The last 5 years has seen quite a resurgence in the Comic Book market. Mostly fueled by the very successful conversion of the MCU into the live action theater reels from the static images of drab pages called paper comic books. Of course DC is there to compete, in fact it was thanks to the 1989 Keaton Batman that the Live Action franchises was given new lease in life, though it was after almost a decade that Marvel finally caught on and ran with it with the titular Spiderman remake of 2002.
Most will consider the 80's as the Golden-Age of Modern Superhero films, thus the y2000 is definitely the Silver Age, repeating the same shared history between DC and Marvel in the comic-book emerging era of the early 60s.
So lets just first look at the hobby before this, in a time most like me would consider as the "Renaissance" of the COMIC BOOK as both media, art medium and investment.
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As a longtime hobbyist of Comic Books - I started really collecting in 1994 as a College kid influenced by a friend. My first "story arc" of sorts was the "ShatterShot" X-title crossover Annual of Marvel and it went from there.
Image, Defiant, Malibu, Valiant, Sirius, Night Studios and even already established imprints like Dark Horse, EC, Eclipse, Comico, 80s fledgling imprints like Caliber, Antarctic Press, and Continuity all went with the creator owned studio concepts that blew out and saturated the market with amazing slew of variety that pushed comic book media selections.
"High Times" as it was called in the comic book hobby then. Hobby stores popped out from malls to side establishment as the speculation war went on with so many competing gimmicks such as One Shots, Ashcan editions, Limited previews, cameo appearances, cross overs. It was also the time that the paper quality, artistic treatment, color separation, and cross platform media established the comics as an entertainment and financial medium.
It was also the time that names relegated to the corners of the books became prominent. The "Marvelous Seven" as initially called was the seven Marvel artists who left the imprint to create IMAGE Comics in 1992 that began the wave of creator owned concept that pushed the medium and the hobby to a new and exhilarating heights that is yet to be duplicated in any other hobby. The "X-odus" as it was then called since most of the artists were in their own, prominent pencillers and inkers in the much celebrated rejuvenation of the X-Men titles.
Todd McFarlane (Spider-Man), Jim Lee (X-Men), Rob Liefeld (X-Force), Marc Silvestri (Wolverine), Erik Larsen (The Amazing Spider-Man), Jim Valentino (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Whilce Portacio (Uncanny X-Men), helped usher in the beginning of the return to prominence of not just Marvel Comics but the comic book media as a whole. in creating Image comics, they began the renaissance of Comic Books.
With the new found fire in their tails, DC went into its own offensive with the hobby shattering Death of Superman in 1992 followed by the Breaking of the Bat in 1993. Two milestones in comic canon that had lasting impact on the industry that rewrote the reincarnation cycle of death and rebirth of almost every prominent Golden Age and Silver Age Super Heroes into the new millennia. Back issues was the forte of Marvel prior, as interest on Annual and story-arc dross-overs (or mostly X-Overs) began stirring up interest to new collectors that got on-boarded with the recent hobby trend. First on the list was "Infinity Gauntlet" Limited Series (1991) that predates the Infinity War (1992), "X-tinction Agenda (1991), ("Fall of the Mutants" (1988) , "Mutant Massacre" (1986), and the "Dark Phoenix" Saga (1980) that preludes the "Days of Future Past" (1981) milestone.
In all, these provided Marvel with a solo innovation in a "shared universe" concept that most new titles and imprints began following to better suit their character cross-over, links and relations to other in-house titles. DC for its part has done theirs to clean up their own universe with the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" (1985) and retconned with "Zero Hour" in 1994 but only helped cleared up some of the canon but did little else in giving the DCU a tangible shared universe up until latest title releases helped in mending it up leading to the early 2000.
It is hard to further compress the timeline and occurrence of this period as there was a lot. From the market movers, prominent names, gimmicks, promos, media support and products. It was such a time that i myself felt was bound to burst open like a bubble, and so it did by the middle of the 2Ks.
This hobby and the era that defined it was a study on how over-speculation, market manipulation thru exclusivity and manufactured rarity has gradually taxed the lifeline of of the greater market, the common collector. In the race for profit margins, the creator owned concept was devoured by the same market it helped created. Due not to its own, but the greedy few both inside the industry and in the secondary market. Foreseeably like any hype it is bound to happen, but the drastic drop of interest and profitability overshadowed an otherwise amazing start and never recovered until almost 2 decades after.
What was left was an amazing treasure of products that was traded high for more than a decade after the collapse to a rather lukewarm interest. #1's, Special Covers, Limited prints, Exclusive offers, Cameos...things that even the Card Collecting market introduced to their own products. It was only when the prices decidedly dropped as investors and collectors cut their nagging losses did the market began its rebound.
In the next part I'll give my firsthand take on the revitalization of the back-issues market that helped fuel the returning interest of new books as comics to screen adaptations flood the broadcast media and internet.
...till then....
