A LOT Of People Were Buying Comics Just To Scalp Them
Like with today’s Pokemon card craze, what set off the comic book-buying bonanza of the ’90s was basically a combination of 1) average fans now being older and having more money to throw around, and 2) investors realizing that something that was once dirt cheap could potentially go for big bucks one day. In 1991, The New York Times put out an article about how the first Batman comic had gone from costing 10 cents to $55,000, causing everyone who bought the paper that day to have their eyeballs replaced by dollar signs like in an old-timey cartoon.
A whole lot of people thought, “Hey, if that crappy old Batman comic is now worth 50K, surely this issue of DeathBlood Meets DarkDeath (Feat. DeathDeath Jr.) will be worth THREE TIMES that! It’s got way more exclamation marks on the cover!!!”
This new fever also coincided with the rise of the first comic book rock stars. Within a few years, artists like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld went from total randos to having their own Levi’s ads and showing up on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous — which is extra impressive when you consider that only two of those three could draw something that kinda looked like a human body.
Still, they must have been doing something right, because for the first time ever you had hordes of fans showing up at comic book stores asking specifically for issues drawn by one artist.
Marvel Comics
More readers (or buyers, at least) meant more stores opened up, especially after the two biggest comic book distributing companies lowered the requirements to order bulk comics from them. Suddenly, any nerd with $300 in their pocket could go from buyer to dealer, which is how the U.S. went from having 800 comics stores in the late ’70s to around 10,000 in 1993. And since there was more shelf space to fill, it was easier for new comic book companies to pop up, hoping to be the new Marvel or DC … or at least the new Archie Comics, but with more guns and bigger boobs.
So now you had a whole bunch of people eager to buy comics — some in case they were worth something one day, some because they were opening up their own stores, and some because they actually wanted to read them. And, for a while, this worked out pretty well for everyone. But then something tragic happened: the business people noticed.
Marvel And DC (But Mostly Marvel) Went All In On Pandering To Speculators
When the major comic book companies realized they were getting a massive influx of new readers, the reaction we less “Well, let’s make sure we’re giving them the best possible product for their money” and more “OK, how do we squeeze more cash out of them?” One common tactic was (and still is) to print variant covers for special issues, hoping that collectors and speculators would buy the same comic multiple times because the art on the front was different. For instance, 1991’s X-Men #1 had four different Jim Lee covers that combined into one image, plus a a fifth version that folded out like a porno mag centerfold (ask your parents what that is).
Marvel Comics
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