Sneaky Salicrup, after offering up a bunch of suggestions to mighty Marvel on how to best succeed in selling comics through 7-11, hints that somehow this may all wind up making you some big bucks. Let’s find out how, shall we?

First, I must say how impressed I was with Joe Quesada’s talk a few weeks back at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (www.moccany.org), as part of Danny Fingeroth’s Inside the Comic Creator’s Studio seminar series. I was also impressed with how interested the jam-packed audience was in such seemingly mundane issues as comicbook distribution, especially the 7-11 distribution deal that Marvel had recently announced. But Joe also shared such other nuggets of knowledge as:

Revealing that Marvel’s market research had tested Marvel’s latest comicbook offering with three different groups -- older lapsed comics fans (from late 20s on up), mid-teens to mid-20s, and young kids (say, 8 – early mid-teens). The results were very interesting. The oldest group was surprised to see the many technical advances in printing and coloring since they last read comics, lest we forget how horribly printed comics were just 15 years ago. They also seemed impressed with the overall look of the comics and wanted to know where they could buy these new Marvel comics. The middle group was totally unimpressed. They simply had no interest in comics, no matter how well produced they were. They simply had no interest in comics. The youngest group was impressed and thought the Marvel comics were cool and wanted to know where they could buy them.

Marvel also discovered, that of this highly desirable young group of potential new Marvel fans, almost all lived within either walking or bike-riding distance from a 7-11. They also learned that 7-11 was one of the places these kids were allowed to go by themselves, and be allowed to spend their own money.

Rather interesting info, eh? One of the conclusions we can draw from all that is that comics have skipped an entire generation of readers. It’s not unlike the cigarette business in a sense. The smoking industry’s market research shows that if they don’t hook potential smokers by a certain age, they’ve lost that customer forever. Perhaps it’s similar with comics? If publishers can’t get readers addicted to comics (catchy title, eh?) by a certain age, they may have lost them for good.

Joe also spoke about his first time experiences with buying comics and how the collecting aspect played a vital role. When Joe first started buying comics as a kid, there was just something irresistible about an old issue of the Fantastic Four, that was displayed up on his comic shop’s wall, enshrined in a plastic bag, and selling for an astronomical ten dollars. Joe simply had to have that comic. So, he saved his money and eventually bought it. It didn’t even matter that it was in fairly poor condition, young Joe had just purchased a piece of comics history!

Jim Salicrup, Joe Quesada and Danny Fingeroth at MoCCA

Joe also realizes the true difference between a casual reader and a comics collector. We may all like to call ourselves “comics fans,” but when Joe asked everyone in the audience who threw away their comics after they read them, to raise their hands, not a single hand went up. “You’re all comicbook collectors,” he correctly proclaimed.

But more importantly, Joe understands what makes comics truly collectable. Obviously, rarity is a major factor. It’s also one of the reasons Joe got Marvel to stop over-printing their comics. Besides cutting Marvel’s inventory costs, Joe has actually created true collector’s item comics again. Unlike the millions of “hot” comics that comics speculators were buying back in the early 90s by the box-load, that clearly were not “rare,” today’s Marvel comics, actually are rare. The print runs, for almost the past decade have been the lowest they’ve been in decades. Have you tried buying back issues of popular titles published in just the past few years? If you’re able to find them at all, I bet they’re selling at a pretty premium, unlike the 90s “hot” comics clogging up the quarter bins at most comic conventions.

So, at long last we’ve come to the part of this column you’ve been waiting for – how you can make some extra bucks. Well, lest I be accused of promoting yet another “speculator’s market” like the one in the 90s, let’s simply review. Comics in recent years, from every comics publisher, not just Marvel, have seen record-setting low print runs. Yes, most popular storylines are available in trade paperback collections, but collectors want the “rare” original comics. Then factor in the increased interest in comics recently, and the new distribution channels opening up, such as this 7-11 deal, is it therefore unreasonable to expect that the audience for comics may possibly double, or even triple or quadruple, over the next five years? And what’s going to happen to the price of back issues from the last ten years, if the demand exceeds the virtually non-existent supply? We’ll, I’d suggest, if you have such comics in your collection, you may want to make sure they’re all warm and snug in their mylar bags, ‘cause you may consider selling them in a few years, at prices you won’t believe.

Let me give you yet another example of what I’m talking about. Papercutz published three issues of The Hardy Boys in comicbook form. Keep in mind, I edited those comics, so, I don’t want anyone saying I didn’t disclose any vital bits of information. In case you don’t remember seeing those comics, it was fairly easy to miss them, since they came out the same time as such mega-blockbusters from Marvel and DC as Identity Crisis, The New Avengers, and revelations about Gwen Stacey’s past. Yet, the Hardy Boys have quite a hardcore following of fans and collectors of their own, they just don’t often frequent comic shops.

Thus, these Hardy Boys comics, which all had print runs lower than any Hardy Boys mystery sold in bookstores, are true collector’s items. In fact, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, there was a mistake in the very first issue that makes them even more desirable to collectors – Frank and Joe Hardy were inadvertently depicted with each other’s girlfriends. It was corrected in the collected edition -- the edition that’s now available in school book clubs, libraries, and bookstores everywhere – and that’s the edition intended to remain in print, I hope, for many, many years to come. But boy, it sure was wrong in the comicbook. Now, obviously, I can’t guarantee that these Hardy Boys comics will ever increase in value, but considering the low print runs, and the fact that The Hardy Boys have been around longer than Superman, what do you think?

What I’m not suggesting is that anyone buy multiple copies of any comicbook for “investment” purposes. The best reason to buy any comic is simply because you want to read and enjoy it. Besides, if everyone suddenly starts buy hundreds of extra copies, it’ll just be a repeat of what happened last time. It’s only because the comics published in recent years, even such bestsellers as the JLA/Avengers, have been produced in such comparatively small numbers that they’ll be collectible. Oh, and there is that small matter of the comics-buying population having to double, triple, or even quadruple first. So don’t do anything crazy!

Be here next week, when I offer a few money-saving tips -- all designed to help you have more money to spend on comics!

Addicted to Comics is © Copyright 2005 by Jim Salicrup. All rights reserved.