Civil War #4 Continued

The next sleeper reason why I like Civil War #4 is Thor! This is not the primary reason for my Civil War #4 pick, but it adds to the demand (he,or should I say his clone, actually comes back in issue #3 so look for it also). The variant cover has an excellent shot of Thor with his hammer raised.
At this point it's no secret that Thor will make his return in 2007 in a highly anticpated series by J. Michael Stracynski and artist Olivier Coipel (New Avengers). According to Marvel the real Thor and clone will meet in the future, and this will make these issues even more desirable.

So folks, there you have it:

• Variant cover
• New Thunderbolts
• New Thunderbolts series
• Thor cover
• Thor clone
• and just for grins I'll throw in that issue #4 is a lower order number issue.

Look to see this issue again in the future.

Civil War #4 - Thunderbolts and more..

They call them the "new new" Thunderbolts and they make their debut in Civil War #4. If you aren't up to date on the whole Marvel Civil War Saga, the quick and dirty is Tony Stark has assembled a team of super-villains to include Venom, Bullseye, Lady Deathstrike, the Jester, Jack O'Lantern and Taskmaster. They make their first appearance in a splash page at the end of this issue.

I'm starting to like Civil War #4 more and more. The first reason we'll talk about in this blog post is what I mentioned above - the New Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts #110 (the first issue) will be released in January. I haven't seen the order numbers for this book yet, but it could be another pick. It's different, villain books typically don't do well, and it has a weird number - #110. But the industry has changed and these "darker" books have a large following. Marvel Zombies anyone? Except this isn't as gimmicky. If this book takes off (which I'll go out on a limb and predict it will do pretty well), Civil War #4 will increase in demand. There is another reason for Civil War #4 to pick up and I'll discuss it in the next post.

Another benefit is Civil War #4 has a variant cover. The Michael Turner 1:18 variant is hot right now, and will only be more so if the above scenario plays out. There is also another big reason the variant along with the regular issue could gain even more demand, and I'll talk about it in the next post....

Black Suit Spidey

Do you have your black suit spidey issues?

If you're wondering why I ask you are out of the loop watching the Spiderman 3 trailers. I can't wait to see the hollywood interpretation of the black suit. The comic book movies have taken important stories and pieces of stories and given them their own spin. It's been fun watching somebody else put their version or idea of a storyline on the big screen. With that being said, the following issues are in play since we don't know exactly what will be done with Spidey!

Amazing Spider-man 300 - 1st Venom. Looks like he'll make an appearance in Spider-man 3 and this book has been red hot!

Amazing Spider-man #252 - "Homecoming" with the great black suit cover.

This is even more important now! In the aftermath of Marvel's Civil War storyline, Spider-man is returning to his black suit. Couple this event with the upcoming movie and you have a recipe for a huge jump in demand.

Do you have any other issues to add? Please leave comments!

Numbers Continued

The last post talked about numbers - specifically the 212,200 issues of Justice League of America #1. No doubt this is a huge order. Can a book ever have significant appreciation at this level, especially in light of the other order numbers we discussed? Usually, not. This isn't always the case though. There is one area you can keep an eye on and that is crossover interest. If there is an event or character that is key to the high order issue, you could see the readers of other titles start looking for the book in question. This would increase demand beyond the usual amount. In JLA's case, this wouldn't be my play. Over 20o,000 issues is huge in this market, and number that will be difficult to move.

Looking at some numbers

I was reviewing some order numbers from retailers. There are a few places to find these, but for the typical collector (non industry member) you can find them in Comic Buyers Guide.

Whenever you view the order numbers I keep some sort of benchmark in mind. I usually use an X-men book (Uncanny for instance) and a DC (Batman?) to give a good idea of how many issues a solid title is selling. There is not a lot of hype in these books, and retailers have a pretty firm idea how many they need to order. For this example Uncanny X-men #477 had 89,100 orders and Batman #656 had 95,800.

Now the interesting stuff. The same month retailers ordered a whopping 212,200 issues of Justice League of America #1! How do you think this issue will do over time? Without a doubt, these #1 issues have a lot of speculation. Will the price hold up? If we look at another popular book with a little more hype we see some strong numbers. The book I looked at is Astonishing X-men #16 with 120,100 copies ordered. Still strong, but a long way from 212,200.

Before we get put off too much by the 212,200 number I want to talk about one other option you need to look at. We'll discuss it in the next post. Stay tuned...