The Doctor is In: I Have Issues, but My Money’s on the Trade
In The Doctor is In, Allan “Doc” Dorison operates on a specific part of popular culture.
I recently walked into a comic book store in Brooklyn Heights and picked up the newest issue of Kick Ass.
The guy behind counter asked me: “Would you like a bag and board with that?”
“No I’m just going to roll it up, throw it in my back pocket and chuck it when I’m done,” I replied without thinking. The look on the clerk’s face was priceless. I continued: “It’s going to come out in trade paperback in about six months anyway.”
He gasped, then gave me a scowl and an unspoken “F&@% YOU!” as I walked out of the store.
As I strolled down the street with a rolled up comic in my pocket, I started to feel a little guilty. Only ten years ago, I would have torn someone’s head off if they treated a comic that way. Not anymore, though. Had I grown away from my obsessive fanboy tendencies?
Well, I still make weekly trips to the comic shop… I read Wizard regularly… I sneak new “exclusive” and “limited edition” Mighty Muggs onto the shelves of my bookcases even though, as my fiancee reminds me, the tchotchke quota of our apartment has exceeded critical mass… So… Nope. I’m still pretty nerdy.
As I dug deeper into my collector’s soul, I got down to the truth of the matter. Basically, I feel the single issue is dead.
It seems that the comic book stories that are being written today, are longer in format than those of yesteryear. They’re being written in four to six issue arcs with the long view of eventually being published in the collected trade paper back format. Gone for the most part are the in-continuity one shot, or even two off storyline. It looks like the comic book industry is booming again, and not because of the “Mom and Pop Comic Shops” but rather from the sales being made at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other booksellers.
Companies like Mile High Comics are having 75% off sales on they’re single issues just to keep them moving, and understandably so. Why should someone pay $4 dollars per single issue, from an advertised 10 issue arc? That’s $40 for the complete story. Why spend that, when you can buy the same arc for about $25 a couple of months later as a trade?
Sometimes you don’t even have to spend that much, on account of the insane sales that you can find at any comic convention regardless of its size. I know I look forward to shopping at Katz’s Komics table or booth at every show I go to in New York. I’ll drop most of my expendable cash on half-priced trades and graphic novels, sometimes picking up entire runs of a series for under $100. My friend Matt just picked up some hard back collections at a small, local convention in Pennsylvanyia for $5 dollars a pop. As a cost conscious collector it seems like trades are the way to go. Dollar for dollar it makes the most sense.
This is the trend, people, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. So, what does this mean for the single issue? How can the publishers bring readers and long time fans back? Should they print 50 variant covers like they did in the 90’s?
Absolutely not.
A lot of comic fans that, like me, grew up with the 90s boom and bust feel the same way. Perhaps it’s because we watched “prospectors” jump on, and then off our bandwagon, after their poly-bagged variant covers of X-Men #1 failed to send them to graduate school. Maybe some of us felt burned, or burned out, by the whole situation and as a result we no longer mind our collections as carefully. When everything’s a collectible nothing really has any value, has become a kind of mantra to some of us. I’ve already admitted that I still buy singles and read them, even knowing that I will eventually throw them out long after they’ve collected dust and knicks in the magazine rack next to… ahem… my favorite seat in the house.
I buy them because I still like feeling “on top” of a storyline and supporting new artists and writers as their books hit the stands, but I no longer feel the need to preserve each issue in its own tomb to ensure the cash value of a comic that has sentimental value to me. If I really like a book, I’ll buy the collection and preserve it on my bookshelf, or even share the love by lending the book to a friend who maybe didn’t get on board when the single issues were in the shops.
Maybe buyers like myself, who no longer collect singles can keep the format alive once you combine our sales figures with the people who are still die hard bag and boarders, but basic supply and demand dictates that less and less single issues will be around…. Therefore, their inherent value should go up, assuming that they’re still printed and sold over the long haul. Things have started returning to the days when parents threw away their kids comics. Except now, some of us are both the parent and the child keeping our own rooms clean in order to fill them with different stuff, like say “exclusive” or “limited edition” Mighty Muggs.
So my advice, my prescription for the wise collector — the one that doesn’t provoke the silent dismissal of comic store clerks –would be to watch the trends, stock up on mylar sleeves and snatch these fading pieces of popular culture from the mitts of fans like me who will just use them to prop up table ends, or worse lose them behind our toilets. I won’t stand in your way, but don’t look in my back pocket, you might not be able to stand what you see.
(with Matt. Murray)
Allan Dorison is the event and conference manager for a major financial bank in New York City. He has previously served in a leadership capacity on the executive boards of several comics based organizations. His video parodies of pop culture phenomena can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/hexo66.
I still bag and board my single issues, whenever I buy comics. I have no illusions of them being worth much later on, and I know they’re not original art, but there is something about them. I feel bad treating comics like any other dentist office magazine that you can just throw around when you’re done with.
Trade paperbacks on the other hand, because they are slightly sturdier when I am done with, I stick them on the bookshelf. Some are bagged (even though it looks weird) but most are not. While generally, a trade will give you most of the single issue stories, sometimes the editor cuts out some issues or even just a few pages from some of the more “epic” events.
If you want the whole story, your best bet is still the single-issue hunt.
-L
Wow, interesting point Lee. As someone who sheepsihly admits to not even reading “current continuity” comics anymore, at least until months or even years later after they’ve been collected in a trade, this is food for thought… Also as someone with a genuinely insane collector’s steak in me you may have re-ignited a bigger flame in figuring out what holes there may be in my reading and shelving and I may have a nervous breakdown tracking down single issues I think I’m missing because I bought the collection out of a bargain bin. Thanks.
Also worth noting is that if you hit half off back issue sales individual issues can usually be purchased for far less than cover price. I’ve also noticed that demand for issues has lessened over the years and lots of great books can be purchased for less than a buck an issue which can certainly compete with graphic novel prices.
-Thrifty Jared