Comic books have been around since the 1930s when they came to prominence in North America. Comic books represent a valuable part of the entertainment industry as in North America alone is worth over 1 Billion Dollars. The industry is worth even more overseas as over 6-7 Billion dollars is spent on comics in Japan. Brahm Wiseman owns Heroes comics in downtown London and he explains what comics are considered collectable.
“Yeah so usually comics are sorted by colour, but there’s gold, silver, bronze and what would be considered modern.”
There are only certain comics that are considered collectable in the eyes of a collector.
“Comic book stores came to be more accessible during the late 70s and definitely by the 1980s and comics before that point were more disposable. Back then a comic only cost like ten cents and you could get them at drug stores and people would read them and get rid of them. So anything before that is more collectable. So that would be the silver era.” Explains Wiseman on the era of comics that is more collectable.
As is always the case with anything that is collectable, just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s collectable.
“Yeah, so what makes a comic collectable is supply and demand. So people only want the first appearance of certain characters or monumental stories. So things like Action Comics #1 which was the first appearance of Superman or Detective Comics #27 which was the first appearance of Batman. Books like that will run into the hundreds and sometimes thousands depending on the condition of the book.”
The comic industry changed forever in 2008 when Marvel Studios released the first Iron Man Movie. This was the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which has been going strong ever since. Wiseman says that the MCU has had a positive effect on the Comic industry.
