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Please share this website with others in the collector community.  Tell your friends about Comicbookspeculation.com. We are on Instagram @cbs_daily and on facebook as Comic Book Speculation.  You can also find us on YouTube at Comic Book Wars where we discuss comic book news, market trends, speculation and investment strategies each and every Tuesday around 9:30 pm.  We’ll be back, each and every week to discuss comics, market trends, speculation, investment, sales strategies and more! Without further ado,

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This is your Weekend Update! 

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Coronavirus and the Comic Market 

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Much like the comic market, the impact of the coronavirus will have more to do with collectors emotional responses than it does with logical decisions.  Unless you are hiding under a rock, you are being inundated with messages about the risks associated with the coronavirus. Political motives, fears (rational and irrational), and the media are controlling the narrative and it is uncertain where we go from here.  I am here to suggest to you that this is something you are going to have to be thinking about going forward.

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First, will the coronavirus impact convention attendance?  Will collectors stay home? We’re already seeing major moves at Emerald City Comic Con where earlier today the show was post-poned.  The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 14 as of today. The first fatality was reported in the area of Washington state, and federal authorities are investigating a Seattle-area nursing home where the majority of the victims were infected.  More than 40 cases have been reported in the Seattle area. I suspect that we may witness many collectors stay home or seek shelter at smaller local conventions this con season.

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To some degree avid collectors will clearly still find a way to spend their money.  However, my instincts tell me that without destination convention vacations, many collectors will find other ways to spend their money.  In the short term, I think this is a good thing for comic sales on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook; auction houses like Heritage, Comic Link and Comic Connect; and a great thing for eBay sales.  However, if conventions slow down all convention season long, I fear that this may adversely impact the comic market generally.

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What do I suggest?  As always, look for the opportunities.  What collectors focus on grows. Every set of eyes is a new potential buyer/collector and as collectors/investors we spend money where we invest our time.  If collectors are not going to conventions, I suspect there will be an increased focus on comic related TV. I think potentially the biggest winner in the coronavirus comic market will be TV related spec books.  I have suggested on Comic Book Wars, NicoTime and elsewhere that we were quickly approaching a post-modern comic market that wasn’t driven by TV speculation, but the coronavirus may have stunted the market’s growth.  For me, that means that I will be doing more investing in those kinds of books looking for flips six (6) months down the road.

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All of this may be premature.  There is obviously the potential for effective containment, treatment protocols, and/or an affordable vaccine.  Similarly, there’s always the risk of a significant economic slowdown, decreased productivity from workers, decreased consumer spending, and/or a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.  My crystal ball got a big crack in it a long long time ago. Only time will tell.

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Asgard Speculation

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In an effort to practice what I preach, I want to talk about some of the potential Loki television related spec books that are on everyone’s radar.  First and foremost is Thor #371. This is the first appearance of the Justice Peace who is allegedly the character played by Owen Wilson in the forthcoming Loki television series.  If you are like me and utterly unfamiliar with this character then you may not be aware that he arrested the Fantastic Four for “crimes against synchronicity” in Fantastic Four (1961) #352 – #354, appeared in Jennifer Walters’s (She-Hulk’s) courtroom in She-Hulk alongside fellow TVA officer Justice Love in She-Hulk (2005) #1 – #3,  and most recently fought Deadpool in Despicable Deadpool (2017) #288 when Deadpool was on his way to kill Cable. I don’t know that anyone is reporting with certainty who this character is, but I do think these are books to be aware of in your collecting endeavours. If you can’t pull them out of dollar bins, dig deeper. They are there.

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This week there were also reports that Cailey Fleming (The Walking Dead’s Judith Grimes) was cast as a young Sylvie Lushton. Many of you are familiar with Sylvie Lushton who in the comics is the second Enchantress.   Lushton was just an average teenage girl living in Broxton, Oklahoma until the Asgardians moved. One day Sylvie wakes up with magical powers. Unbeknownst to her, these powers were given to her by Loki. I am not convinced about this plot line necessarily because Fleming is twelve years old at this point.  If they are writing a Kid Loki Young Sylvie backstory then this could potentially make sense, but this is more me apologizing for this rumor than it is me believing the hype. If you are interested in getting in ahead of the hype, I’m afraid you may be a little too late as copies of Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1 are moving on eBay.  Sylvie battled both Dr. Strange and his estranged wife, Clea, in the arcane arts and was integral to the Illuminati storyline. I can see the allure of the character as a spec play, but again I would stick to the dollar bins for this book.

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There are a lot of looming questions regarding the ever expanding Asguardian MCU community of television of films.  Will we see the Asguardians of the Galaxy as prophesied at the end of the last Thor film? Who is Christian Bale playing in Thor: Love and Thunder (Beta Ray Bill, Annihilus, the God Butcher, Adam Warlock, or a smaller character from Jason Aaron’s Thor run)?  All of these questions are questions you need to be asking yourself if you are going to be spending money in this area of the comic market.

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Frank Gogol Young and Hungry

 

In the comic world, young and hungry are two words that are rarely used to describe creators.  Frank Gogol is the exception. We are super excited that he will be joining us on NicoTime this Saturday at 9:00 pm EST. In April of 2017, Gogol ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for his first commercial comic book project, GRIEF–a collection of short genre stories about the grieving process. GRIEF debuted in April 2018 through Source Point Press to critical acclaim.  This was followed by one of the hottest independent titles in comics the following year when Gogol released Dead End Kids. You may recall that the notorious Unpressable Defects released a variant cover of Dead End Kids which is so coveted that you still need to know someone to buy a copy. All jokes aside, good luck finding one. This year, Gogol is releasing No Heroine.

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In his title No Heroine Gogol explores the nature of substance abuse disorders, personal responsibility, and recovery.  His heroine is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer inspired character as is evident from the cover images released on the book. Gogol has been making his rounds on podcasts and convention floors describing No Heroine as his most personal book yet.  Gogol is the adult child of parents who struggled with addiction, and his title No Heroine is born from a lifetime living with and knowing people who struggled with drug addiction. I am incredibly excited about this title and the opportunity to talk comics with one of the brightest young writers in the business.

 

Adaptations No Longer Second Class Comics 

 

This week’s big winner was the Last of Us.  News broke that HBO, game writer/creative director Neil Druckmann was teaming up with Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) to bring The Last of Us video game series to the small screen.  The response was astounding with copies of the books flying of the shelf. Many of you may remember that we reported on this way back in September and again a few week ago on the Weekend Update.  I hope you picked these up when we talked about them and not after the news broke.

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Nevertheless, the bigger take away is that video game adaptations do not suffer in the same way that adaptations from other media has suffered in the past.  For years, any comic that was preceded by a television show (live action or cartoon), toy line, etc. was perceived as somehow insignificant as a collectible.  He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers and other books are no longer perceived in this way. This is a factor that older collectors are acutely aware of but that many younger collectors do not appreciate and an evolution in the market that I want to make sure all of our readers appreciate.

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Like any trend in the market, it is uncertain whether the prior attitudes continue to linger in some collectors, will resurface or have been obliterated entirely.  Only time will tell. It the interim, it is interesting to think whether or not this has had any impact on the price tag associated with high grade copies of first appearances and ratio variants.

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As we are quickly approaching a time when He-Man will be serialized in live action and in cartoon, I want to take an opportunity to discuss one rare He-Man comic we do not hear much about, namely the He-Man.org 1/500 variant.  There have been two sales of this book on eBay this month. The first was on January 10th for a whopping $250.00 and the second was on March 2nd for $400.00.   It’s a safe bet that most of these copies are in the custody of serious He-Man collectors, but these sales will undoubtedly bring copies to market.  Keep your eyes peeled for copies of this book.  It’s also worth noting that this series is written by Robert Kirkman.

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There are so many amazing Transformers variants that command top dollar it seems almost  naive of me to begin to discuss these books when I haven’t devoted sufficient space to do justice to this community.  Transformers collectors are as fanatical about their variant comics as they are their toys. While books like the St. Pepper homage in Transformers #12 RI (2012) and the Transformers #1 RI Change into a Truck are near and dear to my heart, books like the Transformers Universe 2003 Unicron convention variant are so rare that I’ve never seen one in person.

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The same analysis is true of GI comics.  There are a ton of cool variants that you should be acutely aware of so that in the event that you see them in the wild, you will know what to grab.  I like the GI: Cobra Civil War #0 Dell Otto variant and GI Joe #21 (2003) Renegar Michael Turner variant, but most are already hip to those books. Like Transformers, GIJoe has a cool rock poster homage variant cover on Cobra # 19 (Hendrix) that has got a lot of attention lately.  GI Joe #215, #216 and #217 have Snake Eyes, Baroness and Storm Shadow action figure variants which are much more likely to be overlooked now that Marvel has beat the action figure variant cover to death. These books command a nice premium and are something you may find dirt cheap in a bin somewhere.

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We are expecting an increasingly large push of Transformers, He-Man and GI Joe in the next few years.  Snake Eyes will see his own solo film. It appears that the Transformers comic line will receive a ‘Year One’ Style relaunch that visits Cybertron Before the War.  Meanwhile Paramount studios apparently has two separate film scripts in development, one via James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Murder Mystery) and the other via Joby Harold (King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword, Army of the Dead).  Early reports have indicated that they both will allegedly feature entirely new casts. I do not expect for their to be any shortage of 80’s nostalgia. We are also slated for Micronauts and M.A.S.K. films with many suspecting that these projects are just a warm up for the inevitable ROM television/film series.  Keep your eyes open as these books are often discarded and laying in dollar bins.

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Speculators coming out of the Dark. 

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Perhaps the most enduring effect of the explosion of the comic market in the last ten years is that comic speculation is again a mainstream art.  Comic speculation has been around as long as collectors have paid a premium for comics. Following the influx of new money in the 90’s speculation was long seen as a dirty word in the comic industry.  Today more than any time in recent memory, comic book speculation is both a dirty word in the comic industry and an ever present practice. Direct market retailers of course were the first major speculators.  Each week they placed their orders above and beyond the pre-orders of their subscribers, they were engaging in a form of speculation. It is ironic that retailers have convinced the masses that small dollar speculators are somehow the ruination of the hobby.  Please do not be fooled by this immature critique. Be a smarter collector. Read up, learn new skills, and make smart buys and sales in the comic market. Your wallet and your personal collection will reap the full harvest of your labor of love.

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Until next time, “Happy Hunting you bunch of Savages!” .

– Nico, Esq.

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