Holograms And Glow In The Dark Doom: The Speculator Era Examined (1989-1996)
1,256For a period of time in the late 80’s and early 90’s, comic books experienced sales and acceptance unlike before. The medium exploded. Then, just as suddenly, it imploded like a worthless fad. What happened? This video essay explores all the factors that led up to the Speculator Era, what occurred during it and why it all came crashing down.
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MAIN THEME:
“Is That You or Are You You” by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/reappear/
Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/
ANNOTATIONS:
1:38 - “Briefly, the biggest advantage of the direct market…” Newsstand distribution is greatly simplified and subscriptions to comics are not mentioned.
4:01 - “Of course, it has to be acknowledged…” Prior to Batman and the TMNT movie there was a popular TMNT animated series. However, that was a niche popularity with those that watched Saturday morning cartoons. Wide acceptance by popular culture was solidified by the movie, which debuted a year after Batman.
6:40 - Ghost Rider is a reimagining of a Western comic from 1967 that ran for seven issues. Oddly enough, this 1967 series was also a reimagining of another, similarly named character from 1949. Marvel published their Western comic in 1967 to secure the trademark on the name when the trademark on the 1949 character lapsed. The 1972 series only uses the trademarked name, not the character or concept previously established.
7:41 - “Probably in the area of a million copies” The best estimate suggests Batman: Legends Of The Dark Knight #1 sold 700,000 to the direct market alone. Newsstands sales aren’t publicly known and they may only reflect sales of the actual cover, not the multi-coloured variants. So, the estimation provided is a reasonable, possibly low guess. By all accounts, it was the bestselling issue of 1989.
10:21 - “The price guide was possibly…” As seen in the displayed graphic (which taken from Wizard Magazine, issue #25 from September 1993) the price guide was, “…meticulously calibrated in the recently-revamped Wizard Pricing Labs.” There’s no elaboration on what that means or who staffed that alleged lab. Nor on the process by which prices were determined. “…we are constantly in touch with store owners…” This is intentionally vague and, again, doesn’t name any stores or contacts to validate that sentence. Basically, these are unverifiable claims that have no evidence to support it. Therefore, the data analysis and the subsequent prices determined is questionable.
11:12 - “As was their relationship with certain publishers.” The connection between Image Comics and Wizard has a fair amount of circumstantial evidence to support it. Reportedly, Gareb Shamus, the publisher of Wizard was/is a family friend of Todd McFarlane, who provided the cover to the first issue. Shamus was also present at the first Image founders meeting. For the first two years of the magazine’s existence, almost all the covers were drawn by Image artists. The coverage of Image Comics also appeared to weigh heavier than other publishers. So, there is at least the appearance of a close connection between the comic book company and the magazine. In other words, there is the appearance of bias, which may have been reflected in their articles.
11:35 - “The bottom line was to get a collector to buy multiple copies of a comic book based on its cover…” Many of these gimmick covers were pre-bagged. So, a collector was unable to view the content beyond the cover without buying it first. Although, some stores would have an open copy for those that might ask to see inside before they make a purchase. In my experience, no one ever asked first.
12:17 - “During the early 90’s, when Marvel became a publicly traded company…” This portion just touches upon the more well-known factors that led to Marvel’s downfall. As suggested by some, Marvel offering stock and being answerable to shareholders was possibly motivated to increase the wealth of a few, select people. As were some of the subsequent business decisions.
18:30 - “This is not an exaggerated number.” In actuality, it’s a low number if one takes into account the various reboots of New Avengers, Secret Avengers and Dark Avengers. Most of which do tie-in to the ongoing Avengers saga. The real number is closer to 15 times since 2004.
#ModernAge #MarvelComics #DCComics #Batman #Superman