The runaway success of Absolute Batman and the rest of the Absolute line has been one of the best comics retail stories of the decade, bringing customers back into the shops and driving sales to levels rarely seen since the 1990s. But is it also bringing back some of the less savory behaviors associated with that era: speculation at scale, without regard to actual matters of supply and demand?
Boom or Bubble? Interested in picking up a copy of Absolute Batman #1 in 9.8 from the so-recent-yet-so-far-in-the-past year of 2024? You might have to shell out something in the neighborhood of $600 for one of the more than 5,100 graded copies in circulation. A signed and remarqued 9.8 copy went for $1111.11 on eBay just this morning.
Image: Heritage Auctions / HA.com
‘Absolute Batman’ 17 Cover B, auctioned by Heritage for 104 dollars
According to GoCollect, subsequent issues are starting to crack three figures, based on subject matter and covers, leading the site to conclude that, “when it comes to Absolute Baman, we’ve entered uncharted territory.”
Several sites are also reporting rising prices on 90s-era Green Lantern books as fans chase tie-ins to the recently launched Lanterns series on HBO. Exclusives from last month’s SDCC are fetching high resale prices, including one-off media tie-ins like the Stuart Fails to Save the Universe HBO promo with the Jim Lee cover.
High prices for recent back issues and variant mania are nothing new, of course. But after the boom-and-bust collectibles cycle of 2021-22, which saw massive spikes and equally massive drops for comics across the board, cooler heads have largely prevailed. Now, maybe not.
Collector fever is spreading. The situation with Absolute Batman may be a turning point because the collector market runs so heavily on FOMO. Once the word gets out on a particular hot book, the search begins for the next one, with a big prize for being just a little bit ahead of the pack. As a result, we’ve seen action on other DC Absolutes, plus some Marvel titles including Spider-Man 2099 #1(2024) and Moon Knight #1(2026) going for over $70 in CGC 9.8.
More interestingly, there are some signs that the frenzy for hot recent books is spreading beyond the usual Big 2 suspects. D’Orc, a recent fantasy-humor title from Image by Brett Bean, Jean-Francois Beaulieu and Nate Pikeos, saw huge speculator interest, with copies going for upwards of $100 shortly after release. White Sky #1 from Harms, Mavinga and Loughridge followed the same trajectory. In both of those cases, low initial print runs that undershot demand accounted for the value: a simple case of too many dollars chasing too few products.
That follows Image’s typical strategy of doing a limited first printing then running back to press if a book hits bigger on the shelves than anticipated. That seems to be a reasonable way of handling unanticipated demand and making sure fans can get copies of the book if they don’t care as much as collectors do about getting a first printing, while making sure retailers can sell as many copies as their customers need. But it also positions the company well to create the occasional feeding frenzy when a sleeper book hits big.
Publishers are responding. Publishers can’t cash in directly on rising values of their books in the aftermarket, but they can definitely chum the waters, particularly around variants. A recent ICv2 report showed variants accounting for anywhere from 50-80% of SKUs, depending on the publisher, adding up to 34-43% of new comic revenue at retail (see “How Big Are Variants?”).
Last month Popverse reported that Marvel announced at SDCC that it is making some adjustments in its variant program, which the company says had become too complicated. “What we really wanted to do was something that felt curated, pared down, intentional,” according to an unnamed Marvel rep. That experiment is rolling out with the Marvel Midnight line, featuring a streamlined set of variants designed to make it easier for collectors and retailers to keep track of.
Earlier this year, Josh Hayes of Boom! Studios announced the return of “thank you variants” to accompany full returnability for Cover A books (see “ComicsPro: Boom! To Make All A Covers Returnable, Restart Thank-You Variants”).
Other publishers are leaning harder on the variant lever than usual because it might be working better in current market conditions. According to that ICv2 report, all other publishers had variants accounting for 56% of SKUs and 33.7% of dollar sales.
The big picture: casino society and drop culture. Comics have been a collectible for generations, so we are no stranger to boom-and-bust speculation cycles. This time around, the frenzy may be driven by larger social factors.
The first is the rise of mobile gambling platforms, deregulated fairly recently and already accounting for nearly $100 billion worldwide, on track to double by 2030. It is impossible to watch any professional sporting contest without being inundated with ads for this or that sportsbook app. These have now metastasized into “prediction markets” like Polymarket and Kalshi, which allow you to bet on just about anything, including, if reports are correct, public policy decisions of which the bettor may have inside knowledge.
In the face of normalized betting on just about everything, the comics market feels like a better venue than others, because collectors tend to have deep subject matter knowledge and are making their plays based on their personal taste, observations about the market, and insight into the popularity of different characters and creators.
The other point of convergence is drop culture, where the release of a desirable new collectible is juiced in advance through massive marketing, demand generation, manufactured scarcity and other hype. That turns the release into a feeding frenzy with guaranteed FOMO for the majority of participants and almost guaranteeing massive financial returns to whoever got in early.
Comics have been getting in on the act through live-selling platforms, crowdfunded exclusives, and timed-window sellout and ratio incentives, some of which predate the mass popularity of product drops and some that mirror developments we’ve seen in the world of sneakers, watches and other merchandise.
It’s no secret that greed, jealousy, fear and desire are powerful human emotions. When bolted on to platforms that can tap into them at scale, they are turbo-charging pre-existing collectibles businesses like comics, with effects that could accelerate boom-and-bust or, just as easily, turn into permanent features of the industry moving forward.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICV2
