The iFanboy Letter Column – 05/15/2009

Friday means many things to many people. For some, Friday means it’s time to really give some thought to how much food you can eat in one 48 hour period without moving.  For others, Friday means it’s finding out who’s holdin’.

At iFanboy, Friday means it’s letter column time.

You write. We answer. Very simple.

As always, if you want to have your e-mail read on the any of our shows or answered here, keep them coming – contact@ifanboy.com

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I was wondering if you had any tips on the process of finding and collecting old (mid ’90s and earlier) runs of comic books. I’m mainly looking for interesting old stories that I can collect. Their potential worth is not really a factor. For example, my first project is collecting Walt Simonson’s run on Thor. What methods do you use for finding old books for cheap? What are some classic runs that wouldn’t be too hard to find? Any help would be excellent.

Russ O. from Joliet, IL

The art of back issue diving is becoming fading fast, and becoming a memory of how things were, so it’s good to see someone is still interested in participating in the classic game of tracking down those old back issues. With the emergence of trade paperbacks and collections etc., the concept of going and finding the original issues seems to be becoming extinct. While I do like a nice book on my shelf collecting issues, there really is nothing better than having a stack of original issues waiting to be read in their original format, for me at least.

The good news is that you’re in luck, if there were any comics that were available as back issues, it’s ones from the Mid-90’s! (ha) Of course the older the comic, the harder it may be to find and/or the more expensive it will be, but it’s not impossible. You basically have a few options:

1) eBay – As eBay was introduced and grew in prominence in the late ’90s/early 2000s, a large portion of the back issue market for comics moved from comic shops to the internet as auctions. It’s a great place to find collections, runs or groups of back issues, even single issues. Unfortunately the nature of an auction may cause the price to go up, and there are a lot of those pesky CGC graded books (which I assume you don’t want), but a quick search for “Walt Simons Thor” yielded a bunch of results including an entire run and single issues. You might want to check out the Amazon Marketplace as well, which is like eBay but on Amazon. Just search Amazon for the issue you’re looking for.

2) Comic Cons – If you ask me, the best way to find back issues these days is simply by attending a comic convention and diving into the long boxes. If you’re in Joliet, IL, go to Wizard World Chicago and walk through the dealer section. There will be tons of boxes of comics, you can find what you’re looking for and there’s an actual person to interact with and maybe you could even haggle the price down a bit.

3) Comic Stores – Back in the day, the comic book store was filled with long boxes of back issues, but the trend appears to be moving away from that and it’s harder to find a store with a good back issue department, but some still exist. Try visiting all your local comic shops and expand your radius (if you have the means and the time to drive a bit). If the stores around you don’t have good back issue selections, try some of the bigger stores that are online like Mile High Comics, or MyComicShop.com or Westfield Comics. Stores that sell back issues are still out there, you just have to work to find them.

As far as classic runs that wouldn’t be hard to find, your best bet is Marvel and DC as they will most likely have the largest selection out there. Basically look for characters or books that you’re interested. Like for example, my ongoing back issue project is to get a full run of Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants, but I also expanded it out to include The Defenders and may even branch over to DC for a run of The Flash comics.

Good luck in your back issue diving, I hope you’re able to find all the comics your looking for!

Ron Richards

 

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I listen to your show each week, and get sold on these titles you love. I went to check out Gotham Central and Y: The Last Man on Amazon, and the are taking forever publishing the hard covers. It seems to me that the publishers would receive just as many sales if they released the entire Deluxe Hardcover set of Y than to stagger out the volumes over years and years. Gotham Central was complete and done in April of 2006, and the second hardcover won’t be out until this September. Tell me, if you were in control would you abolish single issues, release an entire collection upon its completion, or keep the in place system?

Heath

We hear complaints about these kinds of things a lot, especially in regards to DC — they’re certainly not very quick in getting trades and collections out. But one has to assume there are reasons behind it, other than complete incompetence, which is what most readers seem to assume. For one thing, it’s a mistake to assume that just because a comic series has completed, putting a collection together is a snap. It’s still a whole new project for someone to spend a lot of time and energy on. It’s not a matter of just slapping things together. There are production schedules, deadlines, budgets, cost projects, and a whole lot more that go into putting any book together. I can’t presume to know how the DC collections department is staffed, but have you ever worked at a job where too few people are asked to do too much? Maybe that’s the case. I can’t know.

Further the idea of just putting all the books out there at once is an unrealistic economic decision. Doing that all at once would demand a very large upfront fee to the people publishing the book, and also represent a large one time investment from retailers. Businesses parse out the release of product because if you flood the market, no one wins. A retailer can’t buy 10 complete sets of Y: The Last Man at one time, and hope for the best, that 10 people come in and buy the whole thing at once. Most people don’t work that way. A company like DC isn’t necessarily flush with giant cash reserves, and even if they were, it might not be the wisest investment for them to do what you’re suggesting. The first volume funds the next volume, and so on. In fact, don’t forget that the reason Gotham Central finished printing back in 2006 is because the sales weren’t justifying the series any longer, so assuming that the collections are a sure thing is a mistake. Less people will buy the second than bought the first of anything.

So sure, I wish they’d get things out faster, but I understand why things take time, even if it’s sometimes too much. Also, if you really want to read Y: The Last Man, all the trade paperbacks are available. It reads the same way either way if you want it now. Also, I’m not in favor of abolishing single issues, because, again, they’re funding the production of the stories that get put into books, and those sales are determining what gets collected later, as well as what doesn’t get to finish. Now when it comes to why they don’t have numbers on the spines of the Hellblazer trades, well that’s a paddlin’.

Josh Flanagan

 

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I’ve heard you discuss on the show prose novels that deal with super heroes. I remember specifically Conor mentioning the prose versions of Infinite Crisis and Batman: No Man’s Land. Have any of you happened to have read any non-comics related novels written by comic book authors? I’m thinking specifically of Brad Meltzer or Greg Rucka, who have both published a number of prose novels. I haven’t actually read anything by Rucka outside of comics, but I have listened to Meltzer’s Book of Fate and I’m currently listening to Book of Lies. I’ve enjoyed both of them, but I enjoy his comic book work more. Meltzer isn’t exactly a tight plotter and it shows even more in his novels. Still, his work does rest strongly on character and that strength comes through in all of his work.

Just curious if you’ve followed anyone away from the comics page.

Jeff

Let’s get the easy one out of the way first. I’ve never read any of Greg Rucka’s non-comics related novels (although I have read both of his Queen & Country novels), and I really want that to change soon. I keep meaning to order his Atticus Kodiak series, but for some reason I constantly forget. Maybe I can make that a project for 2009.

The next two guys who come to mind when I think about non-comics related novels by people well known in the comic book industry are Brad Meltzer and Mike Carey. And interestingly enough, I think that I like their prose work, on the whole, much more than their comic book work.

Brad Meltzer writes breezy legal thrillers from the John Grisham School of Writers Who Sell So Many Legal Thrillers That They Buy Gigantic Houses That Have Their Own Baseball Fields. I enjoy Grisham’s thrillers and I enjoy Meltzer’s too. Sometimes you just want a page-turner with a mystery and a plucky hero battling the system to figure it all out. Meltzer writes the kind of book that used to be referred to as a “summertime beach read”. Hmmm… perhaps they are still referred to that way, but I haven’t spent the summer at the beach in forever. Regardless, I enjoy his pose work, often blowing through an entire book in a day or two. Identity Crisis aside, I don’t think that I’ve enjoyed any of Meltzer’s comic book work as much as I have his prose work. I’ve read all of his novels, and as the cliche goes — his early work is his best.

While it’s probably unfair to make the following assertion, I’ll do it anyway — I have enjoyed Mike Carey’s prose work much more than I’ve enjoyed his comic books. Now, I’ve only read one novel by Mike Carey — The Devil You Know — but I really, really enjoyed it, and I haven’t been able to say that about any of his comics that I have read. I have his follow-up novel, and the sequel to The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, on my prose stack and I’m really looking forward to getting back into the world of a down and out exorcist working in a modern day London where demons and spirits are an everyday part of life. (Yes, it’s basically Hellblazer.)

Your e-mail made me realize that I’ve read more non-comics related prose novels by people who write comics than I had realized. Granted, that’s mostly because of Brad Meltzer, but still.

Conor Kilpatrick