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LIFESTYLE | Mar 02, 2010

Kapow! Bam! Batman and Superman Smash Comics Sales Records

Even through his shaded glasses, Tim Burton clearly was wide-eyed.

The famed “Batman” director motioned toward the crowd at San Diego Comic-Con and said, “I can’t believe just how big it’s gotten.” He was referring not just to the physical size of last year’s convention, but also to the existential sense of the comics world itself: The scene was shining a white-hot Bat light on just how massive comics have become as a financial force.

And this week, Batman and Superman flexed the comics market’s muscles again.

The comics world delivered a symbolic one-two punch as a cultural powerhouse, when the Man of Steel and, just three days later, the Caped Crusader fetched record-setting million-dollar prices at comic-book sales.

Suddenly, by tripling the record sale price, comics as a collectible were being mentioned in the same breath as gemstones and paintings. The twin sales garnered headlines and Google searches worldwide. And all the while, longtime comics scholars and non-geeks alike mouthed the question with dropped jaws: Why are people suddenly paying seven-figures for comic books? (Comic books that retailed for 10 cents when they hit the stalls, by the way, and even just a few decades ago sold for $100.)

Yes, these are extremely rare, “very fine”-condition comics from the late-’30s that are freighted with history: Superman debuted in Action Comics No. 1 from 1938 (record price on Monday: $1 million) and Batman first swooped into a comic book in Detective Comics No. 27 from 1939 (new-record price on Thursday: $1,075,500). But really? One. million. dollars? The previous record was $317,000.

“This has a lot to do with timing, the serendipity of the right events at the right time,” says Vincent Zurzolo, co-owner of ComicConnect.com and its sister dealership, Metropolis, which orchestrated the Superman sale in New York. “I think you see people worried about the stock market and real estate and wondering what to invest in. For people who love this material or have the foresight to see years down the road, you realize this stuff is actually a great investment.”

People, of course, could always invest in precious metals, so why Golden Age comics now?

“Comic geeks and nerds from 20 years ago are now the cool guys who are hip to popular culture and who are doing well with their business,” says Zurzolo, 38. “They don’t want a Van Gogh or a Warhol or a Picasso. They want something that means something to them. Spider-Man, Superman and Batman — that’s history to them. And in this country, we’re a society built on popular culture.”

Once Superman crossed the million-dollar threshold, Batman was quick to follow. “As they say: Without Superman, there would be no Batman — as a character and as a record comic-book sale,” Zurzolo says.

At Dallas, Texas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, which conducted the Batman auction on Thursday, the house’s comics expert agrees.

“I think that the million-dollar result made somebody feel comfortable on [bidding] those kinds of numbers” in the Batman auction, said Lon Allen, 37, sales director for Heritage’s comic books division. “This is going to give a boost to the … highest-grade of all comics.”

But acclaimed comics scholar and cartoonist Scott McCloud takes a more skeptical view. First off, McCloud says: “Neither the buyers nor sellers were disclosed in these sales. There can be something going on behind the scenes.” Beyond that, these are probably not a trend, he says. “These are high-profile sales that focus on blue-chip investments,” like the sale of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.”

McCloud says the true measure of comics as a cultural force rests with their literary value. “Until we have more sustained works that are considered classics more than just pop-culture artifact issues, these sales are only bubbles.”

Source: The Washington Post

Indonesian Lifestyle 2008