Continued from part 1

When Covid hit, many people foretold the end of comics as a profitable medium. People were locked in. Comics stores shut down. No one went to the movies (some of Marvel's and DC's comic books saw a huge influx of new readers following MCU and DCU releases). Some publishers actually started letting some people go. Marvel published their infamous "Pencils down" letter. It was followed by other publishers. April 2020 saw the first week in the US without a single new issue published. Twitter was filled with creators and fans predicting the end of times...

But then, things started to happen: locked in people were starved for entertainment (just ask Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, Apple...). Books and audiobooks sales went through the roof. and slowly, but surely, the comics spice started flowing again. Some stores were even allowed to open for a few hours a week, and masked people loaded up on new and old comics. The medium survived and thrived.

As for me, I finally arrived at the realization that while many modern comics are highly readable and entertaining, the collectable aspect has run out. To make back some of their lost revenue, publishers now put out different covers for EVERY issue published. Some had 2, some a dozen, and even more. They tried creating artificial scarcity by providing certain covers to certain stores only, or in different conventions (once those reopened), or on certain sites. Each book got printed in tens of thousands of copies. Issue price went up - way up $4-$6 for a 20 page issue. While there were supply issues, paper prices, ink prices etc. to justify the hike during the pandemic, the rule is that once the price goes up, it'll never come down - and indeed it hasn't.

So to summarize: too many copies in circulation, too many variants, high prices, high availability, plenty of secondary markets (eBay, Reddit, Facebook, comic stores) - all these factors contribute to the fact that we'll probably never see a million dollar comic like Amazing Fantasy 15 (first appearance of Spider-Man) or Action Comics 1 (first appearance of Superman) printed again in our life time.

(Comment: While a market of graded and signed comics appeared, ruled by companies like CGC and CBCS, it became clear quickly that while values of old key issues kept going up, current comics were just to abundant to retain any value.)

So what's a collector who loves comics, art, stories, but also loves the collecting aspect, the thrill of the chase, the accumulation of unique pieces to do?
Go to the source.

While there may be hundreds of thousands of copies of an issue out there, there is only one board carrying the original art, as drawn by the original artists, for every comic page. Making the original art page a 1-of-1 collectible by definition. Bingo!

I started reading about the original art market (OA for short), and fell into the deep end of the pool. There was so much to learn: types, prices, artists, styles, sizes... 2 years later, and I'm still learning.

In the next part I'll cover types of original art you can collect on your own, and their significance. I'll also start covering some research sources so you can DYOR - as we all love to do.

To be continued...