It’s time to Price your comics!

I’m the features editor and one of the "unnamed" authors of Comics Values Annual, our 2009 edition just hit the stands and I received my copies the other day. I’ve been doing this for some 15 or 17 years and I (as you can imagine) enjoy it very much.

Needless to say as we were putting the issue to bed in the closing moments of 2008 and the prior to the newness of 2009 was upon us we paused to look around at the world outside the “All in color for a dime” world of superheroes, Sci-Fi adventures, ghouls, vampires, zombies and other monsters that go bump in the night, to see what was happening in the real world around us. Even as our new President–Elect was gathering together his new cabinet about him and before we knew the fullness of the betrayal of the consumer trust by the the corporate robber-barons who inhabited Wall St. and the Fortune 500 boardrooms prepared to down-size us working-class poor into a state of destitution resembling Jack “King” Kirby’s beloved Kamandi’s post-apocalyptic America we couldn’t help but to wonder aloud, what was to become of collecting.

For truly, how can one look at the headlines of the past several months of 2008 and wonder how a person can possibly spin that they are out of work, their hedge fund has collapsed, their 401K is gone, and their sub-prime mortgage is past due even consider buying old comics? Well, the truth of the matter is that often times in the past, whenever the stock market goes down significantly, much of the available investment money goes to collectibles. Still, those of us working diligently at CVA, we still saw a sharp advance in prices on the top comic collectibles. Still, the question of the day was really “Do the owners choose to sell at this time?” Personally, we do think that the new comics in the marketplace will be soft in value for the foreseeable future.

This is why we continue to produce this price guide (well, that and the money we are paid to do so...
mostly for the money
). Anyway that’s the mental state I was in at that time, and now I can see the issue in print. It contains an interview with Marvel Assistant Editor, John Barber (who works on Wolverine’s titles), and we have a beautifully-rendered cover by Mark Sparacio

You can see the cover off to the right, and attached to this post. I strongly urge you to go out and purchase one for yourself. I know I would, but I get mine for free.

Comics Values Annual 2008

Just like the swallows returning to Capistrano, so too do the funnybook fans return to their comicbook shops (except funnybook droogs do it weekly instead of annually, but you get the point).

At any rate, this is a good thing, because once a year (for the past 14 years or so) I get to contribute to the Comicbook Values Annual (the past decade or so as the features editor, and one of the three co-authors, along with Alex Malloy and Stuart Wells). Well, this year is no different than previous years, because I contributed again, and have been rewarded with my copies of the annual tome.

That’s right folks, CVA 2008 is now out and you can rush out and pick up your very own copy (or, if you want an autographed copy, let me know, and I'll see what we can arrange).

This time out we have a wonderful cover by Mark Sparacio (who has done the last couple of covers for us), of This year’s hot Marvel Comics film, Iron Man. Plus we have an interview (conducted by your humble narrator), with None other than the Award-Winning SF Novelist, Orson Scott Card (who wrote both Ultimate Ultimate Iron Man and Ultimate Iron Man II.

Whelp, that’s it for now. Enjoy

Comics Values Annual

Not quite here yet, but on the way, is the Comics Values Annual 2008 edition. As some of you may already know, I’ve been contributing to this annual comicbook price guide since the ‘93/‘94 edition (I’ve been the features editor and co-author on it since ‘97 or so). The book, published by Krause Books, is an annual listing of comics and their prices.

CVA provides some 94,000 individual listings with special sections devoted to specific publishers (Marvel, DC), notable eras and areas in the industry (Golden Age, Color Comics, Black & White and Undergrounds), plus a grading guide, along with market reports, and tips for buying, selling and preserving your comics. Whether you are a well-seasoned comic book collector looking for reliable details and data, or a box office junkie just discovering story lines behind big screen heroes, this book will take you into the collecting world armed with expert information.

Oh yeah, it also has a couple of articles written by yours truly. Most notably, is an interview I conducted with award-winning SF author, Orson Scott Card who is many things to many people, Funnybook readers probably know him best as the creator/writer of Marvel’s Ultimate Iron Man, and for his work with the Dable Brothers on Red Prophet and Wyrms (also from Marvel) while Science Fiction Fans know him as the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (making him the only author to have won both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years).

Personally, I found the interview enlightening (and, well, fun), hopefully you will as well. One more thing, you might have noticed that the cover is Iron Man, and the person interviewed writes (Ultimate) Iron Man, so I guess it is no secret that we are attempting to patch into the hype surround the New Marvel Comic Flic, staring, well, you guessed it, Iron Man.