If Anarky is what Grant would’ve been when he was 15 if he “knew then what he knows now”, why don’t he do at least some of those things, even though he’s older? Ugh!

I definitely remember people buying multiple copies of each and immediately bagging them without even reading them, in the hopes that they would dramatically go up in value. I remember the same about all four Reign of the Superman titles (when everyone assumed the issue that had the “real” Superman in it would become the most valuable, but no one knew which one it WAS, so better play it safe…), and all of the multiple cover versions of X-Men one.

Hell, I remember paying $40 for a copy of Rai #0, and I want to weep more or less every single time I remember that fact.

Death of Superman was definitely one of the biggest and earliest examples, though… so much so that I wonder whether or not it was all the mainstream hype that brought the speculators into the markey in the first place. And if that’s the case, I’ll honestly say without a shred of sarcasm that the Death of Superman storyline might have been the worst thing that ever happened to comics.

That speculator market utterly DESTROYED comics for YEARS (one could argue that they still haven’t recovered). And about the only silver lining I take out of that very dark cloud is that I learned a hell of a lot about market speculation and short-term stock trading as a teenager living in that time period and watching the crash happen and trying to understand the underlying reasons. Which, strangely enough, help give a unique perspective on how the stock market works (and the many reasons why it’s currently not working so well).

There was an email asking that the 2nd prnting be kept quiet, but someone spilled the beans on Newsarama the same day…

Well, they’ve had a lot of experience backpedalling from a media assault. Northstar, Rawhide Kid,… arguably, Marvel may have taken a good look at those events and ran through different scenarios to figure how to spin this one to good effect rather than bad.

When we planned “The Death” we knew that Superman would die in #75 and that we would then do the “World Without a Superman” bit for a couple months. We hoped that DC would allow us to cease publication for a time, which they did. That way, when the catalogues came out, retailers could readily see that there were no Superman, Action, Adventures, etc. coming out.

But to fill the gap we then added some specials, like a Newstime magazine.

At the time we didn’t know how or when exactly we’d be bringing Superman back. We honestly considered having a fill-in guy be a type of Superman. Hell… there’s nothing we didn’t consider.

I really liked that story. They were way way better than the Batman film he wrote

One issue with the 1989 Batman film is that the Writers Guild called a strike while it was in final pre-production or actually in production, so Hamm couldn’t do any of the rewriting. I’m not sure how Warren Skaaren was able to do it, but at any rate Hamm couldn’t. I actually like the film, but the writing disconnect left a few holes in its wake.

IIRC, those Sam Hamm issues weren’t any particular treat for readers either.

I really liked that story. They were way way better than the Batman film he wrote

By the way, comics are doing quite well nowadays.

$.75 x 75,000 (as of 02/1989) = $56,250

$2.99 x 55,206 (as of 02/2007) = $165,065

According to an inflation calculator $56,250 in 2006 dollars = $92,442.

Funny to think that the Ventriloquist was originally a 2000 AD idea, and now he’s a staple in the Bat-verse, in multiple incarnations!

“My favorite part of that story is that this was a routine suggestion in the story conferences, and this time they said “Why not?””

“Why not?”
“How did Superman die?”
“Why not?”
“How did Superman die?”
“Why not?”

(Fans of Opie and Anthony will get the above bit)