I'd bet that part of the massive drop in sales figures from the early 1990s to today is that fewer people are buying five copies of every issue of X-Men in the hopes that it will become an instant collectible.

Andrew, the drop in sales is not just from the 90s...sales are way lower than they were in the 80s, 70s, 60s, etc. It's not just that the speculators are gone (or mostly gone)...the readership is hugely diminished.

are libraries a Good Thing for
comics?

I work for the Central Rappahannock Library System, but I'm a workhorse not a librarian. I lobbied to get a bunch of ESSENTIALS and SHOWCASE trades on the shelves, and they stay in constant circulation all of the time.

I did this because "graphic novels" dominated what little bit of comics-related material we had. So for kids (my target audience), they only had access to utter shite instead of the best comics ever made, which were produced thirty to forty years before they were born. I wanted them to see the X-Men by Jack Kirby, Spider-Man by Ditko, Superman by Wayne Boring, before suffering with the literal and the equivalent of Superman's mullet or electric Superman or eye-gougingly bad art by the "luminaries" of the modern Industry.

If it's a library's responsibility to further the education of the masses, there has to be the "great" comics of the past on the shelves. The caveat with libraries is the constriction of money available, so ESSENTIALS/SHOWCASE fit the bill (though Marvel could stand to make their books a bit more sturdy, as they fall apart from constant readings, whereas SHOWCASE stay firm); libraries are putting money into their computer access, not into the comic book section (Young Adult).

The money being siphoned off from graphic novel/monthly sales is more than negliable if it means one kid gets exposed to what we were exposed to, pre-1990s with the iconic characters in particular. The future of comics is inexorably tied into how Superman, Batman and Spider-Man perform, imo...it isn't about the money being made, it's who is being exposed. And that's the kids, the kids, the kids, all the way up to the retarded teenagers. Because I was a retarded teenager and reading comic books, great comics, was one of the few areas of pride I had...I understood the difference between a good story and a bad story, contextually, from the past stories of the true greats. So I was always able to have scale, and "taste" in comics and good reading in general.

I think the exposure in libraries is imperative to developing good "taste" in reading, overall, and without them the kids only have horseshit LORD OF THE RINGS knock-offs and STAR WARS tie-in books and whatever sub-literary "Goosebumps" offerings out there. Comics, the great comics of the past, have infinitely more sub-text and "human" themes dealt with, as well as a moral/ethical base still unmatched in modern youth literature.

The fact is, every kid who has read the "true" comics of the past are more layered, more perceptive, and more creative than those who haven't. I believe that firmly.