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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 7:55am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

The Crash happened when the speculators grew a single brain cell each, and with that massive new processing power realized that if they ALL had 100 copies of CAPTAIN COVETED #1 stuffed in mylar bags in their mom's basement, those 100 copies would never be "worth" anything. So they all walked away, causing the artificially inflated industry to implode.

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Tim O Neill
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 8:32am | IP Logged | 2 post reply


I remember trying to buy the JB X-Men back issues that led up to the death of Phoenix, and they were mostly too much for my non-existent budget.  I still managed to buy a few.

I think JB’s run on X-Men is perceived as successful because those issues were so sought after, as evidenced by the success of the Dark Phoenix trade - a book that I always kept handy and revisited often after I stopped buying comic books in middle school.  That trade played a big part in my continuing to read my comic book collection even after I stopped buying new material.





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Andrew Bitner
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Many people, so many years later, probably have a hard time believing that stories as influential as "Days of Future Past" and "Dark Phoenix" weren't monumental bestsellers. Their impact and legacy is immense and yet, at the time--if I remember correctly--they weren't blowing the top-selling books out of the water.

And what WERE the bestselling titles when those books came out? Does anyone remember?
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Petter Myhr Ness
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Back in the 80ies we had plenty of superhero titles over here, and X-Men was introduced in '84 (as "Project X"). It lasted only a year before it was cancelled due to lack of sales, and consisted of the Claremont/Byrne run, ending with Days of Future Past. I remember the editors lamented the cancellation at the time, as they felt the book deserved a bigger audience. 

(they reappeared a few years later, though, in an anthology series). 
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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

JB -- how well did your FANTASTIC FOUR usually sell, per month? My guess is that everyone who bought your FF actually read it, that few of them were speculators.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I remmeber seeing some of the first distributor ads (possibly from from Capital) aimed at comic fans and not stores promoting that they/you could buy a case wholesale of one hundred (or exponential quantities of that number) for X-Men #143, Daredevil #169 and Dazzler #1. I remember those particular issue numbers and titles being promoted. Must've been in that Buyer's Guide newspaper, and to me that is when the speculation thing really got going! Not so long later I remember an ad with a price for 1,000 of Alpha Flight #1.
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Steve Adelson
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Posted: 13 July 2018 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

And just to remember "back in the day"... X-Men #66, the final issue of the original run, reported paid circulation of just under 200,000 as it went into bi-monthly reprints.

....also, almost exactly as many printed, but unsold.

OTOH, Fantastic Four of the same era reported 330K sold and 198K additional printed.  Amazing to me that the print runs could have been THAT far off from sales, month after month.
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 14 July 2018 at 8:51am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Amazing to me that the print runs could have been THAT far off from sales, month after month.

••

Today, we look at "print run" and think "That's how many were ordered, with a few extras for spoilage."

In the Before Time, it was much more complex than that, with the publishers required to produce a large overage to cover not only spoilage, but outside interference, such as bundles leaving the printers and never being seen again. Or arriving at the distribution point, and getting no further.

CRIME! GRAFT! CORRUPTION!!!

It was a messy business.

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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 14 July 2018 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

The bales of comics era. "Hey Chawlie, throw me a bale of those funny books". "Shure. I think a couple musta gone missing, dropped off the back if ya know what I mean, haw."

Even if your local spinner-rack retailer actually did follow what titles were popular (hard to imagine many cared over such a low profit item) they couldn't specifically order more of them and less of what sold none at all. It was a terrible system full of wastage the green thinkers of today would be astonished by. Good for kids who got something with their nickels and dimes, so long as they'd take what they found, but that was about all I can say for it.
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Robbie Parry
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Posted: 14 July 2018 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

 John Byrne wrote:
CRIME! GRAFT! CORRUPTION!!!

If you ever write your memoirs, Mr Byrne, particularly if they focus on your comic career, make that the title of your book, PLEASE!
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 14 July 2018 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

The title of my memoirs (Vol 1) is SHADOWS DON'T HAVE SPEED LINES!
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Darin Henry
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Posted: 14 July 2018 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I loved the bales of comics!  I can recall one or two occasions when the 10 or 11 year old me got to the drug store to find a bale of brand new comics resting on the floor beside the spinner rack, still tied tightly with those flat, skinny plastic bands that cut into your hands when you pulled on them. I remember surreptitiously flicking through the exposed corners of every comic to see if any of the titles I read were included and if they were, the challenge was seeing how far you could separate it from the book on top of it to peek at more of the cover image.  I can also remember occasionally seeing the unsold comics on a return pile, sprawled out looking exhausted at best or like accident victims at worst.   Thank goodness the direct market came along and rescued comics from readers like me.
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