Superman (in its sealed black plastic bag (of which I came too late to get mine) and to snatch up the big maguffy – Spawn! I had all of the first 30 issues except number 4 where he fought Violator and that tore me up inside. It of course was the most valuable comic of the modern age and thus the most sought after. Any existing issue, not in a bank vault was not safe.
The speculative market, fueled by comic book guides such as Wizard, Overstreet and Milehigh created a global frenzy when collectors began to realize the true worth of … wait wait wait … wunna (the vernacular for “you all” in Barbados) remember X-Men #1? The five covers? The wrap around cover? The other gimmicks? The plethora of #1s? The hologram covers? The die-cut covers? The embossed covers that you would have marched through hell to just even smell? All of that drove the speculative market. Comic sales, fuelled by their own success ran rampant until the bubble burst in the mid 90s.
Globally two-thirds of the comic stores closed down and the industry fell into disarray. Marvel declared bankruptcy. The supply of comics outstripped the demand (some comics had ten million printed individual copies). Storytelling was sacrificed for art. Acclaim Entertainment which had bought Valiant Comics (the third largest of the publishers) to use their characters in their videogames went bankrupt and took Valiant down with it. This led to the crippling of the highly anticipated Image/Valiant cross-over Deathmate! Madness reigned!
As you know, when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold. The local comic book industry was no different. Like Graphic Fantasy, Vortex closed its doors, Psychotherapy (near Rendezvous) shut down, and Komik Kraze, the last pure distributor standing was forced to change its business model.
The geeks were left in the hands of the generic bookstores for their weekly fix.
Those bastards! They stuck price stickers on the comic covers! They never heard of polybags! They crammed our beloved tomes in carousels so tightly that taking them out damaged their spines! They let the uninitiated manage them. No more would there be heated debates about comicdom with your friendly neighborhood vendor. All that could be heard was “You want comics? Dem cartoon books for lil children?” and “We sent back the back issues” and “Batman comics? He’s Marvel or DC?”
And our passion,
went from having
its own retail space
down to having a
secluded corner next
to magazines for
teenage girls to fawn
over N’ Sync
(or how the hell ever
you spell it),
magazines that
offered self help to
middle aged women
and men having
their crises. Crisis?
Read Crisis on
Infinite Earths! Now
that’s what a true
crisis is you
philistines! I don’t care about your bald spot, beer gut or waning libido. I don’t care about your…
*ahem* Sorry.
I got a little carried away.There was a hole in our lives for a long time.
The torch is now carried by the AnimeSpot on Bay Street. While only a hole in the wall, entrepreneur Michael Smith tries to keep the pop-culture and comic book banners flying. But amidst heavy import duties, the switch to digital comics and rampant piracy his battle may be a losing one.
July 2014
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