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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Comic Books 101
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Comic shops can feel welcoming and hostile at the same time, mostly because the language is a maze. We break that maze into simple, usable terms so you can walk in knowing what to ask for, what you’re looking at on the shelves, and how to avoid the classic awkward moments at the counter.
Cold Open And Welcome Back
SPEAKER_02Acroid.
SPEAKER_01Dan acroid. The manager, the legend.
SPEAKER_02It's either something you have to treat with a topical cream or I got acroids. Ah, my head is killing me. Do you have any more acroids in there?
SPEAKER_01Hey man, I saw you playing Space Invaders. Have you ever played Acroids?
SPEAKER_02Free radicals and acroids that need to be addressed by taking the Dispatch Ajax supplement boner pills. And by that I mean they are supplement to our regular boner pills.
SPEAKER_00As part of the Galactic Crisis Council, we implore the Neuronians and the Acroids to come together for the fate of all alien kind.
SPEAKER_02The warning factions of red and black actroids that are fighting over the fate of the Earth. Wait, this isn't an acroid. This is an actroid.
SPEAKER_00Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds. Are they in the proper approach for today?
unknownCharge the lightning field.
Why Comic Shops Can Intimidate
SPEAKER_02Well, welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. GQ and I have both worked in comic book stores and spent many of our formative years in them. I always felt a sense of camaraderie. It always made me feel like, oh, here's somewhere I actually belong. In its frank discussions about things that you don't have to explain yourself to people, people who already kind of get it, and then you don't have to explain to the girl sitting next to you in algebra why you're reading a comic book or what a comic book game it is. But I think that does sometimes have an unfortunate flip side where let's say you're not terribly familiar with all of the forget about just comic book lore, but the terminology formats and different vehicles that comic book companies use to deliver you this information. It can be intimidating if you don't know a lot. It can be intimidating if you do know a lot. So we thought we'd give you sort of a primer on the comic book industry and shop terminology so that the next time you go to a comic book shop, at least in this sense, you won't feel completely out in the cold or get the cold children from Mr. Freeze, Iceman, or Captain Cold. Always has, always will. Always will be. That's a cold dick. Don't worry if this seems a little rudimentary, but we wanted to start at a ground floor so that we can build for people with every level of knowledge on these topics.
What A Comic Book Means
SPEAKER_02So let's begin at the beginning. Jake, what is a comic book? Well, thank you for asking, Skip. Would you tell us, huh?
SPEAKER_01I guess. So, what is a comic book? A modern comic book is roughly 6.625 by 10.1875 inch bound periodical, also known as a floppy. Generally holds between 22 and 32 pages of content, usually with a lot of advertisements in them and on them. Nowadays it's high-quality paper, but that's not how it used to be. In 1897, the G.W. Dillingham Company published a collection of reprints of the newspaper comic strip, The Yellow Kid. On the back, the term comic book appeared for the first time. Now back then, the word comic just meant funny, thus, these were called the funnies. 1935. Everything would just be in your local newspaper. Kids, I know you don't know what a newspaper is, but ask your grandpa, and he'll tell you that they were the ways that we received news and advertisements and entertainment. They'd be delivered to your uh your door, or you could get them at a local newsstand. Or you could steal them for your neighbor. Or you could hit the paperboy with your truck and just bring him and keep him under your house and take all of his papers and use them to line all the bird cages that you have.
SPEAKER_02That was a dark entry into the paperboy game series.
SPEAKER_01If you got it wrong too many times, like a choose your own adventure, that would be one of the things that would happen.
SPEAKER_02It's a GTA paperboy.
SPEAKER_01You'd get gay seed, you know. Nobody wants that.
SPEAKER_02Oh god. I was gonna say newsied. The newspapers were so ubiquitous that they would literally use them to line bird cages, you'd use them to wrap presents if you couldn't find any wrapping paper, you'd shred them up and use them as filler and things. They were so everywhere, they were everywhere, they were on the streets, they were the way everything was consumed. Which also is one of the reasons initially, I believe, that a lot of adults didn't think that when comic books debuted, they were valuable, but things will change. Yes.
SPEAKER_01All of the stories uh that you would be seeing, your your Dick Tracy's, your actual hubris characters, they would all be in the newspapers. Now in 1938, when Superman debuted, most comic books were still collections of comic strips. So they would just take comic strips that were in the newspaper, they would put them into a like combined format, and that's how you would read them. So that kind of comic book would keep being published alongside the growing amount of superhero books until well into the 1960s. By that time, uh the name comic book, partly because the word comic was not only commonly used to refer to things that were funny anymore. The only thing most Americans associated with the word comic became sequential art that came in these floppy issues. Now, again, comic books are generally, again, sequential art. Used to tell stories of all varying types. Usually they are done one after another in a series. Sometimes the stories stand on their own, something we might call a one-shot, but a lot of times they are told in order to prolong a narrative for a character or an event.
SPEAKER_02The biggest characters. This kind of stems out of the tradition of, at least the American tradition, obviously all these things have roots in Europe, but in the American tradition of printing pulp magazines and paperback books, they were called pulp because they were printed on cheap paper. They often included illustrations, especially the magazine formats. But the thing that makes the American comic book when Superman or when Action Comics No. But it is the debut of a standalone, uniquely American art form. This is the first time this format first develops. It's the combination of not just narrative storytelling through text or illustrated text, but a delicate balance between the two. And yeah, it's a little rough at first, because a lot of it is just narrating what's happening, what you're saying, but will culminate in a in a style so unique that it's told both harmoniously in balance between text and visuals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think because of the way that pulp novels were made, distributed, and consumed, that also colored the way that comic books were thought of at the time. So pulp, it was literally disposable entertainment. That's how it was designed. You take it, read it, throw it away.
SPEAKER_02In the UK, we started with the Penny Dreadful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Or a detective story. And then those kind of get ported over here, but we don't call them the same thing. But then they very quickly turn into something else.
SPEAKER_01And so when when pulp novels went the way of the dodo, that entertainment source was taken over by comic books. And comic books being of lesser quality paper, designed for both younger audiences and less complicated storytelling, they were immediately relegated to a lower form of entertainment. You know, not something that a dignified person would consume, something more for like the muling masses or young kids. And that was kind of the stigma that was placed on it.
SPEAKER_02And funny enough, that perception also posed an opportunity when Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster created Superman. It started out as more of a zine or a almost a pulp-styled story about the plight of the Jewish people in Europe and Jewish Americans, because the first iteration, and I guess technically this you would think of it as an ash can by definition, which we will also talk about, started out with the Ubermensch, where Superman, the Ubermensch, was the villain based on Nietzsche, which was co-opted by the Nazis, and Superman in that was Bald, Allah Lex Luthor, and he was the oppressive Aryan presence that chased the Jews that had fled Europe to America. Schuster and Siegel very adeptly realized that if they wanted to tell their story to an audience of not just Jewish youth who needed a way to celebrate, you know, their faith and their traditions, but also accessible to oblivious white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Catholics that were the majority of Americans at that point. They crafted the story of Superman, which we have discussed before, but it bears mentioning because that's part of the history of the creation of these things, that Superman was it's a retelling of the story of Moses, and it's a way for Jewish peoples to pass on their traditions in a more subtle and less stigmatized to avoid persecution and shame, sometimes programs. So the superhero, though that type of character still existed, at this moment, that's why we consider Superman the first superhero, because it's the first time this explicit hero shows up in his own book in this format. It's the birth of the entire comic book and superhero genre. Because you had the phantom and you had the shadow and things before in comic strips. But this is the first time it's its own thing, and it's a clearly defined superhero. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Unless we expand it out, and we could get into Ogunbat, which we've discussed before, in our comic book movies episode, where we detail the entire history, comic books translated to movies and how that evolved over time, both within the comic book and the movie industry. Please do go check that out. It's a good series we did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was good. Yeah. As opposed to a lot of the other crap we put out. Yeah. We did a good job, that one.
SPEAKER_01How about that?
Graphic Novel Versus Trade Paperback
SPEAKER_02We executed the purpose of the uh podcast.
SPEAKER_01So if you go into a comic shop, obviously you're gonna see a lot of single issues there. We'll get into other differences and intricacies within those, but you'll also probably see a lot of it would seem to be thicker comics, almost books out there. We'll get into the differences between what uh a trade paperback is and a graphic novel in time. But to start off with, a graphic novel in and of itself is essentially a standalone comic book story that's produced as a complete self-contained work, as opposed from like uh a serialized narrative that is then put together. But this is all one cohesive piece that gets a little complicated throughout the history of the term graphic novel, but let's let's dive into that just to give you a little basis of what that where that comes from. The graphic novel term was coined by Richard Kyle in issue two of Kappa Alpha Newsletter, published in 1964. Now, Kyle stated he would use the term graphic story and graphic novel to describe the artistically serious comic book strip, quote unquote, which in his mind referred to outstanding comics such as Harvey Kurtzman's and Bernard Kriegsted's EC comic stories. Kyle used the term again in the graphic story review column he contributed to Bill Spicer's Fantasy Illustrated issue number five in 1966. Now he used it as an aesthetic descriptor, summarized as quote unquote great artistic creativity that no child could have appreciated, but which would have electrified many intelligent adults if they'd permitted themselves to read comic books.
SPEAKER_02Fanboy defensiveness already already cropping its ugly head up.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean it's it's been 30, 35 years since you know, essentially comic books were really truly on the market. And you're starting to get uh people pushing their glasses up their nose and looking down and saying, this is something real there. This isn't just kid stuff. Now it's obvious the pomposity and subcultural significance colored its interpretation for many thereafter. But it wasn't until the mid-late 70s that it caught on. It was the shift from cheap periodical pamphlet formats to higher quality and more expensive format designed at being sold in bookstores instead of newsstands. That is in the old days where you would be able to buy comic books. It was on newsstands or spinner racks at a drugstore. It didn't have shops specifically designed to sell comic books.
SPEAKER_02This will tie in later, too, because the archetype of the buying a comic book from a newsstand is an underground spine throughout Watchmen by Alan Moore, where a lot of the narrative is told and it's sort of metatextually defined through a a little kid reading a comic book at a newsstand, a comic book of a different genre. It's we we can't get into too much of the meta-layeredness of Watchmen, but we will talk about some of the misconceptions based on this terminology.
SPEAKER_01A picture in their mind of what we're talking. Now, in Europe, so-called albums, which were book form reprinting of newspaper strips and comic books, were quite popular and had become the high-end segment of comics publishing. Things like the adventures of Tintin or Tonton and Asterix being chief among them. Now the term began to be used in the book trade, as it was said, quote unquote, large format paperbacks that depend upon pictures as much as words to tell stories. The two titles were Corbin's Neverware, 1978, published by Ballantine, and Jack Katz The First Kingdom, also published in 1978, published by Pocket Wallaby. Katz was an essential, if not inconspicuous, participant in the late 1970s popularization of the term graphic novel. In 1973, he created the idea of a mammoth 768-page sustained comic strip narrative, The First Kingdom, which he sold to his publisher, Bud Plant, as a graphic novel. The term truly becomes widely known after the release of Will Eisner's A Contract with God in 1978, the so-called graphic story, a whole novel in comic form, which helped popularize the concept and format in the comic book industry. In the 80s, the emergence of the direct distribution market embraced the graphic novel as a format that could be designed for specialty stores. Marvel graphic novels launched in 1982, and their format of 8.5 inch by 11-inch softcover one-shots printed on quality paper that were written and illustrated by big name creators became the template of other companies and alternative publishers at the time. As it continued to gain prestige and visibility in the mainstream, with more media coverage and notoriety, especially with the publication of Mouse in 1992 that won a Pulitzer Prize. That said, many booksellers saw this quote industry buzzword as a two to three book field, encompassing Mouse, Harvey Picar's American Splendor, and The Dark Knight Returns. It was also around this time that the graphic novels began to enter libraries, which was a huge boost in their visibility and widespread consumption. Now the push-pull between commerciality and pretension in the use of the term rather than other terms like picture novella, coined by Seth, the comic book creator, or comic strip novel, coined by Dan Klaus, both were tongue-in-cheek responses to what they perceive as the term's increasingly commercial connotations, but it has provided a pathway away from the juvenile comic book to something resembling quote legitimate literature. The discrepancy between the commercial meaning of the term in the comic book and its scholarly meaning in academia. Obviously, if you go into a comic shop and ask about a graphic novel, you might get a little bit of pushback. Or Blake Stare. Yeah, it kind of depends which type of comic book store employer you're getting or what it is you're exactly looking for. So they'll probably guide you over to something called a trade paperback or a TPB. Generally, this is a collection of previously published individual comic book issues that are bound together in a single volume. It's much easier for readability, for collecting the particular issues you want instead of having to pay exorbitant rates for things that are much harder to find as a single issue. As the years have progressed, the purpose of the graphic novel and the purpose of the trade paperback begin to blur. Oh boy, I have that. Because in say the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, it was much easier to just pick up a comic book and read it because a lot of them were pseudo-self-contained issues. If you picked up an issue of Superman, he doesn't need to be introduced, but he kind of introduced on the first page. And then he goes through an adventure and it resolves at the end of that issue. As comic books became more complicated, you started having uh storylines that would be created that lasted more than a single issue. And over the years that progressed to a kind of standardized format, most continuous comic books that are running are told in five to six issue storylines or story arcs. Sometimes twelve. Sometimes twelve, depending on the creator, depending on the book. Sometimes it runs into perpetuity. So something like the Hernandez Brothers, they tell stories almost in real time, like their uh Love and Rockets. It would run continuously. There were story arcs, but the characters would age as the comics would come out. So it's all one continuous story, as opposed to something like say a Spider-Man, where it's really based on creator of team taking over or like what size story they want to tell. You'll have maybe an overarching creator's run, which may be 50 issues, but there are four to five to six smaller stories that fit within that larger run, but in that run tells an overarching story. So if you've read it all 50 issues, you kind of come like a beginning point and a pseudo-defined end point. But in the nature of comic books, rarely are any of these characters creator-owned. So it's a large company gives somebody the characters to write and draw for a specific period of time to tell some story, ideally, probably staying within the bounds of what they want continuity-wise. So you can't make too many changes, not too many things can happen, but things can get wild within a defined space. So you have these issues, and if someone wants to come and read those, let's say you're at issue 50 of this guy's run that just ended, and you, oh, I want to read it. Well, you could either go get back issues, which are older single issues that might be spotty. Rarely are you going to find a complete one through a thousand at any comic book shop to go purchase. That's a finite resource. But with trade paperbacks, this is a way for you to go back and start at the beginning or read whole stories or whole chunks of a character's arc all bound together for readability purposes.
SPEAKER_02And so this is where the interesting granular stuff comes in. Yeah. Just in the brief things we've already explained, we also mentioned there are complicated variables to go into that. And just the impetus for these formats and these definitions are both sort of philosophical and also practical, both physically and in a business sense. For instance, you explained the size of a modern, quote, floppy or single-issue comic book. Most people don't realize that trade paperbacks are actually a slightly different size. A trade paperback in the modern sense is usually 6.69 inches wide by 10.19 inches tall, which is slightly different than the standard comic book. And the reason for that is they're more likely to be put on bookshelves to stand flat as opposed to a single-issue comic book, which doesn't have a spine per se. And so they don't stand up the same way, and there's not a uniformity. So, yes, there are broad, generalized definitions that are on their own confusing, but those not only come from the abstract sort of concept of what these things are, but also the logistics of each and every one of them is both confusing when you get into the marketing stuff, but also completely uniform by design. That's why we're trying to explain these three because they're always a little bit different. I mean, the actual physical size of them does matter, even though we're going to argue that it doesn't.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's all about what you're looking for. Yes. If you were to go to a comic shop today, let's say you wanted a specific Batman story. Well, of course, you might be able to find it in the single issues. You might be able to find it in the trade paperback. Perhaps you would like a higher quality version of this collected edition. You might get a hardcover edition, essentially a premium version of that same story, sometimes with some added material. But essentially the difference is it comes in a hardcover format. Maybe you want it to be part of a bigger edition. You can have Have an omnibus taking many of those trade paperbacks, a large story, maybe it's 75 issues, and all putting them in one book. It's sometimes soft cover, a lot of times hardcover, obviously a bigger price. Or there's also things where maybe you'd want it a smaller, a smaller, cheaper version. The DC Compact Comic Series that's coming out right now, extremely popular. If you are in a bookstore or a comic book shop, I'm sure you see them all over. Very hot right now. Those trade paperback stories, or those graphic novels, depending on what it is, and depending on who you're talking to. Right. But they are the same material, but shrunk down into a 5.5 by 8.5 digest size.
SPEAKER_02Now, these are industry terms. These definitions are usually both by delivery services. It used to be diamonds, they were the monopoly distribution company, and they would use these terms defined by their page numbers and dimensions. That's why those things are important. And also for regular bookstores and bigger book printers and publishers, not just comic book publishers, because they have their own defined sizes, which help them categorize things when you're ordering them, when you're doing inventory, when they're supposed to fit on a specific shelf. So it's this weird combination of both of those factors. The digest format was a thing that already existed long before comic books. That's not the only small form factor size, and we'll talk about some of those too. But it's this very specific combination of the comic book distributor, big publishers, and the publishing industry as a whole. Because a lot of companies, a lot of comic book companies can't afford to do all of their own in-house printing. And so they use format sizes that are specifically standardized by publishing and printing companies.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And again, as I've flowed in the conversation, I have jumped back and forth between trade paperback and graphic novel. The essential difference at its core is, I think, intended purpose. I think one is a collection of previously printed stories that have been bound together for you to read. And the other one is a singular, on its own, never printed before edition of a story. Both are from comic books using artistic narrative interpretation to provide enjoyment to you, but it's much more complicated.
Watchmen And The Label Problem
SPEAKER_01As you as you saw with those earlier quotes in the history of the term graphic novel, graphic novel became something, something to apply to stories that people thought were more mature, more layered, more sophisticated. So it became a term that got bandied about a lot. And it ruffled some people's feathers, uh, especially noted commercially genius, I would say, Alan Moore, who in 2014 he kind of went on a little bit of a rant about it. I don't do a good Alan Moore, so I'm not gonna try. I'm just gonna read it as a normal American man.
SPEAKER_02Mumbling your way through a grizzled British accent.
SPEAKER_01If you remember, in the 80s, there were tons and tons of headlines just saying, BAM, sock pow comics have grown up. And like they hadn't, there were about three or four halfway decent comic books, and the rest of it was still the same juvenile rubbish that had been produced for the last 40 to 50 years. What the comic boom of the 80s did was grant a license to a lot of people not to have to actually grow up. By calling them graphic novels, which was a term that I hated because they're not particularly graphic, and they're certainly not novels, usually they're 12 issues of She-Hulk stapled together. That is not a novel. What I think happened was that a lot of people who were just interested in the adventures of Green Lantern, even though they were 35 or 40 years old, having Watchmen gave them a way of saying, Oh, I'm not emotionally retarded. Oh, I am reading. And this is a graphic novel that is for adults. No, it's not. It's the same comics that you've been reading for ages. I would feel happier about it if graphic novel actually meant something more than it does at the moment, which is big expensive comic, and that's pretty much all it means.
SPEAKER_02It's funny how wrong and right he is at the same time. Yeah. He's wrong and right for the same kind of reasons. That's a great example because Watchmen, which is extremely thorny thing, it'd be very difficult to talk about. You know, conceptually, the idea was that he was writing comic books in the genre of comic books and taking a serious take on them, but using the tropes of comic books. No spoilers, but I mean a supervillain does a supervillain thing in a comic book format. And in it, they talk about reading comic books. In fact, you as the reader, in the comic book, read through the eyes of a character reading a comic book. It was released in 12 single issues. It was a comic book. When it is released in a collected format, DC calls it a graphic novel. Spiritually, it's Alan Moore is right there, and also the way that that term is used traditionally is also relatively accurate. But it is not a graphic novel, and it was never meant to be a graphic novel. So while technically it is a complete thought, it is a trade paperback, which means collected from the original 12 single-issue comic book run. This is where people get tripped up. And DC does not help the fact that often they slap graphic novel on the cover, or they say, you know, with that HBO show, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore. It's like, well, it's not a graphic novel. It fits some of the criteria, but it isn't. Correct. We understand your confusion.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01It is complicated. Uh, I think part of it is a format issue because it came out issues, but the way that, let's be honest, 95% of people who have ever read Watchmen, it was in a collective format. Yep. Because of that, and because it was seen as more sophisticated storytelling than Biff Bath Pow. And it was all meant to be read together. I mean, yes, it came out individually, but unlike you know, a regular issue of the Flash or a Green Lantern that he talked about, it's kind of a necessity to read all of Watchmen all together. They do not function well singularly. So it's kind of disingenuous to like say, like, well, it came out as issues, so it's meant to be read as issues. It's not really meant to be read that way.
SPEAKER_02I don't know that I completely agree with that just because I think not only is he doing multiple layered metatextual commentary on the format and tone and content of comic books in general, and making a statement and critiquing genre at the same time. I think he wanted it to come out in single issues so that you'd be on the edge of your seat every month waiting for it to come out.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if he had put it out just as a graphic novel. If A, if DC would have done it at all, or B, it would have ever gained traction, because you could pick up an issue that was a dollar, but a $20 story from a guy you probably didn't really know, from an artist you probably didn't really know, about characters you didn't know. I don't know if that sells the same way. So I think it's a little it's a little more complicated than this was his designed intent.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think he's made it pretty clear what his intent is. Especially just by the nature, and I know this almost gets into a more philosophical reading, it almost strips away a layer of the experience he wants you to have when you're reading it collectively. You can read all 12 single issues back to back, and I think that's kind of what he wanted you to do. He is a tribute and commentary on the traditional printed-on newspaper comic book. Though you're right, it is better to read it collected, it also loses something in that experience, which is why a movie was always a bad idea. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I I think I disagree. I don't think the inherent comic book nature pulls away from the intent of the story or the possibilities therein.
SPEAKER_02But you're taking it out of its originally intended format when you're making a movie. I mean, I enjoyed the Watchman TV show, and you and I both liked it, but I mean I love the Watchman TV show. I think it's really good, but it's also not making the exact same the layered commentaries. It's just continuing the stories, but in a way that's finally competent, which had ever been able to pull off before that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, in particular, Watchmen is a deeply layered treatise on what comic books are, format of comic books, and their purpose, both textually and metatextually, along with a vision of what heroes, especially heroes in a non-hero reality, look like. But I don't I don't know. I don't think that it's a killer to take that story out of that context to the point where it's not worth making. It makes it difficult. You definitely lose things, but I don't I don't know that's a death knell. I don't think that's the reason that Zack Snyder's Watchmen is not all that it could be.
SPEAKER_02No, that one actually goes out of its way to actually almost touch on its own version of that critique. We should narrow the scope of watchmen because we could go talk about Watchmen for It's true.
SPEAKER_01There's a distinct derision that comes from Alan Moore. I think that's tied in how he perceives comic books and comic book readers, and also his view of the industry and how he felt that he'd been treated with his work. This is someone who's completely divorced himself from his work and a lot of the financial uh elements of his work. He's a unique case, so uh you have to see where this is this is coming from. Alan Moore's the whole thing, but perhaps a better version of a graphic novel in this case would be something like Batman's the Killing Joke, also from Alan Moore, which came out in a prestige format. Not a single issue. Well, yes and no. Okay. I mean, it was a single issue, it was a one-shot, it was a thicker, a thicker comic, but a self-contained story. And the cover paper was different. There's a harder cardboard. Uh maybe cardboard isn't the right word. What am I trying to say? It was a thicker stock. Okay, it's probably more of a card stock. Yeah, more of a card stock. Yes. The card was there. Just paper was it what came out. That's something that's been promoted as a graphic novel within the industry. And I think that fits better. One, it is a higher quality in a lot of aspects, both production and creation. It's a self-contained story. It has been reprinted as such, often with a hardcover or even a larger version in a small version. In a small story, you can't really expand out to like an omnibus size. But if you're looking for a truly premium comic book experience within the DC publisher, you get something like an absolute edition. And essentially, that is an oversized version of the comic book done in hardcover, pseudo-leather bound with a slipcase cover. A lot of times there's added material, whether that's a script or sketches, uh, variant covers, promotion materials, the premium experience for someone who truly loves a particular run or story, you would get that version to have the creme de la creme version of that kind of correct.
SPEAKER_02That's the DC absolute edition. Marvel's version are called gallery editions. They've had some other names for them over the years. Dynamite does definitive editions, but they're all the same idea. Those are basically the same dimensions and materials. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Again, if you were going to a shop and you're just looking for a comic book, these are some of the different ways that you can consume the same thing. And some of those are graphic novels, some of those are technically high-quality versions of trade paperbacks, or collected editions or collected editions. I think collected editions is a great way to encompass all of those different versions of collected stories as opposed to a singular story put out just for that larger format or that bound uh edition.
SPEAKER_02And then there's omnibuses if you want to get nasty.
Omnibus Editions And Premium Hardcovers
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01As we mentioned before, if you're looking for a generally pretty expensive but larger, you know, maybe you're looking for 25, 35, 50 issues of a comic book all bound together, you can pick up an omnibus.
SPEAKER_02And there are many different deluxe hardcover collections and graphic novels out there. Some do vary in size, a lot of them are padded out with other stuff like you're talking about. So if you're walking into a store like that and you are looking for a very specific thing, we're hoping to guide you in a way that helps you understand what you're asking for, and that you can even spot on the shelf based on its dimensions. And then when things get a little more granular, like you have more questions or someone's asking you questions about what you're looking for, this can help you narrow those things down so that you don't get frustrated and storm out of the store. If you go into a comic store, let's say you don't know anything about being in a comic store, you're getting your nephew, that Spider-Man comic, to help you navigate that entire experience because it can be daunting if you don't know. It's one of those things where if you don't watch sports and you go to a party where everybody's talking about sports, you might feel really lost. Or you go to a you tag along with your father-in-law to a car show and everybody's talking car joggering, and you're like, I don't know, I I have an automatic, like I drive a Prius or whatever. It'll help narrow this down and give you a fair a fair shot at not feeling terribly alienated and awkward. The other formats that you will see in terms you will hear thrown around are things like digest formats, which are a very specific size. Then there's an ash can, which is uh unique to the American comic book concept. It is funny to note that while the ash can has been democratized, the original intent for an ash can was essentially a scam. So the United States Patent and Trademark Office had very specific criteria, and to circumvent some of the patents that were already out there, some companies tried publishing a comic book in a different format to avoid trademark and copyright laws. There would be certain companies they would publish a comic and then provide a copy of it to the trademark office as proof that the comic was published. So in this industry jargon, to be published as a comic book, the term is that it would be marketed as quote in the trade so that it can be trademarked. That's where we eventually get trade paperback as a definition, not just of comic books, but now sort of co-opted by comic books. And so they would just show them these comics that were crudely printed. The cover would be whatever they were trying to prove was real and then receive a trademark. But then they knew they would never actually read the contents of the comic, so they could put whatever the fuck they wanted on the front, and then they could just reprint somebody else's comic and steal it, and then obviously that didn't last forever. Uh like we said, these terms have evolved and changed over time. Ashcans started during the right off the bat with the golden age of comics in the 30s and 40s. By the 1980s, they were a very different thing. The idea is that one company had an idea and it's going to be stolen by the rival company. A lot of it, what they would do is what Asylum Studios does. With these, they would give you a misleading title on the cover, and then they would put something else inside. All you had to do was sell it. The rest of it you could just throw it away because they already got your money. For instance, sometimes they were trying to do this to give away from other trademark stuff that they were doing. Fawcett Comics did an ash can for the first appearance of Captain Marvel, otherwise known as Shazam now. But the original company published it under the title Flash Comics. But National Comics, which would eventually become DC, had already trademarked that name, The Flash. So it was an attempt to trick people into thinking this guy with the lightning bolt on his chest was in some way related to the Flash. Then they tried tried once again to trademark Thrill Comics for a different title, but that company, the company that they were trying to rip off there, had already trademarked that name as well, so they couldn't do that Ash can, and instead they changed it to Wiz Comics and eventually just published it as an actual goddamn comic. So these were basically a way for you to buy cheap, small printed comics. It was a really cheap bait and switch. And they tried really hard to trademark these as they went along, but people caught on, and in 1946 they started allowing companies to register the intent to release a trademark, so there was no real need for this type of chicanery. But the Ashcan didn't go away. It came back in the 1980s as sort of a kindred spirit to the zine. Now, a little bit about zines, you don't know, because they're in the news. But basically, zines were self-published works by artists and writers, people in the punk community, anybody who wants to self-publish in a way that is inexpensive, accessible, and you put it in your pocket, essentially. It's a DIY punk version of a digest, but an original story or a collection of original stories. They're diverse, they're imperfect by design. It's leaned into. I mean, you can have a zine with pages of poetry or traditional visual narrative comic writing, manifestos, you know. So those became a way to express yourself and circulate it. Zines always are in small circulation, they're DIY, they come in different formats and compositions. They're usually either personal anecdotes or political critique or talking about niche, you know, topics, and they're usually either stapled or straight up just folded. And they're about the size of a digest book. About the size of a digest book. The ash can itself was reclaimed after the underground popularity of zine culture. I think it's a direct spin-off, but a but more of a specific intent. So in 1984, a guy named Bob Burden started publishing a zine that would eventually become defined as an ash can with the uh with the character the flaming carrot. I don't know if you remember flaming carrot.
SPEAKER_01I certainly do.
SPEAKER_02That was that was the difference here is that it is still cheaply made, it is still meant to be cheap and circulated underground. But this was actually printed and published by a a comic book publisher. Uh so that's where the industry sort of takes on the zine format and turns it into a proof of concept to test the waters, to either prove it to other publishers, to pitch it to get it picked up or whatever, or because it's so cheap and easy to circulate, to gain momentum and sort of a grassroots marketing, but they use the traditions and the mechanisms that zines were circulated with, and think of them as pilots for testing the interest and gaining interest for a new comic book. So that's eventually what they would become. And then this would get kind of corrupted later because then Rob Leifeld did Ashcan editions of Youngblood comics, Jimmy Palmiatti and Joe Cusato, and they had that character Ash, which is like a firefighter-turned superhero, if I remember right, for Valiant Comics. They put out their own Ash Can editions. Some of those are legitimate. They're like, this is my testing out the waters before I publish the real book, or after the fact, this is how I came up with the characters, and here's all the stuff. It all kind of gets muddled later, and it's it's not its original intent. But think of it as sometimes positive, sometimes negative version of a genuine zine, but co-opted by the actual comic book industry. Then you get into other sizes like Marvel's Conan series was published in a much larger format. Was that just called magazine size?
SPEAKER_01I believe so.
SPEAKER_02Because it was the size of Time Magazine, Time or Life. Then there are sizes like oversized editions, which are essentially 8x12. Kingdom Come did one in a hardcover. And then there's the bigger oversized ones. Alex Ross did Superman Piece, Batman 1-2, they did a Wonder Woman one, he did a Trinity, and they were this enormous magazine size, but they were also bound with a spine and not soft pump. They weren't hardcovered, but they were that cardstock covered.
SPEAKER_01More closely akin to the uh treasury size or tabloid size.
SPEAKER_02Sort of a tribute to the treasury size. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Those are 10 and a quarter by 13 by 5, 13 and a half.
SPEAKER_02And these are important not just for making them stand out from one to the other, but let's say you're a collector, or you just want to get that comic book home safely. You want to make sure it lasts longer than getting thrown away immediately after
Bags Boards And Comic Book Ages
SPEAKER_02reading. You need to know and standardize these sizes to get bags and boards. Another thing that you need to know if you go to a comic book store, traditionally they are sold. Well, not everybody does it the same way, but if you want to preserve your comic, you will be either offered or asked for a bag and board. You can get just a bag, but often a bag and board is going to go. Those are literally just acid-free polyurethane bags and cardboard boards that keep your comic book pristine, sealed if necessary, upright, and able to transport and eventually collect if that's your desire. Those other niche sizes, for most of you, you don't need to know it. But it is good information to have, especially if you're looking for something very specific. There are so many different editions of, let's say, the Sandman, there's the Sandman Omnibus, there's the Sandman Deluxe Edition, Director's Cut. So if you want to go in there and go, hey, I saw that Sandman show on Netflix, I'd like to read the whole thing. They might try and upsell you on one of the hardcovers, or the prestige version, or the absolute edition, or the omnibus. If you want the individual issues, that's gonna be really hard to get, but your best bet is to go and get a trade paperback. And even if it says graphic novel by whomever on any of those books, it's not necessarily a graphic novel. What you want is most likely a trade paperback. And that's kind of what you're gonna be going for most of the time.
SPEAKER_01I would say if you are getting those bags and boards, they're also different sizes based on the comics. Yes, exactly. So comics, the floppies, the single issues, over the years have changed sizes. Yep. The original, what's considered golden age of comic books is. Which is generally the late 1930s to the early 1950s, was a much larger size, closer to a magazine size than a standard floppy issue now.
SPEAKER_02Seven to seven and a half by ten and ten and a half inches.
SPEAKER_01There you go. After that, you had the Silver Age. That was essentially the late 1950s to the early 1970s.
SPEAKER_02So that size is between 6.75 inches and seven inches by 10.25 inches. And that's specifically so that they could fit in the spinner racks at drugstores. See? The spinner racks came back. Yeah, they did. They actually did. But now they're sized for comic books. How the turns have tabled.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Now they're for the after Silver Age, you had the Bronze Age, which is the period from 1970s to about 1985. And then after that, they essentially have the same size of the modern age of comics. Bronze and Modern are about the same size. They both fit in the same bag and board.
SPEAKER_02The difference is like uh they're both 6.625 inches wide, but Bronze Age was like 10.1875 inches tall, and modern is like 10.25 inches tall. So I mean it's it's negligible, but there is a difference. So when you're buying bags and boards, remember there are distinctions.
SPEAKER_01Specifically for this, not as much between bronze and and modern.
SPEAKER_02If you get modern, they usually don't put bronze on it. You you just fit a bronze in a modern.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Usually they're just gonna be selling gold and silver magazine and modern.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and then they do have digest ones, and then you have certain other really specific ones, but you have to kind of order those.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you gotta special order those, and depending on how much of dick your retailer is, or if they're available, because sometimes if you're ordering something super specific, you might just need to buy in bulk, and that's just the way it is. Yeah, because they don't have that and they're not going to carry it after you, so keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_02One of the reasons we're bringing these up, it's important to know what you're asking for. So let's say if you went, you've got a trade, or you found a golden or silver age book specifically for SIM present or a part of your collection or whatever. Don't just assume you can put that in a modern bag. They need each of those requires specific sizes because if you try and squeeze a fucking amazing fantasy comic or an action comics from the early 50s into a modern or even in that case, silver age bag, you're gonna fuck it up. So if it doesn't go in smoothly, don't force it. This is also our our love life advice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no amount of fine wine, chocolates, or a nice dinner date is gonna make that golden age fit any better into a modern age bag. You're gonna ruin it for everybody. You're gonna ruin it forever, and you're probably not gonna be able to get it graded for as high as you as you would if you're gonna send it off to CGC, an official comics grading company.
SPEAKER_02Which you can also do in your love life. You can actually get them to come out and evaluate your techniques.
SPEAKER_01They put it in a hard plastic case so you can no longer enjoy it the way you used to.
SPEAKER_02And you know what? They judge really harshly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I had too much yellowing, that's why I got a lower grade.
SPEAKER_02Was this acid-free? When they tell you to wrap it up, you better wrap it up. Wrap it up. Some other points for normies or people who don't want to feel alienated, like in High Fidelity or the comic book guy in The Simpsons. New comics come out every Wednesday. That is different than records and also movies. Things like that come out on Tuesdays. Comic books come out on Wednesdays. If you want to go find a comic, the next issue of a comic, could you actually records are released Fridays. What? They used to be Tuesdays.
SPEAKER_01Globally released on Fridays.
SPEAKER_02So when I worked at Best Buy, it was always Tuesday.
SPEAKER_01And I remember on I I think they just so I also worked at Best Buy. We have we've uh our Venn diagram is is one black dot um of despair. Yeah. I know that CDs and and movies were always Tuesdays. I think they would release on Fridays, but we just wouldn't put them out until we put everything on the side.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Yeah, because you'd have to have time to put up the displays and all that shit. Yeah, yeah. And I remember that very specifically because on 9-11, which was a Tuesday, my first thought was, well, damn, I'm not gonna be able to go get the new DM IP Giants album today. So I bought it the next day.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's funny. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02So you don't have to ask, it's always on Wednesdays. And if you're looking for specific individual issues, but they're not on the new comics shelf or rack, depending on what kind of store you go to, they will tell you you can look in the back issues. Back issues are simply older issues that they still hold on to because they hope they will sell one day, but they're just there for you to peruse and buy. And they're usually either in the fancy stores, they're in uh drawers specifically made for these things. But in most places, they're gonna be long boxes or short boxes stacked up on top of each other, which brings us to the next thing. What's a long box and what's a short box? Long boxes and short boxes are very much what they sound, they are boxes with handles on either side, usually white, with a top-loading lid. And they do come in different sizes too, because there are golden age and silver age long and short boxes, but basically they're two different size boxes for you to house your comic book collections. The short boxes is literally half the size if you want to contain or coalesce all of your comics in one place, you should get long or short boxes.
SPEAKER_01I think the best way to determine what box you should get is how many comics you want to put in. So a long box generally holds between 200 and 300 comics. Yeah, I usually say about 250 if they're bagged and boarded. A short box is probably closer to 100 to 150 in there.
SPEAKER_02Yep. That is a good way to determine. And unless you're really just like into it, don't let anyone try and upsell you with those graphic printed long boxes or short boxes, because they're way too expensive and they don't really do anything, especially for something that's probably going in your closet. So don't bother.
SPEAKER_01Unless you want to display them, you know.
SPEAKER_02But they are more expensive. Much more expensive. Bags, boards, long and short boxes, those are the keys to storing comics. And for whatever reason you want to store them, any combination of those things will be, depending on your intent, are what you're
Pull Lists Back Issues And Etiquette
SPEAKER_02going to need. Now, with a pull, I know every store is different. Some of them make you sign fucking contracts where they just like terminate all of your shit if you ever miss one. But the idea of a pull is most of the time it's just it's a handshake agreement. But you go into a comic book store, let's say you want an issue of a comic or a graphic novel trade paperback that isn't out yet. Go in and you'll give them your name, your number, your email address, what have you. What comic books would you like for them to pull off of the new comic shelf and make sure they save that for you so that it doesn't get sold and pulled right off the shelf. So to ensure that you can get that issue. And also it's a way for you to collect if you want to get weekly, monthly issues, multiple issues that you want to get regular, those will go on your poll. Think of it as a subscription service, but physically talking to a guy and writing it down and not having to pay HBO Max or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And every shop is different. What they'll allow, how often you can change things, add drop things. I would say the thing we ask is that you just be up to date on things. They didn't want to pick up death stroke, and they you couldn't wait six months to let that back up and then pick up death stroke. You needed to stay on top of things. Also, if you decide you don't like something, but you have multiple issues built up in your pull list, think of it like anything else. Every every place is different, but most comic shops, they're buying these for you specifically. So if you want a particular comic, we're ordering it for you specifically. We're not buying ordering in bulk and then pulling out from what we'd normally put on the wall to put in a pool spot. We're ordering for the wall of what we think we can sell off the wall of a given comic and the pool. So if you say you don't want something, especially something that's two, three, four months old, the shop just has to eat that money. So a lot of places just ask that you pick up whatever you have pulled. And sometimes we would pull things for people if we thought they would want it, but we didn't hold them accountable for those things. So if they were big fans, let's say an indie book about crime, and there's a new really good indie book about crime from a similar author and artist. We were like, Oh, we think you'll like this. We'll pull you the first issue, see if you like that. If they came in and was like, No, I don't want that, we're like, No, that's no problem. We just thought you'd dig it. It all depends on your relationship with the people working at the shop, how well you guys know each other, if your tastes align, what they're into and what you're into. You know, it's it's a complicated relationship, but depending where you're at, depending on the shop, depending on the people, it may be something that they do for you as a service. And again, this is one of the reasons that you're getting stuff from a comic shop and not getting it digitally or getting some some mail service is that we're here to help you. We're here to find what you need, get you what you need, and also help you find new things you didn't know you wanted 100%. Um, because we have that knowledge.
SPEAKER_02It is the argument for the brick and mortar experience. Because downloading digital things is fine, but discovering new things through this genre, there aren't TV advertisements for new Vertigo comics. The only way you discover new things or share things with new things with people that or old things that other people don't know about is to go into the store, create a relationship with the people that work there. And yes, that can be intimidating, sometimes they're condescending, but that's just because it's often a stigmatized part of our society, and so a lot of kids have chips on their shoulders. But for the most part, and it's customer service, yeah, and they're not getting paid very well.
SPEAKER_01But yes, you're not getting paid very well, you're dealing with people all day, every day, a lot of times asking the same questions, you know, the the same you develop the same jaded opinions about both people and things, and sometimes it's hard to hold those things back. You know, I've been a dick at the shop when I worked there. I didn't mean to be, I didn't realize I was being such an asshole, but I've done it. I try not to let that come out, you know, unless there's too much eye-rolly, the same questions, or especially the people who don't actually want to buy things, they just want to hang out in the shop. Oh, yeah. They want to talk shop, they don't want to shop. Yeah, this is how I am making my living. You wouldn't expect someone to come into a bar and just sit at the bar and talk to the bartender and not buy a drink.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, and because we have the perspective of both being patrons and working at comic book stores, we do carry that knowledge on how to navigate those awkward situations, potentially awkward situations. The best way to not have a bad experience at a comic book store is just to be a regular patron, don't be afraid to ask questions, but to streamline your query and your experience. It is helpful to have a certain baseline knowledge of what you're looking for and how to ask for it. Not because you have to cater to jargon or bad faith actors, but because you'll probably gain a lot of respect and they'll enough feel like they have to geek explain things to you. It's the easiest way to cut off guys that are dicks of comic bookstores and also help you find what you're looking for more easily.
Manga Basics For Store Browsers
SPEAKER_02That's the best advice we could give.
SPEAKER_01I would say the only other thing that really jumps out at me is another big thing in comic shops and bookstores is manga. Yes. Now manga could be its own whole episode that honestly I don't feel versed enough to truly get into the depth necessary, but essentially manga are Japanese comics, usually bound together in a a smaller, closer akin to a digest format. Yeah, five inches by 7.5 inches usually. It's about average, I would say.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay. In manga, the way I would always explain it is that there are manga about anything and everything. Now, again, they have their own specifics. Generally, most manga are done in black and white. The format is usually in the Japanese style, so it's read from right to left instead of the western left to right. If you're getting into some mangas, they can be extremely lengthy. I mean, there are the one piece manga spans over 1,170 chapters, compiled into more than 114 volumes. Just as an example, they can be extremely large. So it can be a bit daunting getting into some of that. And as opposed to, say, your standard superhero comic book in the West, these tend to be drawn-out long stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. You don't have other writers and creators coming in to like take over these characters. Essentially, it's one person's vision the entire way through. So you can't really just like, I'm gonna pick up one piece volume 34 to check it out. I mean, you could, but that's probably not the way it's intended. You're gonna miss a lot of the story that way. Yep. And again, there are like a billion different subcategories of manga. I would say ask your local comics purveyor, depending on what you're looking for, so that they can point you where you need to go and what it is you might want, whether that's shonen or isekai or shojo or yaoi or you know, whatever. Hentai.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that is one of the things that we don't emphasize as much because we grew up with American comics, but the industry and interests have shifted with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. So we'll probably revisit more of that in the future. But this was a primer mostly for just the average to above average patron of a comic book store, someone who's never even been in one, and how to make that experience smoother and impress your friends and the Starky fanboys that you thought ignored you when you went in the first time.
Resale Myths Issue Ones Printings
SPEAKER_01Three other, I think, important golden rules when coming into a comic shop. One, you don't ask what the most expensive comic in the store is. Don't do that. You're not gonna buy it. If you want to look around and through the depth of conversation about other back issues that gets brought up, sure. But don't just come in off the street, ask that. Everyone's gonna roll their eyes at you. Two, when you bring comics in, what you're bringing in is not a 9.9 near mint perfect comic that's gonna give you a hundred thousand dollars. Okay, probably what you have is gonna be worth a few bucks. That's it. Be it the fact that you have it means probably a million other people also have it. We have seen it a billion times. We're happy to help you find the price, whether you'd like to sell it or you want to get it graded, or you just want to have a knowledge of it. Some places will appraise comics for you. So if you want to get them insured, you can do that. Ideally, if you don't have comics that aren't worth multiple thousands of dollars, probably at least 10 grand, I wouldn't even bother trying to get it insured. But if you were just bringing comics to resale, or you know, you're trying to figure out this 1985 comic, how much it's worth, probably not gonna be much. Come in with low expectations. Think of the people on the Antiques Roadshow. They had this thing was passed down from generation to generation, it didn't mean much other than sentimental value to them. Maybe it's gonna be worth a lot. I would say you can try to collect comics for value, but I think it's best to collect comics for enjoyment. Don't try to search for things that are gonna be worth a whole lot. Search for something you like and grow from that. As you start accumulating things that might become valuable with time, then move forward. But come to comics, come to the medium for the love of comics, for the love of the story, the characters, the enjoyment of that moment, not as a money-making venture. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. Obviously, do whatever you want, but I think it's the best way to approach comics and comic collecting in general.
SPEAKER_02It will definitely make your experience more smooth. I would say never walk into a store to resell comics and assume that you're going to resell comics. Don't lead off with that. If you want to go in hoping that you can resell comics, ask them what they're worth first. But make sure they're not just spitballing it. Check a price guide, look it up online first so you know what you're dealing with. Because they will try and haggle with you if you actually end up getting to the point where they want to sell it. Just don't assume you're going to sell it. Start with the approach of, do you think this is worth anything? And if you didn't look it up on your own ahead of time, they may and try and undersell you or whatever, but most of the time they're happy to help you look up the value of it. Save yourself the embarrassment by only after you know what the value is, then ask if they're willing to buy it. Because so many times people come in and be like, Well, I've got all these old comics. I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. I mean, do you want to buy them? I don't know. I don't know what they are, I don't know how much of the words. We haven't looked them up yet. You just brought it in a long box and expect me to just buy it off. That's not gonna happen. So don't go in there with that expectation. Otherwise, you're just going to be disappointed andor humiliated, and rarely come out with a lot of cash.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you can always call ahead, say, hey, yeah, I have this box of comics. It's Spider-Man. Uh, looks like I can you can always look on the front cover. Usually we'll have a date on what it is. And usually, if you have the date of when it comes out, the title and the issue number, those are good uh indicators that will give us an idea of what the comic is. The quality of it, you know, how well it's been loved over the years, that can vastly change both the price and our desirability to own that and then try to resell it. It all depends on the shop. You know, some shops have 500 copies, it's spawn number one, some have two. Obviously, if you go to the shop that has 500 copies, they're probably not gagging to get another. You know, maybe just shop around, see who who needs, who wants what. Every store is different, just like every customer and person's different. Take that into account.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and if you're not experienced and you find a an issue, wow, this is X-Men number one. It must be worth a lot. Just because an issue says number one doesn't mean that it's it's the first issue, especially in that scenario.
SPEAKER_01It's the first issue of that series. Uh-huh. Well, X-Men number one still does decently. Well, but there's so many of them out there. The difference between X-Men number one circa the 1960s and X-Men number one 1991 and X-Men number one circa 2024, those are all X-Men number ones. They're not all working on it. That's why it's always good to like check the date and have that information available.
SPEAKER_02Good pro tip, especially I don't know how common it is for today's comics because sometimes this information is printed in the back now, but it used to be pretty standard for most, at least Silver Age to Bronze Age comics. Open the front cover, look on the first page. There is a block of text there on the bottom. It's the only page that it appears on. It will give you the name of the comic, the year it was printed, publisher, where it was printed, and most importantly, which printing it is. Because even if you see a comic that you've looked up online and wow, this is a valuable comic, make sure that it's not the second, third, fourth, fifth printing of that, because those are not worth anything comparatively. Sometimes they are, very rarely. What you want to make sure is that you don't embarrass yourself that way.
SPEAKER_01That's another good topic. Multiple printings of comics.
SPEAKER_02If it is a reprint, that book is by nature not as valuable because it's not part of the original limited print run. I remember when the Death of Superman came out and there were like, it was like six printings of that book. They were just everywhere.
SPEAKER_01It's a complicated field and the medium's all over the place. But sometimes a second or third printing can be more valuable because there are so valuability is often based on availability. And if they only printed 2,000 copies of a second print, you know, that might be much rarer than the 75,000 copies they printed to the first one. Right. It just all depends. Uh a rule of thumb is that generally a second, third ongoing prints are less valuable, less wanted than the original first prints.
SPEAKER_02You're right. It depends on how many of the first one they printed, if they change it between the first and second. Let's say you have a comic that has like a foil embossed cover or whatever, and the second printing was just a regular floppy cover. Sometimes that second printing is still valuable because there are so few of the original that those are the only ones you can get your hands on. And so they still have currency. But oftentimes companies won't do a second or third printing with the same bells and whistles of that rare first printing. At the same time, those are the ones more easily accessible and therefore most likely to be sold or traded. Uh, it just depends on what it is, what the gimmicks are, but it is important that you have that information ahead of time, otherwise you might be sadly disappointed or pointed at and laughed at. Just something to arm yourself with.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I think this should help guide them on their at least initial experience into the comic book realm.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm gonna pull a Columbo here. What just one more thing? This is a very small but very specific example. If you've never been to a comic book store before, you never talked to somebody who works at a store or hangs out at a store, so that you are armed with this ahead of time. There is a difference between the Flash and Flash Gord. Know that ahead of time.
Closing Thanks And Local Shops
SPEAKER_01Well, we hope that this has been informative and will help you on your journeys into comic book land. Oh, look there! You're in comic book land. Fantastic. Your journeys into mystery, as they were. Well played. Not the house of mystery, but I mean it might be in a house.
SPEAKER_02Who knows? It may be in a tale that astonishes you. It's really hard to say. But it is gonna be an amazing fantasy. That sounds spectacular. Amazing. Sensational. Uh we we specialize in action comics around here.
SPEAKER_01We're just your friendly neighborhood comic shop. But yes, uh, thank you for listening. If you wouldn't mind like, sharing, and subscribing, we'd really appreciate it. Rating us five near mint podcasts on your podcast app of choice, ideally Apple Podcasts, is the best way for us to get heard and thus seen. And rated by CCG. So we can spread our filth to the rest of the universe. By Gren Morrison. Yes, thank you. I should have said giant black sperm or whatever, but uh, we'll have leave that as a non sequitur. Mm-hmm. Thank you for listening. Please spread this around. And uh until you need more help through your journeys through Comic Land, you can always reach out to us. We're happy to respond. We can address your concerns, your thoughts, your desires, your wanton lusts, whatever they may be on the pod. So feel free to reach out. Well, you can guarantee that. I'm not going to commit to that part, but but until we can make Skip guarantee to it himself to satisfy you sexually. What what should they do, Skip?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think the most important thing to emphasize, and really the only one we need for this, is don't forget to support your local comic shops and retailers. The brick and mortar experience is the best way for you to enter this world in a way that perhaps will expand your horizons. Be patient. Hopefully they will be patient with you. But make sure you do support your local comic shops and retailers. And that having been said, Jake and I would both like to say, no matter where you go, there you are. That's right. True believer. Excelsior!
SPEAKER_00What in hell, Kirby?
SPEAKER_03Please go away.