F.A.Q. : Comics

What issues of <any title have featured Spider-Man?

If you're looking for the first ever Spider-Man comic, then you need the Spider-Man Chronology.

What's a Silver Age comic?

The Silver Age began in the late 50's/early 60's and was pretty much lead by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the rest of the Marvel guys with their creations of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Daredevil, The Avengers, Iron Man, Dr Strange, and all their contempories.

Most people agree that the Silver Age ended in late 1970, when Kirby left Marvel. Others put it even earlier, at mid-1968, when new distribution arrangements meant that Marvel could and did rapidly expand its range of titles, resulting in more creative staff being brought on and new directions being taken.

For a more detailed history of Marvel and the rise and fall of comics in the 20the century, you'd be well-advised to go read one of the Industry Books that we have so kindly reviewed for you.

Why do some comics have bar-codes and non bar-code versions?

The first batch would go to comic shops, where the dedicated fans eagerly awaited them. Because most comic shops don't use bar-code scanners, these first distribution books did not have a bar-code. A few weeks later, the next batch goes to newsagents and super-markets, where a bar-code was generally expected, and hence is included on the cover.

With very few exceptions, the only difference between the two versions of the comic is the presence or lack of the bar-code. Collectors almost never distinguish between the two versions in this case - they are considered the same comic, and collections will mix the two versions without comment.

There are other cases where the new-stand version was different, but these are not common, and are too detailed a topic to cover here.

How are foreign comics different from US comics?

In Australia, I have seen at least one 90's comic which is a locally printed version of a comic, nearly exactly the same as the original comic, released at the same time, but printed on different paper stock. Some of the advertisements may also be different, I'm not sure.

In England during the 70's/80's the same thing happened, the comic was simultaneously released with a UK price printed on the cover. But nowadays, this seems to be quite rare. In any case, I believe that such comics are generally considered to be of equal value as the U.S. printing, except possibly for exceptionally valuable issues.

Nowadays in England, the Spider-Man comics are collected and reprinted in a different format - often with a significant time delay, under a different title name. These are also not generally valued by collectors.

How do you determine the grade for a comic?

For comics pricing information, the most widely accepted price guide is the Overstreet price guide. Wizard magazine also publishes a partial price guide each month. You can also find a price guide online at www.comicspriceguide.com.

This list does not cover the bizarre world of CGC graded and slabbed comics - that's a whole different story. Hype about particular comics, or about particular fashionable practices like CGC grading can severely skew the regular comics grading and valuation mechanisms.

There are plenty of other factors in the comic grading and valuing world, such as second printings, autographed copies, and comic restoration. Hopefully you now understand the basics, but just be careful out there!

Why did Marvel restart the Spider-Man titles from #1?

When comic sales are down, there are two ways to push sales back up. Either recover your former fans... which means hiring decent talent for the comics. That involves editorial and management integrity, which isn't easy to find in modern corporates. The alternative is to renumber the comics to #1 so that young fans have a point to start collecting.

As a young fan, it's a bit discouraging to see #783 on the front of a comic book, and to realise that they are coming in so late in the series - so a re-numbering can help provide a jump-on point. Combine that with the words "#1" and "Collector's Edition", add a couple of variant covers, and you have the Spider-Man Reboot, which took place in January 1999.

In practice, it doesn't really make much lasting difference, except to annoy long-time fans, to make life more difficult for archivists like ourself. Even Todd McFarlane's #1 of Spider-Man in 1990 isn't worth more than a couple of bucks over the surrounding comics of the era. In the long run, a comic book needs a good character, good corporate backing, and last but not least - good artists and writers.

Why do modern Spidey comics have two numbers?

In January 1999, Marvel renamed all of the Spider-Man titles to Volume 2, and started the numbers from the beginning again. See the previous questions for some explanation of why this seemed a good idea at the time.

Shortly afterwards, they realised that they had destroyed nearly forty years of comic history, and cancelled one of the longest running comics of all time - for no really good reason, since most fans could see that this was still basically the same comic.

Joe Quesada was the writer on Daredevil, which had just done the same thing. He started the practice of listing the "old" issue number on the cover of that comic... i.e. the number that the comic should have been, if there had been no renumbering.

When Joey Q became Editor-in-Chief at Marvel, he wisely decreed that the same thing would be done with Spider-Man. So so you now see the Volume 2 number, and also the number that the comic should have borne, if it were not for the foolishness of some short-sighted marketing morons.

What comics should I collect?

We do provide a summary of the Current Spider-Man Titles, to help explain the different books which are on the shelves right now. But there have been so many Spider-Man Comics produced over the last 40+ Years that there is no simple answer. As for non-Spidey comics, well where would we start?

Our Rave section occasionally feature a section called 'Better Read' which suggests other titles to try. But really, the best thing to do is to head down and browse the shelves and back-issue boxes at your local comic shop!

If I live in the UK, am I stuck reading Astonishing Spiderman?

For a while in the 70's/80's, you could get simultaneously issued UK-priced versions of several Marvel comics, including the core Spider-Man titles. Nowadays, most newsagents in the UK only carry "Astonishing Spider-Man", which is a delayed reprint of a fraction of the real titles. But you don't have to put up with that. Most decent-sized city centres have a real comic shop somwhere around, you'll just have to go track them down. I found one in Oxford, and another in Ipswich. There are several in London, including Forbidden Planet.

You will pay more for these comics, firstly because they are air-freighted, and secondly because you live in "rip-off-Britain". That's life, you'll just have to get over it. If you don't have a local place, you can certainly subscribe to any of the big U.S. online comic shops, and get them to air-mail your books once a month. It might even be a cheaper option.

What are the print run sizes for Spider-Man comics?

All monthly comic books are required once per year to include information in one of their issues describing the print run sizes. The data above is taken from the issues of Amazing Spider-Man. If anybody cared, they could compile similar figures for other Spider-Man titles.

Some special variant cover comics are released with limited print runs of 10,000 or 15,000 or so. The print run size is usually notified when the comic is released, but we don't track it and we're not aware of any other site that records this either.

Finally, some industry magazines (notably Wizard) prints charts of the top 100 highest-ordered comics for each month based on data supplied by Diamond Comic Distributors. This ranks comics in order but does not generally include the absolute number of orders made.

Presumably Diamond Comic Distributors and/or Marvel has the exact print run sizes recorded somewhere, however this information does not seem to be generally available.