{"id":414,"date":"2012-03-08T11:46:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T17:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/?p=414"},"modified":"2012-03-08T11:46:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T17:46:54","slug":"daves-fanboy-sermon-6-number-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/?p=414","title":{"rendered":"Dave’s Fanboy Sermon #6 (Number One!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

They Have Our Number, And It’s The Number One!<\/span><\/strong>
\n“Good Afternoon, Ground Zero Comics”<\/strong>
\n “Hello. Uhmmm… Do you buy comics?”<\/em>
\n“Sometimes. Frankly, it just depends on the book. We have a lot of comics already, so we generally aren’t able to buy anything after 1980.”<\/strong>
\n “I’ve got the Superman #1 issue. How much will you give me for that?”<\/em>
\n“I really couldn’t give you any kind of price without seeing the book. There have actually been several different Superman #1’s”<\/strong>
\n “This is the first one. The very first. How much would you give me for it?”<\/em>
\n“Again, I’m sorry, but it’s impossible to give a price quote without seeing the book. The original Superman #1 came out in 1938 and is very rare. There’s only 10 known copies in existence. It’s more likely that you have one of the other Superman books or perhaps a reprint. If you’d like to bring the book to us I can tell you what you have and then we would know if I could buy it or not.”<\/strong>
\n “Oh this is the first one. The very, very, very first. I can’t get my mom to bring me down unless I know how much you are going to pay me for it.”<\/em>
\n“I’m really sorry, but there is just no way to tell you more without seeing the book. We have to be sure of what book it is and what condition it is in before we can determine a price.”<\/strong>
\n “Oh, it’s mint!<\/strong> Look, just saying that it is the original Superman #1 and it is in mint condition, how much could it be worth?”<\/em>
\n(sigh…)“I’m not trying to be evasive here, but it could be anything. If it is a reprint, it might not be worth anything. It is unlikely to be an original, but if you’d bring it down we can tell for sure. An old comic could be worth anywhere from 10 cents to 10 thousand dollars.”<\/strong>
\n “10 thousand dollars! Cool! Will that be in cash?”<\/em>
\n“No, no… I’m not saying that we will pay you 10 thousand dollars. There’s no way for us to even know what you have.”<\/strong>
\n “You’d better not be jerking me around. How do I know you’re not gonna rip me off?”<\/em>
\n“Well, I’d be happy to go over a price guide with you, but right now I have some customers that I have to…”<\/strong>
\n “I’ll be right down for my money. Hey, this book has the X-Men in it too. Does that make it worth more?”<\/em><\/p>\n

If only comic shop owners had a dollar for every time a conversation like the one above took place then they would be able to buy their own<\/em> copy of Superman #1<\/strong>. Or at least all the Image Comics in the world. As a matter of policy, I cannot give anyone a quote of how much a comic is worth on the phone. I have learned from experience that it leads to far too much confusion and miscommunication. It is not the fault of the customer. They have usually been told by a friend that all old comics are worth a fortune. All you have to do is scan e-bay for the words “Investment”, “Mint Condition” and “Premier Issue”.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, the number on the cover of a comic book indicated which issue it was. Nothing more, nothing less. If it was the first issue, it had a little number one on it. If it was the fourteenth issue, it had a fourteen on it. In fact, publishers even avoided putting that number one on an issue if there was someway to get around it. There were problems with getting mailing permits for publications with no track record. Readers were less interested in an unproven book. But a book that had been going for awhile… that one must be good. Then, somewhere along the line we started paying attention to how early in the series a book was. American loves to be first. American collectors love to have the first of something. The first baseball card of a particular player, the rookie card. The first printing of a popular novel. The first appearance of a comic book character.<\/p>\n

The problems began when outside media began to notice comic collectors. They would take their camera to the comic book conventions and pick out the strangest person they could find to interview. Inevitably, they would lead their local news program with something like this:<\/p>\n

Zap! Pow! Whammo!
\nThose old Funny Books could make you a millionaire! We all read them and then threw them away like the trash they are, but some crazy people are actually paying big bucks for old comic books. Mint Condition Premier issues are selling to collectors who then store them in their parents basements. So next time you’re cleaning out that garage, don’t throw these things away. Sell them and make your fortune. After all, if you’ve got that Superman Number One… you’ve just hit the lottery!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sadly, comic fans were so happy to be on TV that they forgot to be insulted. Then that Number One on the cover took on a mystical significance. Kind of like being at Woodstock, somehow most everyone at least had<\/em> the first Superman before mom threw it away. It wasn’t long before the comic publishers realized that people might buy a book just because it was the first issue. Soon, there was Lots<\/em> of first issues. By the 80’s that “first issue” had become so important that publishers looked for any reason at all to begin renumbering a series. If it took a three month break, it came back as “Number One First Issue! Because You<\/strong> demanded it!<\/em> Eventually, Number One wasn’t good enough, so we got issue Zeros<\/em>!Then we got decimal points . Seem silly? You bet it does. So why do people constantly come into my store and look for all the number ones they can find?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Marvel has made a point recently of cancelling even long running, successful series so they could replace them with two books. Even the venerable Uncanny X-Men<\/strong> got the axe so they could launch Wolverine and the X-Men<\/strong> AND an all new (that means, starting over with Issue #1) Uncanny X-Men<\/strong> in its place!\u00a0 Every possible reason they could find to reboot, remodulate or refribulate a series resulted in at least one new Number One Issue. All of this makes it kind of hard to celebrate an anniversary with a double sized issue. For awhile Marvel took care of that problem in their usual ingenious manner: Two numbers! EAch book would sport two different numbers representing the issue number of whatever current series the book happened to be on and the issue number they would have if they had not restarted the book upteen times. That way Marvel could give us a bonus sized, special issue for Iron Man #50 (most recent numbering) and then a few months later publish another<\/em> special, bonus sized issue for number 500 (old numbering). Are you feeling celebratory? I know I am! Of course, it wasn’t even the 500th consecutive issue of Iron Man, because he ran for 60 issues in Tales Of Suspense <\/strong>and one issue of Iron Man\/Submariner before beginning his own title with issue number one. So how many Iron Man #1’s are there? Let’s see, there’s the first appearance in Tales Of Suspense #39, Iron Man\/Submariner #1<\/strong> followed by Invincible Iron Man #1<\/strong> in 1968, the “Heroes Reborn” <\/em>Ir<\/strong>on Man #1<\/strong> which ran for 13 issues before being replaced by Iron Man #1<\/strong> in 1998 which became Iron Man: Director of S.H.E.I.L.D<\/strong> part way through its run so they could add another title: The Invincible Iron Man, which is still running today. And then there are at least four mini-series and a couple more “one shots” and this isn’t even counting annuals. So there is at least ten or eleven Iron Man number one issues.<\/p>\n

Confused? It gets even better. Last year Marvel decided to cease publication of its flagship title: The Fantastic Four<\/strong> after the “death” of the Human Torch in issue 587. They replaced this book with a completely new title named simply “FF<\/strong>“. Then, a year or so later they brought back Fantastic Four<\/strong>, jumping right ahead to issue #600, and yet still keeping FF <\/strong>going. So – while there is a 600th issue of Fantastic Four, there are no issues 588-599. Trust me, you don’t even want to begin counting all the Spider-Man #1’s!<\/p>\n

So here we are, well into the 21st century. Comics have been with us for more than half a century. Recognition of comics as a truly American art form, one of only two that America can claim over the last century, is slow in coming. But, hey! Who needs recognition? Just curl up with a stack of good funny books and enjoy. Just don’t forget to double bag those suckers when you’re through! They could be worth a fortune, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They Have Our Number, And It’s The Number One! “Good Afternoon, Ground Zero Comics” “Hello. Uhmmm… Do you buy comics?” “Sometimes. Frankly, it just depends on the book. We have a lot of comics already, so we generally aren’t able to buy anything after 1980.” “I’ve got the Superman #1 issue. How much will you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daves-fanboy-sermon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/dave3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9sWnA-6G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groundzerocomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}