellent ideas

If you all want to talk about sales figures, please find and source data instead of just yelling past each other. You can check out comichron for a lot of raw numbers although finding out an estimate of actual units sold can be a little difficult.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:34

danbanana: Jun 7, 2008; OG Bell's fanboi

Skwirl posted:

I'm getting the 100,000 actual collectors number from reading Marvel The Untold Story, I haven't read it in a few years but that's the number I remember the author throwing out when talking about the 90's speculation bubble. There's also people who buy comics and read them or buy them for their kid without any particular interest in collecting.

Yeah that's grossly underestimated unless talking about single titles. Again: if X-Men sold 300k and Avengers 100k, there's maybe some overlap but you're at 350k buyers right there. Multiply that by the number of books only Marvel and DC were putting out... You're well into the millions of buyers. There's no way 90% plus were speculating.

And no one was speculating monthly Avengers books in 1991.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 01:37

Codependent Poster: Oct 20, 2003

Yeah I remember collecting a lot of comics as a kid and buying two copies for all the "big" books and they're not worth anything. But then I have comics from the 2000's on that sell for hundreds on ebay.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 02:41

DivineCoffeeBinge: Mar 3, 2011; Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

galagazombie posted:

I remember when a full half of Marvels publishing output were X-Books. It was crazy how it went from that big to like 4 books at one point. The "X-Crash" happened before the movies made the public at large aware of non-Mutant/non-spider heroes though. I don't know what caused it though. Did readers sick of mutants, or was the sheer amount of X-books an instance of corporate deciding that if one X-Men title sold well they should public a bajillion that no one wanted?

The speculator bubble. Short version: As the bottom started falling out of the sports card market, media hype about "look how much this rare collectible sold for!" started moving over to comic books. Old books were selling for lots of money, which got framed as "clearly comic books are a good investment for the future, especially if they're the first appearance of a new character or a #1 issue or have a big shiny special cover." And so people started buying up comics on the cheap in the hope that they'd be a good investment one day.

Of course, the comic speculators ran into the same problems the card speculators had run into - the reason old comics were valuable is because they were old and rare. You pay out the rear end for a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 because there aren't a ton of those around anymore. There are a whole lot of copies of X-Men #1, which is also recent enough that none of them have had a chance to degrade or fall apart or get tossed out by an angry Mom or whatever. So eventually the bubble burst. But while it was still blowing up? Marvel got 100% on board with milking the situation for as much short-term gain as they could manage.

(which is kinda understandable, as they'd been bankrupt not too much earlier than all of this...)

So Marvel was all-in on the strategy of chasing the hot property and the hot concept at the time. It's not like the expansion of a superhero 'line' was new - Avengers West Coast had been a thing for years, and Spider-Man had supported multiple titles for a while now - but the X-Men took it to an extreme, because the expansion of the line had begun back in the day with The New Mutants, which Claremont had written, and then X-Factor, which he still basically had a hand in; the X-Office had a more clearly unified vision than most of the other groups of books, save possibly the Spidey titles; this is a big reason why when Marvel tried their utterly disastrous "Marvelution" strategy of ditching one central Editor-in-Chief for five 'Group Editors', the X-Books essentially got spun off into their own separate little fiefdom within the company, where no one who outranked X-Editor Bob Harras was actually really involved in the comics.

Which is how Harras organized the publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts, namely Age of Apocalypse. Which made all the money. This rippled through the whole company; Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" ended up going an extra couple of years as the editors were trying to turn it into another AoA-style megahit, for instance.

And because the speculator bubble was a thing, there was a market for those infinite numbers of X-Books... right up until the bubble popped and there wasn't anymore.

That wasn't a very short version, I guess. Sorry.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 04:31

Edge & Christian: May 20, 2001; Earth-1145 is truly the best!
A world of singing, magic frogs,
high adventure, no shitposters

This is an even less short version but the speculator bubble had absolutely nothing to do with how many X-Men books came out, unless the argument is "they made even more of them because it was the only surefire seller."

Putting aside a lot of ahistorical stuff about newsstands and sales/circulation figures from before the direct market became dominant, let's zero in on X-Men #1 (1991), a book that sold 8,000,000 copies, breaking the record X-Force #1 set earlier that year, breaking the record Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 set in 1990.

August 1991: Excalibur, Marvel Comics Presents (ft. Wolverine), Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Men, X-Men Classic

As the speculator boom really kicks off, Marvel has expanded the X-Line from one book in 1981 to seven ongoings and a reprint book.

August 1992: Cable, Excalibur, MCP, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Men, X-Men Classic
August 1993: Cable, Deadpool, Excalibur, MCP, Sabretooth, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine/Punisher, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Force Annual, X-Men, X-Men Annual, X-Men 2099, X-Men Adventures, X-Men Classic, X-Men Poster Magazine
August 1994: Cable, Deadpool, Excalibur, Generation X, Sabretooth Classic, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Force Annual, X-Men, X-Men 2099, X-Men Adventures, X-Men Annual, X-Men Classic, X-Men Poster Magazine, X-Men: The Early Years

This number quickly swells, but then comes 1995, the year that things really start going downhill; the speculator bubble was bursting, upstart companies started folding. Marvel buys Heroes World and makes them their exclusive distributor, which causes all sorts of negative ripple effects. This is admittedly possibly the peak of X-Book saturation:

August 1995: All-New Exiles, All-New Exiles vs. X-Men, Cable, Excalibur, Generation X, Starjammers, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine/Gambit, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Man, X-Men, X-Men '95, X-Men 2099, X-Men 2099 Special, X-Men Adventures, X-Men Archives, X-Men Poster Magazine X-Men Unlimited, X-Men: Rarities
August 1996: Adventures of the X-Men, Cable, Excalibur, Generation X, Onslaught: Marvel Universe, Professor Xavier & the X-Men, Pryde & Wisdom, Uncanny Origins, Wolverine, Wolverine '96, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Force & Cable '96, X-Man, X-Men, X-Men vs. Brood, X-Men vs. Clandestine, X-Men: Road to Onslaught

By the end of 1996, Marvel declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This famously and empirically has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the publishing division, as much as people like to repeat it. All comics are now distributed exclusively through Diamond, who have the monopoly on comics distribution. What happens to the X-Men line?

August 1997: Cable, Colossus, Deadpool, Excalibur, Gambit, Generation X, Generation X '97, Maverick, Psylocke & Archangel: Crimson Dawn, Uncanny Origins, Uncanny X-Men, Uncanny X-Men '97, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Man, X-Men
August 1998: Cable, Deadpool, Excalibur Generation X, J2, Marvel Collectible Classics: X-Men, Mutant X, Sunfire & Big Hero 6, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Force, X-Man, X-Men, X-Men: The Manga
August 1999: Astonishing X-Men, Bishop: the Last X-Man, Cable, Deadpool, Gambit, Generation X, Mutant X, Uncanny X-Men, Warlock, Wild Thing, Wolverine, Wolverine/Cable, X-Force, X-Man, X-Men, X-Men: True Friends
August 2000: Bishop, Cable, Deadpool, Gambit, Gambit 2000, Generation X, Mutant X, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Force, X-Man, X-Men, X-Men the Hidden Years, X-Men Universe, X-Men Declassified

Technically there are fewer X-Books, but that's still a shitload of X-Men books! And Marvel's total output shrank in this time: they released 83 books in August 1995, but only 50 in 2000.

In terms of monthly sales, starting in April 1997 after everything is back under the Diamond banner, X-Books are the #1 seller (and frequently filling up the Top 10) every month except the following

code:

May 1997: Spawn #62 (X-Books come in #2, #3, #6, and #10)
August 1997: Spawn # 65 (X-Books at #2, 3, 5, and 9)
November 1997: Fantastic Four #1 (X-Books at 3, 5, and 6)
December 1997: The Darkness #1 (X-Books at 5, 6, and 9)

July 1998: Fathom #1 (X-Books at 2, 3, 7)
August 1998: Battle Chasers #1 (X-Books at 2, 3, 7, 10)
December 1998: Witchblade/Tomb Raider (X-Books at 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10)

November 1999: Tomb Raider #1 (this is the only time the two main X-Books are not #1 and #2 the entire year. This month they're at #2 and #3.)

April 2000: Fathom #12 (this again breaks the streak of Uncanny/X-Men falling out of the 1/2 slot, pushing them down to 2/3, along with Wolverine at #4)
July 2000: Spawn #100 (see above, X-Books at 2-4)

Bob Harras is fired in August 2000, but that does not stop the streak from continuing. In December 2000, Uncanny is pushed out of the top slot again, this time by Ultimate X-Men #1.

August 2001: The Brotherhood, Cable, Cyclops, Deadpool, Exiles, New X-Men, New X-Men 2001, Rogue, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Force, X-Treme X-Men

With Ultimate X-Men added to the rotation, X-Books now take up 4 (occasionally 5) of the slots in the top 5 for the entirety of 2001, only knocked out in December 2001 by Frank Miller returning to Batman with DK2.

As we get deeper into the 21st century, much like the "Bad Girl" fad of the late 1990s, a new fad (80s toy revivals like Transformers, GI Joe, Thundercats, Masters of the Universe) as well as DC starting to really put all their money on Batman in the form of DK2 and Hush start to push the X-Books down to merely being Top 10 books, not imperial eternal #1s. Later still, the mania to constantly relaunch books with big #1s that have a million variant covers push the X-Men franchise down even further. This doesn't stop Marvel from still putting out a shitload of them.

August 2002: Agent X, Chamber, Exiles, New X-Men, Soldier X, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Weapon X (five one-shots), Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Statix, X-Treme X-Men
August 2003: Emma Frost, Exiles, Mystique, New Mutants, New X-Men, Spider-Man & Wolverine, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Weapon X, Wolverine, Wolverine: Snikt, X-Statix, X-Treme X-Men
August 2004: Astonishing X-Men, Cable & Deadpool, District X, Emma Frost, Excalibur, Exiles, Mystique, New X-Men, Rogue, Starjammers, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Weapon X, WOlverine, X-Force, X-Men, X-Men Unlimited, X-Men: The End, X-Statix
August 2005: Cable & Deadpool, Exiles, House of M, Mutopia X, New X-Men, New X-Men: Hellions, Nightcrawler, NYX, Ororo: Before the Storm, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate X-Men Annual, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Men, X-Men Unlimited, X-Men: Kitty Pryde, X-Men: The End
August 2006: Astonishing X-Men, Cable & Deadpool, Civil War: X-Men, Claws: Black Cat & Wolverine, Exiles, New Excalibur, New X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate X-Men Annual, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine Origins, X-Men, X-Men Fairy Tales
August 2007: Astonishing X-Men, Cable & Deadpool, Exiles, New Excalibur, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine Origins, X-Factor, X-Men, X-Men First Class
August 2008: Astonishing X-Men, GeNext, New Exiles, NYX: No Way Home, Secret Invasion: X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine: First Class, Wolverine: Killing Made Simple, X-Factor, X-Factor: Layla Miller, X_Force, X-Men Origins, X-Men First Class, X-Men Legacy, Young X-Men
August 2009: Cable, Dark Wolverine, Dark X-Men, Deadpool, Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool: Suicide Kings, Exiles, GeNext: United, New Mutants, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Uncanny X-Men First Class, Wolverine First Class, Wolverine Origins, Wolverine: Weapon X, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Men Forever, X-Men Legacy
August 2010: All-New Wolverine, Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine, Astonishing X-Men, Dark Wolverine, Deadpool, Deadpool Corps, Deadpool #1000, Deadpool Team-Up, New Mutants, New Mutants Forever, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine: Weapon X, X-Campus, X-Factor, X-Force: Sex & Violence, X-Men, X-Men Forever 2, X-Men Legacy, X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: Blade, X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: Storm & Gambit
August 2011: Astonishing X-Men, Daken: Dark Wolverine, Deadpool, Deadpool MAX, Fear Itself: Deadpool, Fear Itself: X-Force, Fear Itself: Wolverine, Gambit & the Champion, Generation Hope, New Mutants, Uncanny X-Force, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine & Black Cat: Claws II, X-23, X-Factor, X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, X-Men: Schism
August 2012: Age of Apocalypse, Astonishing X-Men, Avengers vs. X-Men, AvX, Deadpool, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, First X-Men, Gambit, New Mutants, Ultimate Comics X-Men, Uncanny X-Force, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine & the X-Men, Wolverine Annual, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Men Legacy, X-Treme X-Men

Okay but now here's where they start really killing the X-Men line, right? In 2012 the rumors started that they were going to 'replace' mutants in the Marvel Comics with Inhumans...

August 2013: A+X, All-New X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, Cable & X-Force, Deadpool, Deadpool Kills Deadpool, Gambit, Ultimate Comics X-Men, Uncanny X-Force, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine & the X-Men, Wolverine MAX, X-Factor, X-Men, X-Men Legacy
August 2014: All-New X-Factor, All-New X-Men, Cyclops, Deadpool, Deadpool vs. X-Force, Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Savage Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine & the X-Men, Wolverine Annual, X-Force, X-Men

Maybe it's true! Look how the number of X-Books shrank from 19 in 2012 to a mere 16 in 2013, and only *14* in 2014. And then Secret Wars resets the entire line, will Marvel use Secret Wars to retcon the X-Men out of existence or into a pocket universe? Will they be ignored during Secret Wars, restricted to a mere dozen tie-ins?

August 2015: Age of Apocalypse, Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars, E is For Extinction, Little AvX, House of M, Inferno, Magneto, Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos, Old Man Logan, X_Men '92, X-Tinction Agenda, Years of Futures Past

Okay so they got over a dozen tie-ins during Secret Wars, but after Secret Wars? M-Pox is happening and they just aren't putting out any X-Men books like they used to and

August 2016: All-New Wolverine, All-New Wolverine Annual, All-New X-Men, Civil War II: X-Men, Deadpool, Deadpool & the Mercs for Money, Deadpool/Gambit, Extraordinary X-Men, Old Man Logan, Spider-Man/Deadpool, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men '92
August 2017: Astonishing X-Men, Cable, Deadpool, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again, Generation X, Generations: Jean Grey, Generations: Wolverine, Iceman, Jean Grey, Old Man Logan, Weapon X, X-Men Blue, X-Men Gold
August 2018: Astonishing X-Men, Astonishing X-Men Annual, Cable/Deadpool Annual, Deadpool, Deadpool: Assassin, Domino, Exiles, Extermination, Hunt for Wolverine (four mini-series and a one-shot), Multiple Man, New Mutants: Dead Souls, Old Man Logan, Spider-Man/Deadpool, Weapon X, X-23, X-Men Blue, X-Men Gold, X-Men Gold Annual, X-Men Red, X-Men Grand Design

These are admittedly historically low numbers, but also over a dozen books featuring the X-Men coming out every single month.

August 2019: Dead Man Logan, Deadpool Annual, House of X, Major X, Marvel Tales: X-Men, Powers of X
August 2020: NO X-MEN BOOKS AT ALL

It turns out they eventually did stop publishing all of the X-Men books, but it was because of Covid, not newsstand sales or Bob Harras or Isaac Perlmutter or the speculator boom or etc. Good news though, they're back!

Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Mar 13, 2021

# ? Mar 13, 2021 05:13

Edge & Christian: May 20, 2001; Earth-1145 is truly the best!
A world of singing, magic frogs,
high adventure, no shitposters

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

The speculator bubble. Short version: As the bottom started falling out of the sports card market, media hype about "look how much this rare collectible sold for!" started moving over to comic books. Old books were selling for lots of money, which got framed as "clearly comic books are a good investment for the future, especially if they're the first appearance of a new character or a #1 issue or have a big shiny special cover." And so people started buying up comics on the cheap in the hope that they'd be a good investment one day.

Just to expand on a few points from my previous post, this isn't really true. Baseball cards caught fire earlier, but the trading card and comic speculator bubbles coincided and fed off of each other. The trading card bubble burst slightly earlier, but it was in 1994-5, well after comics had gotten 'hot' and right as things were spiralling out of control in the comics market. The trading card bust is the biggest reason Marvel went bankrupt, as Marvel (the corporation, not the people making comics) spent close to a billion dollars buying Fleer, Skybox and Panini right as the trading card market collapsed, in part due to massive speculation, in part because the NBA, MLB, and NHL all had strike/lockout shortened seasons in 1994-1995.

quote:

(which is kinda understandable, as they'd been bankrupt not too much earlier than all of this...)

X-Men #1 came out in 1991, as mentioned above. Marvel declared bankruptcy in December 1996, not because of comics, so the cause and effect here are wildly off base.

quote:

Which is how Harras organized the publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts, namely Age of Apocalypse. Which made all the money. This rippled through the whole company; Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" ended up going an extra couple of years as the editors were trying to turn it into another AoA-style megahit, for instance.

This is also questionable, as the official launch of "The Clone Saga" started in the summer of 1994, while Tom DeFalco was still Editor in Chief. Age of Apocalypse launched in December 1994, a few weeks before DeFalco is fired for reasons entirely unrelated to Bob Harras, Age of Apocalypse, the Spider-Clone, etc.

Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 13, 2021

# ? Mar 13, 2021 05:29

Protagorean: May 19, 2013; by Azathoth

can't wait for first-issue comics NFTs

# ? Mar 13, 2021 05:45

Blockhouse: Sep 7, 2014; You Win!

Thank you again WWE's Edge & AEW's Christian, for your insight and willingness to do a bunch of tedious research

I had no idea Marvel went bankrupt due to the trading card collapse that's somehow an even bigger blunder on the company's part

# ? Mar 13, 2021 05:53

Alaois: Feb 7, 2012

Blockhouse posted:

Thank you again WWE's Edge & AEW's Christian, for your insight and willingness to do a bunch of tedious research

I had no idea Marvel went bankrupt due to the trading card collapse that's somehow an even bigger blunder on the company's part

Mid-90s Marvel is an amazing case study in how not to run a company

# ? Mar 13, 2021 06:01

DivineCoffeeBinge: Mar 3, 2011; Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Edge & Christian posted:

This is an even less short version but the speculator bubble had absolutely nothing to do with how many X-Men books came out, unless the argument is "they made even more of them because it was the only surefire seller."

that was the intended argument, yeah. I probably used way too many words for that to be clear.

Edge & Christian posted:

Just to expand on a few points from my previous post, this isn't really true. Baseball cards caught fire earlier, but the trading card and comic speculator bubbles coincided and fed off of each other. The trading card bubble burst slightly earlier, but it was in 1994-5, well after comics had gotten 'hot' and right as things were spiralling out of control in the comics market. The trading card bust is the biggest reason Marvel went bankrupt, as Marvel (the corporation, not the people making comics) spent close to a billion dollars buying Fleer, Skybox and Panini right as the trading card market collapsed, in part due to massive speculation, in part because the NBA, MLB, and NHL all had strike/lockout shortened seasons in 1994-1995.

Huh; my memory had the trading card markets collapsing a bit earlier based on watching prices get slashed and collectible stores closing in my area around like '92-'93, but I am not gonna argue with actual research! Thanks for that!

That's not sarcasm, btw, I really appreciate your willingness to actually bring numbers instead of "things I vaguely recall from my teenage years before I wrecked my brain with booze"

# ? Mar 13, 2021 08:23

radlum: May 13, 2013

Thanks Edge & Christian for that summary; that was great.

I think people misremember how much X-Men comics were being published during the mid-2010s, but I think the real issue is that most of those books sucked, they sucked a lot.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 14:20

Harold Fjord: Jan 3, 2004

radlum posted:

Thanks Edge & Christian for that summary; that was great.

I think people misremember how much X-Men comics were being published during the mid-2010s, but I think the real issue is that most of those books sucked, they sucked a lot.

It's all a blur to me but I remember some cool stuff from Aaron, Xforce, and Legacy Volume 2 and it was all down hill from there.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 16:38

Edge & Christian: May 20, 2001; Earth-1145 is truly the best!
A world of singing, magic frogs,
high adventure, no shitposters

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Huh; my memory had the trading card markets collapsing a bit earlier based on watching prices get slashed and collectible stores closing in my area around like '92-'93, but I am not gonna argue with actual research! Thanks for that!

Your memory probably isn't that far off, 1992-1993 was the peak of the bubble, as supply was outstripping demand. But from one perspective the market was doing great, over a billion dollars worth of cards were being sold to retailers in those years, even if a lot of them sat around and had to be clearanced out of the stores. Topps or Score or Upper Deck or Donruss or Fleer didn't care if thousands of cases of their sets end up as ballast or kindling, they sold them, that's a win in their book. They should care in the sense that they killed their own market, but that's not how big business works.

It's not dissimilar to the comics market, in that the market didn't 'collapse' until 1995-6 but the things that actually killed the market (people over-ordering Reign of Supermen or Knightfall to try to recapture the "Doomsday" frenzy, Deathmate, Image books being wildly late, high dollar gimmick covers, gluts of "New Universes" like Ultraverse/post-Shooter Valiant, etc. etc.) all really happened in 1993-1994. But the effects of those things (people realizing these were not 'investments', readers moving on, stores going out of business and the surviving stores being a smaller market that was presumably smarter about ordering) didn't really kick in until a few years later.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 16:46

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

It's arguable the industry never really learned the lesson fully, given that we still have 1-in-100 variant covers that try and get stores to buy hundreds of copies of a book that likely won't ever be sold just to feed a smaller speculator market that want the rare cover, thus grossly inflating sales figures for titles.

# ? Mar 13, 2021 16:55

Macdeo Lurjtux: Jul 5, 2011; BRRREADSTOOORRM!

Newsstand returns also had a secondary shelf life, there was a company that would snap them up at pennies on the dollar, pack them up, and sell them at big box stores. I remember the local Toys R Us had an isle devoted to the packs. I remember buying one with the gatefold X-Men #1 and the next 5 issues. I still have them in a long box at my parents.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 00:55

danbanana: Jun 7, 2008; OG Bell's fanboi

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

Newsstand returns also had a secondary shelf life, there was a company that would snap them up at pennies on the dollar, pack them up, and sell them at big box stores. I remember the local Toys R Us had an isle devoted to the packs. I remember buying one with the gatefold X-Men #1 and the next 5 issues. I still have them in a long box at my parents.

My understanding of newsstand returnability was that the store needed to remove the cover to return and get partial credit. Maybe there was a gray market unloading unsold books?

# ? Mar 14, 2021 01:24

Edge & Christian: May 20, 2001; Earth-1145 is truly the best!
A world of singing, magic frogs,
high adventure, no shitposters

That's not really a gray market, it's just someone buying up surplus and repackaging.

In order to actually get refunded for any returnable mass market product (whether it's comics or magazines or airport novels) the retailer would have to rip the covers off (sometimes just the strip with the barcode on it) and physically send these scraps back to the distributor to get a refund. Then the retailer is supposed to pulp the coverless copies. The logic for this is that if you had 500 unsold copies of an issue of Spider-Man (or Rolling Stone, or Elle, or a bunch of copies of Jurassic Park eight months after the movie came out) it would be a burden to actually pay freight to send them all back.

There was (maybe still is, I just don't know where) a gray market for coverless copies of any of these. When I worked in bookstores in high school a couple of them would let you sift through the "discards", and a shop when I was even younger had a box full of coverless comics you could buy for a quarter.

But a copy of X-Men #1 with the gatefold cover (or any of those repack things, of which I bought a bunch) couldn't be newsstand copies that got 'returned', partially because they would have to have the cover ripped off, also partially because the gatefold cover was a Direct Market Exclusive, so it was never sold to anyone as returnable.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 01:36

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

Yeah, I think that's more like the groups that buy up all the non-rare trading cards for Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic and sell them as "100 Genuine Trading Card" packs for like 3 bucks.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 02:21

Air Skwirl: May 13, 2007; Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Krakoa Welcomes, a generally positive account deciding to go really loving hard on Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda weeks after the show ended is incredibly funny to me.

https://twitter.com/KrakoaWelcomes/status/1370942353096200192?s=20

# ? Mar 14, 2021 06:08

Blockhouse: Sep 7, 2014; You Win!

That's a weird level of getting petty at a fictional character.

I might be projecting but I've seen X-Men fans who actually treat Scarlet Witch like she was a real person they're angry at and Decimation was a real thing that happened. It's weird.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 06:14

Angry Salami: Jul 27, 2013; Don't trust the skull.

Stop! Pretender! We don't speak her name!

# ? Mar 14, 2021 06:56

Open Marriage Night: Sep 18, 2009; "Do you want to talk to a spider, Peter?"

Dismissing all the damage Wanda did is a very bad look. It�s even funnier coming from someone called Krakoa Welcomes, because Krakoa is the first group ready to hold Wanda accountable for her actions in the comics.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 06:58

Air Skwirl: May 13, 2007; Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Blockhouse posted:

That's a weird level of getting petty at a fictional character.

I might be projecting but I've seen X-Men fans who actually treat Scarlet Witch like she was a real person they're angry at and Decimation was a real thing that happened. It's weird.

I think it's meant to be in good fun, it's not like the account has been ranting about Wanda for the last 8 weeks or whatever. the "198" call out just struck me as funny so that's why I posted it here.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 07:03

howe_sam: Mar 7, 2013; Creepy little garbage eaters

Skwirl posted:

Krakoa Welcomes, a generally positive account deciding to go really loving hard on Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda weeks after the show ended is incredibly funny to me.

https://twitter.com/KrakoaWelcomes/status/1370942353096200192?s=20

Weeks? It ended last Friday.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 07:30

Air Skwirl: May 13, 2007; Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

howe_sam posted:

Weeks? It ended last Friday.

The last year has completely broken my ability to figure out how long ago anything was.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 07:38

Gologle: Apr 15, 2013; The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3

It was literally Magneto's fault. smh im tired of having this conversation

EDIT: Not with any of you guys, mind you, but back in the 2000's I had endless hours of internet arguments with people over House of M.

Gologle fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Mar 14, 2021

# ? Mar 14, 2021 14:05

radlum: May 13, 2013

Blockhouse posted:

That's a weird level of getting petty at a fictional character.

I might be projecting but I've seen X-Men fans who actually treat Scarlet Witch like she was a real person they're angry at and Decimation was a real thing that happened. It's weird.

It's certainly weird, specially since right now we are at peak Scarlet Witch popularity and sympathy; I hope there's a plan for her on this current X-Men era, beyond that awful Empyre tie-in.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 14:46

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

radlum posted:

It's certainly weird, specially since right now we are at peak Scarlet Witch popularity and sympathy; I hope there's a plan for her on this current X-Men era, beyond that awful Empyre tie-in.

The Empyre tie-in isn't even a bad idea in general, the idea of her trying to repent and make up for it and failing is a decent concept, but I don't know why Hickman felt it necessary to have Dr Strange literally do nothing but poo poo on her the whole time.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 17:18

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

It's really weird that Wanda gets the blame and Magneto gets off scott free because of a dumbass retcon that makes no sense done entirely because of petty MCU/Fox infighting that isn't even relevant anymore. "How dare Wanda do that?!" they say as multiple people who literally tried to genocide entire species just sort of chill on Krakoa.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 18:03

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

I kind of want some depowered mutant who had a power that was really debilitating get resurrected on Krakoa and be mad that they have their powers back.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 18:22

OnimaruXLR: Sep 15, 2007; Lurklurklurklurklurk

Gologle posted:

It was literally Magneto's fault. smh im tired of having this conversation

EDIT: Not with any of you guys, mind you, but back in the 2000's I had endless hours of internet arguments with people over House of M.

I am still waiting for that particular reckoning, but with the way Wanda's been treated in the comics makes me think that there's never going to actually be tackled, and there's just going to be a bunch of snarky side barbs

# ? Mar 14, 2021 18:37

Gologle: Apr 15, 2013; The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3

Hey now, One More Day is being addressed, so anything is possible!

# ? Mar 14, 2021 19:00

Beerdeer: Apr 25, 2006; Frank Herbert's Dude

Gaz-L posted:

I kind of want some depowered mutant who had a power that was really debilitating get resurrected on Krakoa and be mad that they have their powers back.

Chamber hangs out with the New Mutants doesn�t he.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 20:28

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# ? May 23, 2024 16:29

radlum: May 13, 2013

Didn't he get his powers back after Age of X? (I think he Rosenberg killed him too, but by then he was already repowered)

# ? Mar 14, 2021 21:33

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > The Tenth Life of BSS X-Thread: Get in, Loser! We're Going to Therapy!

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