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Joe Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6709
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | 1
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Spider-Man #165
Stegron? Loved that!!! Talk about tugging on your
heartstrings, I remember being SO sad for that poor
dinosaur man!! Falling into the freezing water!
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Bruce Buchanan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 June 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4797
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | 2
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You got it, Joe! In hindsight, I realize that issue isn't particularly noteworthy by the high standards of 1970s Spider-Man comics. But it never fails to bring back the warm 'n' fuzzy nostalgia for me.
To follow up on JB's story about comics being everywhere, I remember buying my comics at three different convenience stores, the grocery store, Kmart and the downtown news stand. And that's just in the small North Carolina town I called home.
Every time my parents would take me to buy groceries or fill up the car, I'd almost always come home with a comic or two. And that's the point - I didn't have to make a special trip to get comics like I do today. They were right there at all of our usual stops.
Edited by Bruce Buchanan on 19 June 2009 at 1:54pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134818
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | 3
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Stegron? Loved that!!! Talk about tugging on your heartstrings, I remember being SO sad for that poor dinosaur man!! Falling into the freezing water! •• Len Wein came up with Stegron, and that story, because he didn't like the idea of dinosaurs being warm blooded!
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Jason Mark Hickok
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 February 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 10472
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | 4
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I am with a lot of people here. I remember walking as a young kid to the drug store to see what comics they had. If that store didn't have anything interesting it was on to the next store which also carried comics. I think there were 4 or 5 places I could buy books (when I did have a couple bucks) and I grew up in a small town of 2000 people.
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Joe Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6709
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | 5
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So, the newest news from the science world said dinosaurs
were warm blooded, and Len disagreed?
It is a warm fuzzy story for me, even thought Stegron was a
despicable character!
I loved the Andru run so much....LOVED!
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Rob Spalding
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 June 2006
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1152
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | 6
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I got into comics late, and it was due to an impulse purchase of a comic that always hits its deadlines.
I may have told this story before, but I'll do it one last time, for fun.
Waiting for a delayed train I nipped into the station's newsagents and there on the rack was the Judge Dredd Megazine.
After that one issue I was hooked and it didn't take me long to be buying both it and 2000ad the parent comic.
Amzing to think that as far as I know, barring a printer's strike in the early 80's/late 70's, 2000ad ( a weekly comic) has never shipped late.
With weekly comics such as the Beano and Dandy being my reads as a kid, it still comes as a surprise to me that American comics have issues with lateness. When over here there are 20 - 30 page comics coming out weekly, with artists and writers still producing the same they would for a monthly 22 page comic.
Also we're now getting comics that are 3 issues of Marvel or DC comics bundled together, for about £4 that are available in nearly every newsagent I go into. I wonder what kind of numbers they are selling? I would imagine that they would surprise the number men at the Big Two with how well they sell, just in the UK.
If you had a similar thing in the US I would think they'd do gangbusters (that is the right term isn't it?)
Maybe DC and Marvel need a few old Beano and Dandy editors to come in and oversee things.
Edited by Rob Spalding on 19 June 2009 at 2:09pm
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Greg Woronchak
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 7
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How many more "EVENTS" can they pump out and how many more ways can they find to publish a new Spider-Man or Batman title.
I do agree with this point, but I can understand the mentality behind it. Suits have no clue about the quality or appeal of a given comic book (an unfair generalization, I'll admit), only what results in sales 'blips': variant covers, 'events', and having Obama appear in a book.
Hopefully, more creators/publishers will figure out that good stories that make you want to buy the next issue (rather than wait for the eventual trade) published when promised might result in sales as well.
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Joe Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6709
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 8
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and I definitely got it off the newsstand!
Waited a whole Month for the conclusion, when I saw the
cover for part 2 at the store, I swear I was smiling so
wide you could see the inside of my ears!
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Keith Thomas
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 3082
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | 9
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I remember a lot of the people I knew got their comics when
their school had book drives to raise money and got their
parents to buy them subscriptions to a bunch of comics.
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Arc Carlton
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 April 2009
Location: Peru
Posts: 3493
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | 10
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Comics should be available everywhere.
Now it's like you must have a car, some extra free time and the address of a comic book store. I remember when I was in Miami 2 years ago (Coconut Grove and Key Biscayne), there was no way I could find some place to buy comics. I even looked in the Diamond comic shop locator online, and I went to the closest shop I had found (which was like, oh, sort of a long trip on the metro rail) only to found out it was out of business.
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4075
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | 11
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I think that the comics industry went off the rails when it tried too hard to make itself like the baseball card industry.
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, there was a surge of interest in baseball cards as collectibles. There was mainstream news coverage, every Holiday Inn and town hall across the country was hosting card shows, the big companies started branching out in every possible direction (Super premium sets! Low end retro sets! Desert Storm cards! Hockey cards!), little companies sprung up everywhere, baseball card shops sprung up nationwide, and the most essential product that a card collector needed was the Beckett's Monthly price guide (which went from a catch-all mag to just a baseball card mag, with other sports and non-sports editions coming along in the 1990s, too).
The end result of all of this? Premium card sets pushed all of the regular, entry-point sets out of stores. Five-and-dimes stopped carrying baseball cards altogether, since people were buying all of their cards at specialty shops. Instead of getting 15 cards in a pack that was less than a buck, it was more and more common to get seven or eight cards in a pack that cost two-to-five dollars. The regular product was treated like dirt, with a big emphasis placed on limited edition inserts and rare variable cards. Card companies focused on high-end chase cards in an effort to appeal to adult speculators, effectively pricing kids out of the market.
And how's the baseball card market doing today? There are only two major card companies still in existence, as diminishing returns forced the other companies to close their doors permanently. Beckett's price guide has canceled all but one magazine, which now covers all sports cards in one magazine. It's been at least a decade since I've seen baseball cards for sale outside of a specialty shop, and it's been at least that long since I've encountered kids or adults who've expressed any interest at all in baseball cards as a hobby.
You still see the occasional news story about the most valuable baseball card being sold for a million bucks, but apart from that, the mainstream media and the general public seem like they couldn't care less about baseball cards.
Long story short: Multi-million dollar industry geared at kids; adults take notice, come in and wreck everything; industry loses 75-90% of its peak customer base, and is reduced to a mere shadow of its former self. Comics haven't shot themselves in the foot as badly as the trading card industry did, but comics followed that business model much more closely than they ever should have.
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JT Molloy
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Posts: 2092
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| Posted: 19 June 2009 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | 12
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Maybe if Grant Morrison wrote the statistics on the back of trading cards, people would call it "brilliant" and bring the industry from cold dead back to life support!
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