I used to work as a comic shop in high school and the amount of times I ruined someone’s day by telling them that death of Superman still in the black bag is worth nothing
As a massive Captain Marvel fan, I don't know why they decided to push her by making her an unlikeable crazy person in civil war II. I feel like that really damaged the character for a while
The most uncollectible comic I've ever seen was way back in 1992 when I was working in a Sydney comic book store. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was the comic to have. Then it wasn't. We ordered dozens of copies. I went into the comic store I worked at when I was in Sydney again back in 2007. I checked the back issue bin. There were still dozens of copies of Turok for 50 Australian cents.
I bought a silver age key online and it was packed amongst a stack of Ultimate Fantastic 4 books for protection instead of something like a Gemini mailer
@@ImagineNationInk Is "secondary market" a common term, because it works as a descriptor for stuff like that? Minor titles/second tier - I've seen. Like X-Factor/New Mutants/DC equivalents.
@@joshuaclark1930 “Secondary market” essentially means reselling something after the initial publication/release. For example; eBay, garage sales, thrift stores, dollar bins, etc
I stopped by a hole-in-the-wall vintage store to see if they had any comics. I was pointed to a corner of the store and saw about 5 or 6 long boxes just waiting to be gone through. I was so excited! Imagine my crushing disappointment to see that they were 95% Valiant titles. :/
The crazy thing about all the Valiant books is they have probably aged better than most of the mid to late '90's books. It's just that most people aren't familiar with the characters and Valiant art is solid but not jaw dropping.
@@jameydunne3920 I liked the Valiant stuff myself. I've picked up the omnibus editions as they've released them. As you said nothing jaw dropping but stories were decent enough. Looking forward to the Eternal Warrior omnibus too
Flawed, but I liked it. It felt a little like the Marvel Winter Soldier story that I really wanted but didn't get. I heard there was a sequel in the works, and was curious how they would build on the first one
Marvel's New Universe. The only comics that I ever chucked into a recycling bin. I had runs from #1 onward of each title, which were part of a collection I bought in the '90s. I've seen them in boxes for 10 for a $1 & they don't go!
I guess it’s tangentially mentioned here by Valiant’s entire 90s run. I believe Valiant’s mastermind Shooter was behind that essentially cold run to the Valiant universe.
I was a small time dealer back in the late 80s and early 90s. once people caught on to the early Valiant issues that had ridiculously low print runs (harbinger 1 = 30,000) speculators began ordering quantities of the books and then the crash. in ending, you can add the Malibu titles to the list.
true. which shows how much the market has changed. a friend of mine has a shop and his $ in sales have been somewhat constant over the years, even though the cover prices have increased, so numbers have been going down@@davidallen8891
As someone who's worked with a comic store for about 5 years now, I have to say almost every book that's based on a movie, sports, or video game. Seen many come through and had to break the news that they were worth about 10-25 cents each.
I picked up two Bloodshot #1’s back in the day because the guy at my LCS at the time, said, “this is going to be a hot book.” I was new at collecting and thought, “what a good investment.” Today, I’m seeing the same book in the dollar bins.🙄
@@GhostRiderSpiritOfVengeance an antique mall in my area has a stack of both Cabel #1 and Bloodshot #1. I was debating on buying them all and throwing them up on ebay.
I found a stack of Elflord 1st and 2nd series dumped on the street and it was about to rain. Not sure if they are unwanted or hard to move but I couldn’t let them die a horrible death in the rain.
I've been trying to collect a full run of Elflord for around 25 years but there are still certain issues I can't find. It's weird, I can find hundreds of copies of certain issues for next to nothing, but others are impossible to track down.
I didn't buy into the Valiant hype at all, but I did spend a lot of money on CrossGen comics. It's fun to talk to the creators about it today, though, since it was a unique operating model.
I recall trading in a bunch of Valiant comics for in store credit and getting the reply, "Oh, I can fill my bird cage with these." Yeah, safe to say I didn't get much.
Yeah, listening to youtubers or "hot spec key" websites about "investment" has lost a lot of people their shirts with 2022 MCU spec for example. (That said I thought Bloodlines, new 52 Superman, Civil War II are not worth 50 cents as someone who reads comics and doesn't look at them like stocks.)
Their are a few runs of books I collect that hold no monetary value, just love the books. It's great because the runs are very cheap to finish. But I have found that trying to finish a graded 9.8 run of them is almost impossible because these books have been sitting in dollar bins for over 20 years and haven't been taken care of.
I think those Superman books in 2004 that Michael Turner was associated with still have interest. I believe he wrote or co-wrote those 6 issues between Action, Adventures of, and Superman.
John sable freelance. Literally picked a full run out of 10 cent bins all at once, from the same location. Still had 2 more 3/4 complete runs of it still in them when I was finished
I collected a bunch of these when they were current along with a lot of other titles that are probably in the 10 cent bins: Nexus, American Flagg, Camelot 3000, Amethyst, Arion, Dalgoda and so on.
The X-Force run by John Francis Moore is pretty awesome though, sort of a spiritual successor to Claremont's New Mutants run where the characters are now angsted out twenty-somethings.
I second this. Moore's run was really solid and once Pollina came on for the art they meshed really well on storytelling. Moore is really an under appreciated writer in my book. His Chronos book for DC only lasted like 12 issues but was a sleeper hit for me back in the 90s.
That X Force run,especially the issue in the thumbnail,is what got me back into comics. Absolutely loved it and still do. Pollinas art was incredible and so was Jimmy Cheungs when he took over. Probably the best run X Force ever had outside the X Statics stuff.
I used full runs of 90's valiant when I was learning to make custom bonds. To this day one of the larger comic shops in Pittsburgh had about 80 copies of Eternal Warrior #1 in the dollar bins.
NOBODY buys old Defiant comics back issues. It’s a damn shame too because Shooter,Ditko and Claremont worked on em and they were actually pretty good early 90s books
When you're right, you're right. I went to my LCB this past Saturday, and there were three and a half long boxes full of X - Force. All of the issues were issues 16 and above. I know because I was looking for issue 15.
Back issues are so over-priced most of what I buy these days comes out of the dollar bin, just hunting for cool stuff, stuff to trade and the occasional under-priced gem.
This should have been titled the "Land of Misfit Toys" books. Lol... Also, it's hilarious how many of these books took art homage from Rob Liefield's art style. Thor, Xforce etc. fun stuff though. True story, my buddy went to his LCS, and staid he'd take all the books in the .50 bin for $25 (I think he figured out it was closer to $50 in "value". LCS owner took him up on it, and then he carefully cut the covers off all of them, and then epoxied them into a bar top he was making for a client who had a superhero themed home bar (Big DC guy supposedly).
I’m surprised Wolverine: Agent of SHIELD didn’t make the list. My old LCS had an entire LONG BOX full of the first issue. They couldn’t even give them away!
It's funny, because Valiant was super popular in the 90's, and a lot of the back issues went for big bucks. It was pretty much my favorite comic company when it was in its heyday, and I still have complete runs of a lot of the titles like Ninjak, X-O, Eternal Warrior, Bloodshot, Archer and Armstrong, and etc. The company made a huge mistake when they forced out Jim Shooter. He was the driving creative force behind the entire line, and once he was gone the quality of the comics quickly went downhill and then shortly after that Valiant was history.
Same here. I have most number 1s and some 0s. I acquired Harbinger 2 sometime in 92. Early 93 I was told by my LCS it was valued around 75 bucks. I thought I had struck gold and stored them in a nice place.
I go through dollar bins all the time. When I was in Pensacola FL one of the comic shops had all Mystique comics from 2003 (except #1) for a dollar. I been collecting X-Factor out of dollar bins now I just need 52 issues to finish the run. Back in the late 80's I found AMS#31 in a 25 cent bin. I also found a lot of Spectacular Spider-Man in the 25 cent bin back then. Recently in my LCS I've been finding Fantastic Four vol.1, Captain America vol.1 & 2, Avenger vol.1 and The New Avengers in the dollar bin.
I really enjoyed this video, You made some very valid points. I was collecting Superman in that era, and it was pretty vanilla for the most part. P.s I too see alot of valiant in the discount bin but they were the fist company I saw that did reflective foil covers and it blew my mind as a kid
I remember when Valiant comics first started coming out. I read Magnus and Solar with a little skepticism and the stories were really good. Then I expanded to other Valiant titles and the stories were awesome (to me at least). I eventually stopped getting a few books from DC and Marvel and got pretty much everything from Valiant. I loved those stories and for the most part, the art was amazing. I even started buying old Gold Key versions of Magnus and Solar. I was hooked and now it seems that re-selling comics is more important than reading them and the fact that Valiant comics dominate the 50 cent to a dollar bin, means that still not many people are buying them. If you really want something to read, check out the old Valiant books from the 90's.
This. I just wrote a comment relating this. Granted, Valiant was greatly helped getting noticed being that the Wizard crew hyped them to kingdom come, and they were competing against Image, Marvel (I believe post-Claremont) and DC. Image was just that, all about looks and not so much coherent storylines. Marvel and DC had just lost their powerhouses when Image came around, right after shifting into the “image is all that matters” idea of comics. Leaving Valiant to develop stories. So I’m glad to hear they didn’t keep their value, as I’d love to pick them up whenever I make it back to the States.
I love Superman 2003-2011, which works out great for me because they're very affordable. In fact, I recently picked up a NM copy of Superman 204 (Jim Lee cover) for a buck! So everybody PLEASE keep ignoring that era, thanks! 😎
I'll take them over new 52 Superman anyday. New 52 Superman sucks on toast, that to me is when Dan Didio got his cold greedy as hell hands on Superman.
@@jakeproven256 I totally agree. Those N52 Superman are dirt cheap too because nobody wants them. The 2000's were awesome for Superman IMO. We had Busiek, Rucka, Azzarello, Loeb, and Johns runs during that time. Shoot, Richard Donner even got in on the action. If you ask me that decade of Superman is criminally underrated. But whatever, cheaper back issues for us.
That’s what happens when you have an ultra powerful hero and he’s been around for years: you run out of things to do with him. I feel like once he died, he should have comeback with old golden age Superman powers and worked to earn back his modern Superman abilities (kinda like a goku kaio Ken to super saiyan and beyond type of thing). I mean he was fizzling out in the 50s and they didn’t know what to do anymore so they had to introduce new things like kryptonite and brainiac and the like. That’s where Superman has always shined as a comic: when he fights villains with superior minds not brutish villains because there’s no way they can win. It’s almost like an inevitability for Superman to win and for him to be interesting as a character again, he needs to take a lot more losses. That’s why the movie man of steel was so controversial amongst comic fans. Superman doesn’t kill but you made him do so when the more interesting story is let him stick with his principles and have to live with the fact that Zod killed someone and Superman didn’t kill him to stop him. That’s what would’ve made a better sequel. It’s not how Superman deals with his powers it’s how his powers and his villains gallery affect those who are around him. When there’s a Superman writer who understands that we will have an awesome Superman run on our hands.
Sadly, everything you said about the 90's Valiant comics is true as almost no one seems to collect those issues hardly even the key issues. The same could be said for the most part about the early Image titles of that same era. I don't see anyone clamoring for the original runs of Wildcats, Youngblood, Savage Dragon, or even Shadowhawk. The only series from that era that holds any value is the early Spawn books. The one thing I will say is that at least with the Valiant's they are very hard to find especially in high grade as they had much lower print runs than the big publishers at the time. It took me a long time to find a high grade copy of Harbinger #1 and I ended up getting it at what now seems like a pretty reasonable price. I pressed, cleaned, and then submitted it to CGC and it came back a 9.6. Now I am on the look out for a copy of X-O Manowar #1 in high grade.
I've been looking for a clean Shadowhawk 1 newsstand edition for years. I usually pick up the Savage Dragon books because I think they're a good read. Larson doesn't get respect he deserves for that or his work on ASM and SM.
@@jmpw005 I've been searching for all six of the Image launch titles in Newsstands and so far I have Cyberforce 1 and Shadowhawk 1. I am still looking for the others but I think that Shadowhawk 1 is the hardest one to find in high grade, I just got lucky to score one.
@@jthomascruz4890 Good luck finding the rest. I was able to get a high grade newsstands of the titles I liked. Someday I'll get that Shadowhawk #1 to go with my #2 & #3 newsstands.
Do any of the old Valiant comics hold their value. My brother read Eternal Warrior growing up (we were big Valiant heads), and maybe 7 years ago I bought the entire run of HARD Core for like 50 cents a pop. Read through them once, and chucked them. You truly can’t go home again.
From what I've seen, people will still fork over a bit for some pre-Unity classic Valiant era books. Usually not stupid money, but enough where putting them in the dollar bin would likely be a loss for the comic shop. Solar 1-10, Harbinger 1-5, Rai 1-5, the first few issues of X-O, etc. It's the post Unity/post Shooter stuff that really sits, which is a shame in some cases as there were still some good books running (Magnus, Shadowman) until Acclaim bought out the company. What's sad is history's pretty much repeated itself with the current Valiant universe\Dinesh ousting. I swear the characters are cursed. It's interesting to see Morbius #2 listed here. I remember the first 12-18 months of that book being pretty solid, at least until Ron Wagner left. It was probably the best take on the character I've read, though I gave up on Marvel years ago. Most of the other Midnight Sons early 90s books outside of Ghost Rider were pretty weak from the get-go.
Eternal Warrior 4 is still a key that has been a mainstay of all Valiant books that used to have a good value, but has dropped recently quite a bit. In the 90's, issue 9 was a key but now is $1 bin fodder. The last issues of Valiant are STILL hard to get & fairly expensive.
Cool that you mentioned Valiant, but another deep cut nineties company/imprint is Now Comics. I have a few myself, they seemed to do mostly licensed properties. Green Hornet, the Twilight Zone, Terminator, they even had a Married With Children comic!
(29.02.24) Actually people still collect to read...but personal tastes change. From 1983 to 1989/90, I was a hardcore 'Marvel Zombie' getting every (non-licensed only, save for the reg Star Wars title) Marvel branded comic - then I got disillusioned by Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants and switched to Batman after selling off most of my Marvel books. Even now I cull my collection every now and then.
I do the odd comic show and sell comics out of my garage two or three times a summer, and amazingly enough, I got rid of a lot of Image and other 90s independent crap these past couple years in my dollar bins. I couldn't believe it either, but it does happen. Had a guy pull out a chunk of Ultraverse this summer and I almost dropped my coffee.
Malibu's Ultraverse was a tragedy. I LOVED it, I have most of it. For three years Mantra's a$$ was in every comic in the lists of back issues for sale. Then the collapse of the industry in the 90s Marvel buys it and runs it into the ground. It is SO forgotten that even when they do multiversual travel they never go there.
i remember that morbius comic was one of my favorite series along with ghost rider, till some friend of my grandma said there is torture, serial killers, drugs and monster rapes in this comic and suddenly my entire collection was gone over a couple issues of morbius being on the coffee table when my grandmas friends from the va hospital came over. really one of the things that pushed me into the streets as a small child. my comics and cartoons were the only reason i wasnt joining gangs and shooting gangs before i was 10. after that i was all about getting into problems in the ghetto. i wonder if they realized the damage they were doing to my future by criminalizing lame marvel comics.
I will happily take the Morbius, all of the bloodlines, Thor and Eternal Warrior. I love Valiant comics, just bought Ninjak 1-7 at an antique shop last weekend.
I think Bloodlines had other characters to come out of it other than Hitman... but DC never utilized properly,. (The Pysba-rats, Sparx, Loose Cannon, etc.)
I'm old enough to remember in the mid-90s when GI Joe and Transformers comics were back issue poison.Then all of a sudden everyone wanted them again (though Special Missions and Transformers: Generation 2 are still pretty cheap per my experience).
OK Bloodshot #12, and the Good Guys #2 are specific issues that show up in the dollar bins a lot...guess no one wanted to read a valinat book about an unknown characters on vacation, and I guess shops overordered on the "Dominion" imprint?...speaking of imprints, I see a lot of "Dagger comics" in the bins, a short lived company of three series with names like "Team Anarchy". the art was sub par, and the stories forgetable, but apparently they had enough start up money to print a lot of books. And lastly any of the Image "Extreme Studios" books with the exeption of the later Alan Moore stuff (Team Youngblood in particular)
I’ve been trying to sell all my number 1’s from the new 52 at a crazy low price and nobody wants them. We’re talking about like 20 issues for under 15 bucks in mint condition.
Wow that's crazy about x-force. My local book store has a fairly large spot of comics and I stopped by one day and picked up all keys for both x-force and x-factor.....makes sense now thinking about it some each key was roughly $1.00 except x-factor #6 which I paid $15 for. Canadian price variant
Greg Capullo drew X-Force 15-25, before moving on to Spawn & Batman. One might say those are worth collecting, especially if you can get them on the cheap
#25 is also the Fatal Attractions crossover issue, and there are a couple of others that are parts of crossovers or have gimmick covers in the run that people definitely cherry pick. That applies to pretty much every nineties X-Men spinoff.
That’s before he became incredibly amazing and super talented (he had to crank out thirty issues of spawn to get his chops. Now he’s untouchable! His Batman is definitely dope and top five of definitive artists for Batman.). You can look at old capullo stuff and can’t tell the difference between him and Tony Daniel at that time. His pre 1996 artwork doesn’t have the flair that his latter work does.
Capullo's first comic was Cable vs Deadpool- A must buy. Then a few X-Cutioner's Song. Which I liked that crossover. The SHEILD and War Machine vs X-Force was kind of cool- but no Cable. Cable came back in #25 and that issue was cool. Cable stuck around for a bit, but the issues were merely ok. Then Cable left and....well- who cared about X-Force again with the exception of a pair of random Deadpool appearances?
@@cheeseburger12 X-Force definitely petered out without Cable, but I’ve gained an appreciation for the eighties and nineties X-Men spin-offs lately and started chasing them down. Even Excalibur!
I actually love X-Force post Rob. X-Cutioners Song, team on the run vs Shield with Capullo art. Yes. Even I buy 40ish area start not being super into it. But I love that crossover and 19-25.
*LOVED* X-Force back in the day! Feral was a total babe! I stopped following the series when Caliban joined the team and Warpath somehow shrank and began wielding a bo staff. Sometimes change isn't good...
I know this video is about comics, but watching made me think of about ten years ago I found a mint copy of the original 1979 Advanced D&D player's handbook in a bargain bin, for maybe 2 bucks. It didn't have any marks or wear and tear of any kind. Needless to say, I picked it up lol. Anyone else here made a score like that in a bargain bin? I wanna hear about it!
As someone who is interested in Valiant comics I can tell you why I avoid back issues: 1. I'm only interested in the JIM SHOOTER Era. 2. I no longer have the patience to look all over town for missing issues I need to complete a given writer's tenure, unless it's from the Bronze Age or earlier.
A comic book store near me USED to be jammed so tight that the whole place was considered an OSHA and fire code violation. They were forced tp do a 75% off sale or the city safety inspectors were going to shut them down. Even then NOBODY was buying Groo the Wanderer. Okay, everyone but me. I think I walked out of the store with about half the Marvel run of the series for under $20. I would have bought duplicates of the ones I already had but because it was a sidewalk sale, they could not take debit or credit cards and that was as much cash as I had on me.
Ha! I am a collector from the early 80s and left the hobby in the early 90s for 5 years. When I got back into it I started collecting different things AND differently for that matter. Meaning I have found collecting story arcs a much funner thing to do, so I'm the one guy that went back and got every issue of Bloodlines. And every single issue connected to Onslaught. So sue me
In "What The?" #6, the Crisis On Infinite Earth's was referred to as the "Crisis Of Infinite Jerks" because it closed the door on any future cross-overs. It was written by John Byrne, who had done Man Of Steel and who defined Gladiators powers to be equivalent to Supermans, so I imagine he was planning to do a Superman-versus-Gladiator, which would've been Kool.
I didn’t buy the old Valiant books at cover price but I’d grab them from bargain bins because there were some very good stories among the titles. Oddly enough I think I only found 1 Ninjak during that period but plenty of Archer & Armstrong. No Image comics made this list? A lot of their early titles were overprinted garbage. I have a huge collection because I enjoyed them, especially Stormwatch. Maybe they are so worthless that they aren’t even mentioned anymore. I have a collection of 50k comics of assorted publishers that I bought between 1975 and 2005 that I’m now looking at parting with. From collector to seller and I’m clueless, so thanks for the videos. I like to understand what I’m doing before I do it.
I own three issues of every Valiant comic from the 90s because there was always one of them in a 99 cent-store three-pack. So if I saw there was a 3-pack that contained an issue of Knightfall or Infinity Gauntlet I didn't have yet, I spent the dollar--even if I knew it meant I'd have another copy of Deathmate or Magnus: Robot Hunter.
I only collect Marvel now. Last May, I sold over half of my collection, which was everything non-Marvel related, which included D.C., Valiant, Dark Horse, etc. I sold them for approximately 50 cents each.
Maybe do a video about stuff like Elfquest or Groo, just as examples of titles that kind of started out amazingly and then just went to shit. And I have 30-40 of both of those comics.
While you don't often find the Archie Sonic runs in discount longboxes in my experience, likely as parents would just pick them up for their kids, there's an exception for the run between issues 52-75 where the books just became hideous and unpleasant even to the covers. I suppose the shorthand would just be 'the issues with endless crosshatching on the covers.'
I got a job at a comic shop in the late 90s, long enough to see hope from the floor falling out from under the whole country thanks to the speculator crash but close enough we had to tread lightly. And my vote is the boxes and boxes and boxes, floor to ceiling of both the death and return of Superman, and its Marvel counterpart, second to like fifteenth printing of McFarlane's adjectiveless Spider-Man #1.
What’s sad about the Superman stuff is that 690 to 700 on the plain Superman title was interesting stuff. They had monel and Superman fighting in kandor and they explained why daxamites and kryptonians are so similar and it fleshed out kandor as a place on krypton and why it was important. It was short and to the point (only about a year’s worth of issues) but it had a lot of good kryptonian canonical stuff being fleshed out in there. I also liked that new costume that monel dawned and the reasons why his color scheme was what it was in his new costume. Pretty neat stuff but the problem was the preceding stuff before it was so bad that nobody looked into that little years worth of issues leading up to Superman 700.
I’m the weirdo that collects X-Force, and X-Factor… but only in high grade and only if “found out in the wild.” Bloodlines makes me chuckle. I must have received 5 “bonus books” of Bloodlines when I’ve made a purchase from someone online. Sure, from the sellers perspective, they think they’re being cool by sending a bonus book… but I’m on to them. They’ve been offloading unsellable books to make room for better ones!
I didn't read Valiant comics back in the day, but then again, I was off comics in the early 90's. More because I was finishing college and had no money than the quality of the comics. I more or less discovered the company in their new incarnation and really loved some of the titles. I've picked up a few of the older trades and the stories are definitely enjoyable, but not something I gravitate towards in the cheap bins.
In the uk valiant comics used to sell in multi packs in news agents in the early 2000and they where everywhere got whole runs of Magnus and hard corps at the time
I used to work as a comic shop in high school and the amount of times I ruined someone’s day by telling them that death of Superman still in the black bag is worth nothing
Shame.
Because it's a dime a dozen. You can get it at any comic shop easily. It's worth the value of the most expensive thing on the Burger King value menu
Despite that, I am still glad that I kept it in the bag and didn't wear the black armband like someone I knew.
As a massive Captain Marvel fan, I don't know why they decided to push her by making her an unlikeable crazy person in civil war II. I feel like that really damaged the character for a while
blame the SJW!
Just like at the Willow show and Witcher Blood Origin. They really want to sell unlikable psychos for some reason…
Brie Larson didn't do Captain Marvel's likeability any favors either.
Lol "massive captain marvel fan"
@@dimitrijetucovic1307 LOL great !!! i hope those comic book investments work out for you.😅
The most uncollectible comic I've ever seen was way back in 1992 when I was working in a Sydney comic book store. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was the comic to have. Then it wasn't. We ordered dozens of copies. I went into the comic store I worked at when I was in Sydney again back in 2007. I checked the back issue bin. There were still dozens of copies of Turok for 50 Australian cents.
That’s funny, I brought a copy of Turok from Comic Kingdom in Sydney, just before they closed
There's Turok movie scripts floating around since 1992. I bet those end up in bins too
@@OliverDunlop I remember that place was a freak show when I used to shop there. A friend of mine coined it the Tatooine Cantina.
I thought they were going to get a bump after the video game became popular: Nope.
Moved into an old comic book store like 15 years ago. Cleaning up found boxes of comics. I know i have like 50 copies of issue number 1 Turok.
I bought a silver age key online and it was packed amongst a stack of Ultimate Fantastic 4 books for protection instead of something like a Gemini mailer
Marvel's Ravage 2099 is the title I always see in bargain bins over here
I picked Morbius #2 out of a dollar bin recently specifically because of the cover, I think it looks incredible.
Just awful low level “art” any no talent high schooler could draw that. Time for glasses, I think.
There were much worse covers later in the run. Some of the later covers were atrocious.
Excalibur sits in a lot of dollar bins, which has been great for me, since I’ve been building a set!
Yup, I see a lot of Excalibur, and you can add New Warriors to that list too!
I’m with you on Excalibur. I feel those early Claremont/Davis issues are some of the most slept on issues in the secondary market
@@ImagineNationInk Fact!
@@ImagineNationInk Is "secondary market" a common term, because it works as a descriptor for stuff like that? Minor titles/second tier - I've seen. Like X-Factor/New Mutants/DC equivalents.
@@joshuaclark1930 “Secondary market” essentially means reselling something after the initial publication/release. For example; eBay, garage sales, thrift stores, dollar bins, etc
I stopped by a hole-in-the-wall vintage store to see if they had any comics. I was pointed to a corner of the store and saw about 5 or 6 long boxes just waiting to be gone through. I was so excited! Imagine my crushing disappointment to see that they were 95% Valiant titles. :/
The crazy thing about all the Valiant books is they have probably aged better than most of the mid to late '90's books. It's just that most people aren't familiar with the characters and Valiant art is solid but not jaw dropping.
@@jameydunne3920 I liked the Valiant stuff myself. I've picked up the omnibus editions as they've released them. As you said nothing jaw dropping but stories were decent enough. Looking forward to the Eternal Warrior omnibus too
@@aarongomez9440 Did you see the Vin Diesel Bloodshot movie? If so, what did you think?
Those Valiant Nintendo comics are pretty out there
Flawed, but I liked it. It felt a little like the Marvel Winter Soldier story that I really wanted but didn't get. I heard there was a sequel in the works, and was curious how they would build on the first one
Marvel's New Universe. The only comics that I ever chucked into a recycling bin. I had runs from #1 onward of each title, which were part of a collection I bought in the '90s. I've seen them in boxes for 10 for a $1 & they don't go!
I guess it’s tangentially mentioned here by Valiant’s entire 90s run. I believe Valiant’s mastermind Shooter was behind that essentially cold run to the Valiant universe.
Truth!
Same for me but it wasn't so bad.
Esp Justice.
I rather liked DP7 and Nightmask, but I've deliberately avoided the other New Universe titles.
A lot of those have potential . when they get a tv show.you'll shoot yourself
Liefield's lines of books (Brigade, Bloodstrike, etc.) from the early Image days & after he split from the imprint.
please make more videos like this. its such an overlooked subject of discussion.
I’d love to!
What? NO Deathmate Yellow?
HAHAHHHAAA.
Fun times man.
Thanks
I was a small time dealer back in the late 80s and early 90s. once people caught on to the early Valiant issues that had ridiculously low print runs (harbinger 1 = 30,000) speculators began ordering quantities of the books and then the crash. in ending, you can add the Malibu titles to the list.
Nowadays most books don't even have that circulation.
true. which shows how much the market has changed. a friend of mine has a shop and his $ in sales have been somewhat constant over the years, even though the cover prices have increased, so numbers have been going down@@davidallen8891
One Man's junk is another man's treasure.
TRUE!
Warriors of Plasm from Defiant Comics. Jim Shooter strikes out again.
Micronauts and Human Fly have been perennial dollar bin material for decades, along with nearly the whole run of Batman Knightfall.
As someone who's worked with a comic store for about 5 years now, I have to say almost every book that's based on a movie, sports, or video game. Seen many come through and had to break the news that they were worth about 10-25 cents each.
I picked up two Bloodshot #1’s back in the day because the guy at my LCS at the time, said, “this is going to be a hot book.” I was new at collecting and thought, “what a good investment.” Today, I’m seeing the same book in the dollar bins.🙄
I will trade you a stack of Cable #1 books 😁
Really? I remember those shot up to $10/$15 for a while
@@GhostRiderSpiritOfVengeance an antique mall in my area has a stack of both Cabel #1 and Bloodshot #1. I was debating on buying them all and throwing them up on ebay.
I found a stack of Elflord 1st and 2nd series dumped on the street and it was about to rain. Not sure if they are unwanted or hard to move but I couldn’t let them die a horrible death in the rain.
Hell yea bro I got a stack of elflord too 😂
I've been trying to collect a full run of Elflord for around 25 years but there are still certain issues I can't find. It's weird, I can find hundreds of copies of certain issues for next to nothing, but others are impossible to track down.
I didn't buy into the Valiant hype at all, but I did spend a lot of money on CrossGen comics. It's fun to talk to the creators about it today, though, since it was a unique operating model.
Ruse is a great tv show idea.
Negation is still one of my all-time favorites!
I recall trading in a bunch of Valiant comics for in store credit and getting the reply, "Oh, I can fill my bird cage with these." Yeah, safe to say I didn't get much.
Demand is dependent on persona. If you’re a reader maybe those titles are great. Monetary value to me is a fugazi concept that influencers push.
Yeah, listening to youtubers or "hot spec key" websites about "investment" has lost a lot of people their shirts with 2022 MCU spec for example. (That said I thought Bloodlines, new 52 Superman, Civil War II are not worth 50 cents as someone who reads comics and doesn't look at them like stocks.)
No mention of "investment " or "value " that I can hear. Just " these don't sell. They're dollar bin stuff and still won't move. "
Yeah, money is a lie the government is lying to you 😜
Their are a few runs of books I collect that hold no monetary value, just love the books. It's great because the runs are very cheap to finish. But I have found that trying to finish a graded 9.8 run of them is almost impossible because these books have been sitting in dollar bins for over 20 years and haven't been taken care of.
I think those Superman books in 2004 that Michael Turner was associated with still have interest. I believe he wrote or co-wrote those 6 issues between Action, Adventures of, and Superman.
John sable freelance. Literally picked a full run out of 10 cent bins all at once, from the same location. Still had 2 more 3/4 complete runs of it still in them when I was finished
I collected a bunch of these when they were current along with a lot of other titles that are probably in the 10 cent bins: Nexus, American Flagg, Camelot 3000, Amethyst, Arion, Dalgoda and so on.
@@actionic135 I grabbed them up as I enjoy Mike Grell's work so I figured I'd give them a try
The X-Force run by John Francis Moore is pretty awesome though, sort of a spiritual successor to Claremont's New Mutants run where the characters are now angsted out twenty-somethings.
I'll check it out!
I second this. Moore's run was really solid and once Pollina came on for the art they meshed really well on storytelling. Moore is really an under appreciated writer in my book. His Chronos book for DC only lasted like 12 issues but was a sleeper hit for me back in the 90s.
That X Force run,especially the issue in the thumbnail,is what got me back into comics. Absolutely loved it and still do. Pollinas art was incredible and so was Jimmy Cheungs when he took over. Probably the best run X Force ever had outside the X Statics stuff.
@@miggypeso909 Yeah, I was surprised to see the Stryfe In Hell issue, that was probably the best issue of an x-book that came out that year.
@@chrisschumacher8553 wasn’t it tho? Especially the ending! I have no idea why people don’t like this run.
Does Malibu Ultraverse outsell Valiant comics? What about Defiant's Warriors of Plasm?
Dang, really are Making videos every day now. I predict “10 books in my collection with yellowing pages” being a video topic eventually this year 😅
I used full runs of 90's valiant when I was learning to make custom bonds. To this day one of the larger comic shops in Pittsburgh had about 80 copies of Eternal Warrior #1 in the dollar bins.
NOBODY buys old Defiant comics back issues. It’s a damn shame too because Shooter,Ditko and Claremont worked on em and they were actually pretty good early 90s books
When you're right, you're right. I went to my LCB this past Saturday, and there were three and a half long boxes full of X - Force. All of the issues were issues 16 and above. I know because I was looking for issue 15.
Back issues are so over-priced most of what I buy these days comes out of the dollar bin, just hunting for cool stuff, stuff to trade and the occasional under-priced gem.
This should have been titled the "Land of Misfit Toys" books. Lol... Also, it's hilarious how many of these books took art homage from Rob Liefield's art style. Thor, Xforce etc. fun stuff though. True story, my buddy went to his LCS, and staid he'd take all the books in the .50 bin for $25 (I think he figured out it was closer to $50 in "value". LCS owner took him up on it, and then he carefully cut the covers off all of them, and then epoxied them into a bar top he was making for a client who had a superhero themed home bar (Big DC guy supposedly).
Spider-Man: Chapter 1 by John Byrne is impossible to shift. I had all the issues on Ebay for 99p for months and nobody even looked at the damn thing!
I still love the Valiant years. Picked up the Unity TPBs for $1 each. Can't wait to read it with my kids.
For great deals - it's worth it!
I loved Tekno-Comics back in the 90s. Those were some fun and original stories. Primortals and Mr Hero were the best!
Woot woot!
I have some. Good ideas, third rate art.
I’m surprised Wolverine: Agent of SHIELD didn’t make the list. My old LCS had an entire LONG BOX full of the first issue. They couldn’t even give them away!
How about almost every Malibu title from the Ultraverse?
They had some great titles like Prime, Solution or Firearm but they will not sell anymore.
Firearm was better than people remember. Now I want to build that set haha
Ive got the entire malibu/ ultraverse universe! Fits into one short box!!👍
I still have every issue of Malibu's Ultraverse titles.
Really enjoyed them - still do!
@@stevenschaller1672 You are short, I need two boxes(not long comic store boxes but still). I miss it.
I forgot.i keep the marvel crossover issues seperate! All the infinity stuff too!👍
I had a Batman Confidential #1 when I was a kid and I read it until the cover almost fell off. Loved that thing. (Still have my copy, beat to hell)
I know I am showing my age, but I loved the Marvel New Universe titles, the Jim Shooter experiment. I’m not sure anyone remembers those anymore.
It's funny, because Valiant was super popular in the 90's, and a lot of the back issues went for big bucks. It was pretty much my favorite comic company when it was in its heyday, and I still have complete runs of a lot of the titles like Ninjak, X-O, Eternal Warrior, Bloodshot, Archer and Armstrong, and etc. The company made a huge mistake when they forced out Jim Shooter. He was the driving creative force behind the entire line, and once he was gone the quality of the comics quickly went downhill and then shortly after that Valiant was history.
Same here. I have most number 1s and some 0s. I acquired Harbinger 2 sometime in 92. Early 93 I was told by my LCS it was valued around 75 bucks. I thought I had struck gold and stored them in a nice place.
I always find the spin off 90s x-men titles that no one wants
I go through dollar bins all the time. When I was in Pensacola FL one of the comic shops had all Mystique comics from 2003 (except #1) for a dollar. I been collecting X-Factor out of dollar bins now I just need 52 issues to finish the run. Back in the late 80's I found AMS#31 in a 25 cent bin. I also found a lot of Spectacular Spider-Man in the 25 cent bin back then. Recently in my LCS I've been finding Fantastic Four vol.1, Captain America vol.1 & 2, Avenger vol.1 and The New Avengers in the dollar bin.
I completed my run last year. I bought lots to complete it.
Yea X Factor had a lot comicbooks nobody wanted
Cyberforce, Bloodstrike, Shadowhawk, Stormwatch, basically 90% of 90s Image
Garbage series with guys in steroids or gun freaks. The gals were mostly centerfolds. The best of the worst being Gen13.
I really enjoyed this video, You made some very valid points. I was collecting Superman in that era, and it was pretty vanilla for the most part. P.s I too see alot of valiant in the discount bin but they were the fist company I saw that did reflective foil covers and it blew my mind as a kid
Ha, I have an X-Force run from 1 - 50, and then the last issue 129 for a cap at the end 'cuz it has a cool Doop cover
I remember when Valiant comics first started coming out. I read Magnus and Solar with a little skepticism and the stories were really good. Then I expanded to other Valiant titles and the stories were awesome (to me at least). I eventually stopped getting a few books from DC and Marvel and got pretty much everything from Valiant. I loved those stories and for the most part, the art was amazing. I even started buying old Gold Key versions of Magnus and Solar. I was hooked and now it seems that re-selling comics is more important than reading them and the fact that Valiant comics dominate the 50 cent to a dollar bin, means that still not many people are buying them. If you really want something to read, check out the old Valiant books from the 90's.
Agree completely, I loved the Valiant run from the early 90's...and then they fired Jim Shooter and it all went to Hell very quickly.
@@michaelbaker8375
Absolutely! Jim Shooter was the glue that held it all together. I think he did way more for Valiant than he did for Marvel
Solar was really good imo
This. I just wrote a comment relating this. Granted, Valiant was greatly helped getting noticed being that the Wizard crew hyped them to kingdom come, and they were competing against Image, Marvel (I believe post-Claremont) and DC. Image was just that, all about looks and not so much coherent storylines. Marvel and DC had just lost their powerhouses when Image came around, right after shifting into the “image is all that matters” idea of comics. Leaving Valiant to develop stories.
So I’m glad to hear they didn’t keep their value, as I’d love to pick them up whenever I make it back to the States.
Valiant up until BWS left was incredible. Some of the best comics ever.
I love Superman 2003-2011, which works out great for me because they're very affordable. In fact, I recently picked up a NM copy of Superman 204 (Jim Lee cover) for a buck! So everybody PLEASE keep ignoring that era, thanks! 😎
I'll take them over new 52 Superman anyday. New 52 Superman sucks on toast, that to me is when Dan Didio got his cold greedy as hell hands on Superman.
@@jakeproven256 I totally agree. Those N52 Superman are dirt cheap too because nobody wants them. The 2000's were awesome for Superman IMO. We had Busiek, Rucka, Azzarello, Loeb, and Johns runs during that time. Shoot, Richard Donner even got in on the action. If you ask me that decade of Superman is criminally underrated. But whatever, cheaper back issues for us.
@@jaylucien669 Yes, a lot of decades for Superman are underrated in fact.
@@jakeproven256 I couldn't agree more.
That’s what happens when you have an ultra powerful hero and he’s been around for years: you run out of things to do with him. I feel like once he died, he should have comeback with old golden age Superman powers and worked to earn back his modern Superman abilities (kinda like a goku kaio Ken to super saiyan and beyond type of thing). I mean he was fizzling out in the 50s and they didn’t know what to do anymore so they had to introduce new things like kryptonite and brainiac and the like. That’s where Superman has always shined as a comic: when he fights villains with superior minds not brutish villains because there’s no way they can win. It’s almost like an inevitability for Superman to win and for him to be interesting as a character again, he needs to take a lot more losses. That’s why the movie man of steel was so controversial amongst comic fans. Superman doesn’t kill but you made him do so when the more interesting story is let him stick with his principles and have to live with the fact that Zod killed someone and Superman didn’t kill him to stop him. That’s what would’ve made a better sequel. It’s not how Superman deals with his powers it’s how his powers and his villains gallery affect those who are around him. When there’s a Superman writer who understands that we will have an awesome Superman run on our hands.
Sadly, everything you said about the 90's Valiant comics is true as almost no one seems to collect those issues hardly even the key issues. The same could be said for the most part about the early Image titles of that same era. I don't see anyone clamoring for the original runs of Wildcats, Youngblood, Savage Dragon, or even Shadowhawk. The only series from that era that holds any value is the early Spawn books. The one thing I will say is that at least with the Valiant's they are very hard to find especially in high grade as they had much lower print runs than the big publishers at the time. It took me a long time to find a high grade copy of Harbinger #1 and I ended up getting it at what now seems like a pretty reasonable price. I pressed, cleaned, and then submitted it to CGC and it came back a 9.6. Now I am on the look out for a copy of X-O Manowar #1 in high grade.
I've been looking for a clean Shadowhawk 1 newsstand edition for years.
I usually pick up the Savage Dragon books because I think they're a good read. Larson doesn't get respect he deserves for that or his work on ASM and SM.
@@jmpw005 I've been searching for all six of the Image launch titles in Newsstands and so far I have Cyberforce 1 and Shadowhawk 1. I am still looking for the others but I think that Shadowhawk 1 is the hardest one to find in high grade, I just got lucky to score one.
@@jthomascruz4890
Good luck finding the rest. I was able to get a high grade newsstands of the titles I liked. Someday I'll get that Shadowhawk #1 to go with my #2 & #3 newsstands.
sorry to say I put together a full set of the Bloodline comics....not sure really why but I did...
I have Thor 502. Must have come in a multipack I got at Ollie's one time, because I didn't read a lot of Thor back in the day.
Do any of the old Valiant comics hold their value. My brother read Eternal Warrior growing up (we were big Valiant heads), and maybe 7 years ago I bought the entire run of HARD Core for like 50 cents a pop. Read through them once, and chucked them. You truly can’t go home again.
From what I've seen, people will still fork over a bit for some pre-Unity classic Valiant era books. Usually not stupid money, but enough where putting them in the dollar bin would likely be a loss for the comic shop. Solar 1-10, Harbinger 1-5, Rai 1-5, the first few issues of X-O, etc. It's the post Unity/post Shooter stuff that really sits, which is a shame in some cases as there were still some good books running (Magnus, Shadowman) until Acclaim bought out the company. What's sad is history's pretty much repeated itself with the current Valiant universe\Dinesh ousting. I swear the characters are cursed.
It's interesting to see Morbius #2 listed here. I remember the first 12-18 months of that book being pretty solid, at least until Ron Wagner left. It was probably the best take on the character I've read, though I gave up on Marvel years ago. Most of the other Midnight Sons early 90s books outside of Ghost Rider were pretty weak from the get-go.
Eternal Warrior 4 is still a key that has been a mainstay of all Valiant books that used to have a good value, but has dropped recently quite a bit. In the 90's, issue 9 was a key but now is $1 bin fodder. The last issues of Valiant are STILL hard to get & fairly expensive.
Cool that you mentioned Valiant, but another deep cut nineties company/imprint is Now Comics. I have a few myself, they seemed to do mostly licensed properties. Green Hornet, the Twilight Zone, Terminator, they even had a Married With Children comic!
I collected comics to read them. Guess that's not a thing anymore.
(29.02.24)
Actually people still collect to read...but personal tastes change.
From 1983 to 1989/90, I was a hardcore 'Marvel Zombie' getting every (non-licensed only, save for the reg Star Wars title) Marvel branded comic - then I got disillusioned by Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants and switched to Batman after selling off most of my Marvel books.
Even now I cull my collection every now and then.
I do the odd comic show and sell comics out of my garage two or three times a summer, and amazingly enough, I got rid of a lot of Image and other 90s independent crap these past couple years in my dollar bins. I couldn't believe it either, but it does happen. Had a guy pull out a chunk of Ultraverse this summer and I almost dropped my coffee.
Malibu's Ultraverse was a tragedy. I LOVED it, I have most of it. For three years Mantra's a$$ was in every comic in the lists of back issues for sale. Then the collapse of the industry in the 90s Marvel buys it and runs it into the ground. It is SO forgotten that even when they do multiversual travel they never go there.
i remember that morbius comic was one of my favorite series along with ghost rider, till some friend of my grandma said there is torture, serial killers, drugs and monster rapes in this comic and suddenly my entire collection was gone over a couple issues of morbius being on the coffee table when my grandmas friends from the va hospital came over. really one of the things that pushed me into the streets as a small child. my comics and cartoons were the only reason i wasnt joining gangs and shooting gangs before i was 10. after that i was all about getting into problems in the ghetto. i wonder if they realized the damage they were doing to my future by criminalizing lame marvel comics.
I would see boxes of Tarzan when I was a kid. Nobody wanted them.
I will happily take the Morbius, all of the bloodlines, Thor and Eternal Warrior. I love Valiant comics, just bought Ninjak 1-7 at an antique shop last weekend.
I see a ton of Malibu comics in my $.50 bins
I think Bloodlines had other characters to come out of it other than Hitman... but DC never utilized properly,. (The Pysba-rats, Sparx, Loose Cannon, etc.)
Loved the first Civil War except for the ending. It got me back into new comics for a few years. Won't touch Civil War II.
I'm old enough to remember in the mid-90s when GI Joe and Transformers comics were back issue poison.Then all of a sudden everyone wanted them again (though Special Missions and Transformers: Generation 2 are still pretty cheap per my experience).
OK Bloodshot #12, and the Good Guys #2 are specific issues that show up in the dollar bins a lot...guess no one wanted to read a valinat book about an unknown characters on vacation, and I guess shops overordered on the "Dominion" imprint?...speaking of imprints, I see a lot of "Dagger comics" in the bins, a short lived company of three series with names like "Team Anarchy". the art was sub par, and the stories forgetable, but apparently they had enough start up money to print a lot of books. And lastly any of the Image "Extreme Studios" books with the exeption of the later Alan Moore stuff (Team Youngblood in particular)
I’ve been trying to sell all my number 1’s from the new 52 at a crazy low price and nobody wants them. We’re talking about like 20 issues for under 15 bucks in mint condition.
When Richard Donner was writing for Superman at that time doing the new Krypton mini series, I enjoyed those issues.
Wow that's crazy about x-force. My local book store has a fairly large spot of comics and I stopped by one day and picked up all keys for both x-force and x-factor.....makes sense now thinking about it some each key was roughly $1.00 except x-factor #6 which I paid $15 for. Canadian price variant
At least X-Factor has some good covers in the 1-100 range.
Cyberforce has an abundance of dollar bin real estate.
Greg Capullo drew X-Force 15-25, before moving on to Spawn & Batman. One might say those are worth collecting, especially if you can get them on the cheap
Oh neat!
#25 is also the Fatal Attractions crossover issue, and there are a couple of others that are parts of crossovers or have gimmick covers in the run that people definitely cherry pick. That applies to pretty much every nineties X-Men spinoff.
That’s before he became incredibly amazing and super talented (he had to crank out thirty issues of spawn to get his chops. Now he’s untouchable! His Batman is definitely dope and top five of definitive artists for Batman.). You can look at old capullo stuff and can’t tell the difference between him and Tony Daniel at that time. His pre 1996 artwork doesn’t have the flair that his latter work does.
Capullo's first comic was Cable vs Deadpool- A must buy. Then a few X-Cutioner's Song. Which I liked that crossover. The SHEILD and War Machine vs X-Force was kind of cool- but no Cable. Cable came back in #25 and that issue was cool. Cable stuck around for a bit, but the issues were merely ok. Then Cable left and....well- who cared about X-Force again with the exception of a pair of random Deadpool appearances?
@@cheeseburger12 X-Force definitely petered out without Cable, but I’ve gained an appreciation for the eighties and nineties X-Men spin-offs lately and started chasing them down. Even Excalibur!
Ultimatum. Everyone hated it. The Ultimate Universe was so popular, and they just destroyed it
Just bizarre and full of “shock value”
After the first five years it was becoming like the rest of marvel. Better to burn up than to fade away. Afterward what was left was a draugr.
Poor 90s Valiant, also Defiant comics, Black Bull Comics (i.e. Just a Pilgrim), Extreme titles, are always in the dollar boxes
I actually love X-Force post Rob. X-Cutioners Song, team on the run vs Shield with Capullo art. Yes. Even I buy 40ish area start not being super into it. But I love that crossover and 19-25.
*LOVED* X-Force back in the day! Feral was a total babe! I stopped following the series when Caliban joined the team and Warpath somehow shrank and began wielding a bo staff. Sometimes change isn't good...
Actually, I am putting together a Bloodlines run right now. Yes, I know it’s bad . . .
I know this video is about comics, but watching made me think of about ten years ago I found a mint copy of the original 1979 Advanced D&D player's handbook in a bargain bin, for maybe 2 bucks. It didn't have any marks or wear and tear of any kind. Needless to say, I picked it up lol.
Anyone else here made a score like that in a bargain bin? I wanna hear about it!
Hot damn! Good find!
I see alot of 90's Image comics in the dollar bins. But they are slightly picking up in popularity and purchases.
I want these $.50 X-Force books you speak of. I just haven't seen them.
As someone who is interested in Valiant comics I can tell you why I avoid back issues:
1. I'm only interested in the JIM SHOOTER Era.
2. I no longer have the patience to look all over town for missing issues I need to complete a given writer's tenure, unless it's from the Bronze Age or earlier.
A comic book store near me USED to be jammed so tight that the whole place was considered an OSHA and fire code violation. They were forced tp do a 75% off sale or the city safety inspectors were going to shut them down. Even then NOBODY was buying Groo the Wanderer. Okay, everyone but me. I think I walked out of the store with about half the Marvel run of the series for under $20. I would have bought duplicates of the ones I already had but because it was a sidewalk sale, they could not take debit or credit cards and that was as much cash as I had on me.
10:45 I always say "They're not 'worthless', they're just 'worth less' than you think".
Valiant, Defiant and most Image books at the time are good for kindling.
Ha! I am a collector from the early 80s and left the hobby in the early 90s for 5 years. When I got back into it I started collecting different things AND differently for that matter. Meaning I have found collecting story arcs a much funner thing to do, so I'm the one guy that went back and got every issue of Bloodlines. And every single issue connected to Onslaught. So sue me
I started to collect Valiant in the 90’s but stopped pretty quick after reading a few. Still have them lol.
In "What The?" #6, the Crisis On Infinite Earth's was referred to as the "Crisis Of Infinite Jerks" because it closed the door on any future cross-overs. It was written by John Byrne, who had done Man Of Steel and who defined Gladiators powers to be equivalent to Supermans, so I imagine he was planning to do a Superman-versus-Gladiator, which would've been Kool.
I DESPISE the Gladiator character. An overpowered dog of whoever sat on the Shiar throne.
Agree with most but the SUPERMAN one. There were some great stories between 2003 to 2011. John’s run in Action Comics, his New Krypton run.
I did state there were exceptions with Busiek and Johns!
I’d really love to see a Superman New Krypton Omnibus that collects that whole story line. 👍🏼
I didn’t buy the old Valiant books at cover price but I’d grab them from bargain bins because there were some very good stories among the titles. Oddly enough I think I only found 1 Ninjak during that period but plenty of Archer & Armstrong.
No Image comics made this list? A lot of their early titles were overprinted garbage. I have a huge collection because I enjoyed them, especially Stormwatch. Maybe they are so worthless that they aren’t even mentioned anymore.
I have a collection of 50k comics of assorted publishers that I bought between 1975 and 2005 that I’m now looking at parting with. From collector to seller and I’m clueless, so thanks for the videos. I like to understand what I’m doing before I do it.
Great video!! Love that you’re making this your full time gig!!! Definitely going to become a member!!
Early Valiant was great including Eternal Warrior. It is too bad few appreciate it.
I own three issues of every Valiant comic from the 90s because there was always one of them in a 99 cent-store three-pack. So if I saw there was a 3-pack that contained an issue of Knightfall or Infinity Gauntlet I didn't have yet, I spent the dollar--even if I knew it meant I'd have another copy of Deathmate or Magnus: Robot Hunter.
I only collect Marvel now. Last May, I sold over half of my collection, which was everything non-Marvel related, which included D.C., Valiant, Dark Horse, etc. I sold them for approximately 50 cents each.
Maybe do a video about stuff like Elfquest or Groo, just as examples of titles that kind of started out amazingly and then just went to shit. And I have 30-40 of both of those comics.
I actually like Groo!
I have them all or most. Groo changed over time. Elfquest tried to become an extended universe too hard.
I was hoping the crown jewel of fugly covers was on this list....
Wolverine:
Revolver
While you don't often find the Archie Sonic runs in discount longboxes in my experience, likely as parents would just pick them up for their kids, there's an exception for the run between issues 52-75 where the books just became hideous and unpleasant even to the covers.
I suppose the shorthand would just be 'the issues with endless crosshatching on the covers.'
Some good art work in those xforce comics. Forget keys and read fun books.
I got a job at a comic shop in the late 90s, long enough to see hope from the floor falling out from under the whole country thanks to the speculator crash but close enough we had to tread lightly. And my vote is the boxes and boxes and boxes, floor to ceiling of both the death and return of Superman, and its Marvel counterpart, second to like fifteenth printing of McFarlane's adjectiveless Spider-Man #1.
i actually always thought the Morbius #2 cover was pretty cool personally
Jokes aside, i like it a lot as well.😊
What’s sad about the Superman stuff is that 690 to 700 on the plain Superman title was interesting stuff. They had monel and Superman fighting in kandor and they explained why daxamites and kryptonians are so similar and it fleshed out kandor as a place on krypton and why it was important. It was short and to the point (only about a year’s worth of issues) but it had a lot of good kryptonian canonical stuff being fleshed out in there. I also liked that new costume that monel dawned and the reasons why his color scheme was what it was in his new costume. Pretty neat stuff but the problem was the preceding stuff before it was so bad that nobody looked into that little years worth of issues leading up to Superman 700.
I love the Geoff Johns (Brainiac and New Krytpon) stories (and even some right after leading into new52. They had some great stories in there.
I picked up Superman 680-691 back in 2021, really enjoyed the issues by James Robinson.
I’m the weirdo that collects X-Force, and X-Factor… but only in high grade and only if “found out in the wild.”
Bloodlines makes me chuckle. I must have received 5 “bonus books” of Bloodlines when I’ve made a purchase from someone online. Sure, from the sellers perspective, they think they’re being cool by sending a bonus book… but I’m on to them. They’ve been offloading unsellable books to make room for better ones!
I didn't read Valiant comics back in the day, but then again, I was off comics in the early 90's. More because I was finishing college and had no money than the quality of the comics. I more or less discovered the company in their new incarnation and really loved some of the titles. I've picked up a few of the older trades and the stories are definitely enjoyable, but not something I gravitate towards in the cheap bins.
There were so many titles I just gave up on in the 90's due to the artwork. I just absolutely hated and still hate that time period.
Valiant had some of the best art. So did Ultraverse.
In the uk valiant comics used to sell in multi packs in news agents in the early 2000and they where everywhere got whole runs of Magnus and hard corps at the time