Collecting comics a fizzling trend
Where are all the comic-book collectors these days? Buying comics was a big thing for baby boomers two decades ago and for appreciators of sequential art, it still is. But it’s a hard sell for some to consider the printed medium as being worth something.
Today, most comic collectors buy to read, and only a handful of these readers take care of their purchases by sealing them in a comic bag with a backing board. That’s the sign of a collector.
“It’s a love affair with the object itself,” says Chris Boltan, writer of Seattle-based Smash Comics.
Some comic investors even go so far as to have climate-controlled attics for their rare comics, or simply hope the 20 copies of Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 under their bed will be worth millions one day.
Al Coccola, who has been collecting comics for more than 50 years, finds the buying and selling of comics is more of a hobby for him.
“It supports my habit so I can buy a few new titles a month. They don’t necessarily do better than a mutual fund, but they are a lot more fun to play with. Most people are collectors first, rather than investors,” says Coccola.
Back in the early ’90s, there were more investors than collectors.
When Island Fantasy, Xeron, and Curious Comics were the only game in town, more mom-and-pop operations opened up, hoping to cash in on the comic book craze.
Some managed to survive by cross-merchandising. Comic-book stores all over North America have echoed this trend; otherwise they wouldn’t have survived past the ’90s.
“The mid-’90s bust ruined the comic-book speculator for all time, but you never know what a few years or decades could do. The fans who continue to collect variant editions do so out of love for the medium rather than a desire for money,” says Bolton.
The heydays for a shop called Island Fantasy are gone, but the store’s former owner, Dick de Ryk, is still selling comics online. He knows the market has shifted and believes it’s gone a little more underground.
“Instead, comic-book collectors are all at home buying on the Internet,” says de Ryk.
Over on comic-strip row on Johnson Street, store managers Bill Rice, of Curious Comics, and Gareth Gaudin, of Legends Comics, have been keeping close tabs on the industry they love.
Gaudin notes that the two biggies, Marvel and DC, ruined the market by making comics a commodity first. They were forcing collectability on people instead of focusing on a cool story.
“Collectors are still looking for that elusive issue to complete their collection and lots of people who buy for reading purposes still end up collecting,” adds Rice, who says comic-book collecting is still a niche market even though it’s become more mainstream.
“If everything comes in cycles then this is the down-turn of comics,” says Gaudin. “It’s still going strong with people buying graphic novels.”
While the trade paperback killed the back-issue collecting market, it’s a good thing for readers. They’re no longer paying a high price for those hard-to-find early issues of Superman since they’ve been reprinted in the affordable trade-paperback format.
“A comic book is a lot about turning the pages and I love the smell of the old comics; that’s what collecting is all about,” says Gaudin, who’s hoping that more people get bit by the collecting bug.
“Comic collecting needs a new generation of young people to get into collecting back issues and boost interest again,” he says.
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