I have been collecting comics for as long as I can remember and its just so sad to see whats become of this industry in recent years. Vampirella is without question one of my single favorite female comic characters (its really a tie between Red Sonja and Vampirella) and my Vampirella collection is extensive, almost as big as my Michael Turner collection. I own the 100% complete Vampirella Magazine collection, with 95% of the magazines being at a 8.0 or higher grade and the lowest likely being a 6.5 to 7.0 grade. This was one of the collections I lost in the fire we had back in 2008 and when I decided to replace my collection, I painstakingly took the time and effort to track down the highest grade copies I could find, that were at least reasonably priced as some sellers just ask ridiculous prices on high grade collectibles. It took me just over 3 years to finally complete my Vampirella magazine collection again.
On top of that I own pretty much every Vampirella comic that has ever been released, at least up until a couple years go. There is no doubt that the quality of Vampirella had gone down dramatically in the final years that Harris Publications had ownership of the IP. They had clearly lost faith in the franchise so when Dynamite announced in March of 2010 that they had purchased Vampirella, I was really excited and that excitement was quickly dialed up about 20 notches when that first #1 issue hit comic shops. It was clear from that very first issue that Dynamite was very serious about raising the quality of Vampirella back up, especially in regards to the quality of the artwork.
With that #1 issue they produced some of the nicest Vampirella covers I had seen in a VERY LONG time. There were variants from J Scott Campbell, Alex Ross, Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic, Fabio Neves, Joe Madureira, etc. All in all, that was one of the most successful launches art/cover wise I had ever seen and thankfully for Vampirella fans, that was just a small taste of what was to come. Lucio Parrillo and Ale garza's latter work in the series was absolutely amazing. In particular, Lucio Parrillo's work simply blew me away and he is now one of my single favorite artists. I honestly consider Lucio Parrillo's cover runs with Vampirella, Dejah Thoris, and Red Sonja/Queen Sonja to be the single best cover runs in the entire history of the comic market. Every single cover produced by Lucio was absolutely brilliant and they just got better and better with each successive issue. I personally consider Lucio's Vampirella #19 cover to not only be the single best Vampirella cover to date, but also the single sexiest comic cover ever produced period.
Not to mention, those Alex Ross covers became some of my all time favorite Vampirella covers:
At the time that series was produced, the most expensive prices I paid for the variants was around $20. Unfortunately it has all gone down from there. Dynamite is without question one of the greediest companies on the market. As time went on and new Vampirella and Red Sonja volumes were produced, they cut back dramatically on using high profile artists for most of thier covers and instead went with lesser known artists. The only one that really resonated with me and became a pretty popular artist herself was Jenny Frison. The vast majority of the other covers were mediocre at best. I actually contacted Lucio Parrillo and asked why he was no longer doing covers for Dynamite on a regular basis and his response was that Dynamite simply wasn't paying enough to do cover work anymore so it simply wasn't worth it to him.
What makes this even worse is Dynamite started producing regular variants (B&W versions, Blood red versions, virgin copies etc.) and the price of those variants skyrocketed. I continued to collect many of Dynamite's titles even in spite of all these changes as I simply ignored most of the variants, only buying a few here and there if they really appealed to me, but things have just continued to spiral out of control and not just with Dynamite. DC and Marvel continue to produce more and more variants that continue to cost more and more money and one of the worst aspects to modern comics is you have no clue just how many copies exist. Instead of doing variants like the comic industry used to do variants, that being limiting them to a certain number of copies like 500 and including a COA, they now use ratio's instead and rarely ever produce COA's. What we see now is 1:10 variants, 1:25 variants, 1:50, 1:100, 1;200 and I think were now even seeing 1:500 variants. So collectors really have no idea how many copies really exist as you can find various sales numbers for given months but the comic companies simply don't release the total numbers of copies produced for a particular comics, which means its impossible to figure out how many variants exist. So even tho 1:100 may sound like a really rare book, there might be thousands of copies out there.
Another one of the trends that drives me crazy is once a comic artist gets popular like J. Scott Campbell or Artgerm, you rarely ever see thier covers anymore outside of variants. So if you like artists like Campbell or Artgerm and you want to collect thier comic covers....well, its going to cost you a lot of money to do so. Just head over to J Scott Campbell's storefront and see how much he is charging for many of his variant covers. And he is actually now charging extra to sign anything. All purchases made from the J. Scott Campbell store used to automatically come signed. Now you have to pay an extra $5-$10 to get his signature on a book or comic. Everywhere I look its just greed, greed, greed, with prices continuing to soar out of control. People that spend $100+ on a modern comic are insane in my opinion.
I have really been at the last straw for some time now, and that final straw finally broke earlier today. I learned in an email today that Dynamite was producing Vol.7 (or Vol.3 since Dynamite took over) for Vampirella and even released images for the various covers. Here is the regular cover you can buy for 25 cents, a sales tactic obviously aimed at getting people to invest in the series:
And here are the variant covers:
Joseph Michael Linsner Sneak Peek Variant Cover
J Scott Campbell Sneak Peek Variant Cover
The prices for those 2 comics are $50 for the Linsner and $100 for the Campbell cover. Not to mention, Dynamite is now charging $150-$200 for thier signed 18x24 lithographs which don't even have edition sizes and aren't nearly as nice as Sideshow prints. Thier non signed prints cost $90+.
Again, everywhere I look in regards to the modern comic market, all I see is greed, greed, and more greed. I am officially throwing in the towel on all modern comics and plan to sell off 90% of my collection before this bubble bursts and make no mistake about it, the modern comic market is a bubble that is going to burst. It may be 2 years, 3 years, 5 years etc, but it is going to burst. Its 100% guaranteed at this point. All the signs point in that direction.
I am sticking with golden age, silver age and maybe a few bronze age here and there. I will never purchase another modern comic ever again. I just purchased Artgerm's 3 issue set of his latest Wonder Woman variant and that will literally by my last modern comic purchase. Even the price of the hard cover omnibuses are ridiculously high, tho I will likely continue to buy some of those from time to time. Again, from this point forward its golden age, silver age, some bronze age, some TPB's, and a few omnibuses here and there. Everything else I am passing on in a big way and I will honestly be trying to sell my modern collection as fast as humanely possible.
Sorry for the long post, but I just had to get that off my chest. The modern comic industry has become a joke and I honestly feel sorry for the people that will continue spending these ridiculous sums of money on modern variants. In the long run you will be lucky to get even 50% of your money back, if that!. In fact, when the market crashes its likely many of those variants will be selling for a few dollars apiece as there will be so many of them at that point that the sheer volume of them will make high values impossible to maintain.
So best of luck to those that continue to invest thier hard earned money on modern comics! This is one collector that is calling it a day on that aspect of the market.
I agree about digital, only way I buy and read comics these days. I'm even thinking of just subscribing to the services like Marvel's or Comixology's and just reading books there without owning them. I'll just buy what I love and feel I need to own.
