Monday, June 1, 2020

It's so easy to sell comics right now



I've been slowly sharpening up the comic collection with a minor - but ongoing - purge. Dumping whole runs of comics on a local auction site, and making a little cash on the side, which I'll probably plough into more comic books, because that's the circle of life.

Usually I sell three or four lots a week, and I just keep relisting and relisting them until they disappear, but I started up again when the post shop on the corner re-opened after the lockdown, and this shit is flying out the door, man.

Just this week, I've unloaded a Brandon Graham comic collection; a copy of Kraven's Last Hunt, all of Neil Gaiman's 1602 series; all of the Marvel Star Trek comics I picked up last year; some Batman giant black and white reprint comics; all 10 issues of a Doctor Who comic crossover from 2017; the anti-300 Three by Kieron Gillen and Ryan Kelly; some Mark Millar Ultimate Avengers comics; some Minimum Wage and Goodbye Chunky Rice and some repetitive copies of Kirby's Jimmy Olsen.

I sold off the last six issues of Cerebus the Aardvark, and three Jim Lee X-Men comics, and the four issues of Hellblazer that Eddie Campbell wrote, and three Clive Barker graphic novels published by Eclipse that I've had since the early nineties (I'm keeping The Yattering And Jack, because that's got some sweet John Bolton art.)

I got rid of all the War Stories that Garth Ennis did with Avatar, which had stories that were as strong as any other war stories he'd told - there is a lovely bit about fall and autumn on the closing page of one of them which is sublime - but had atrocious art that hurt my eyes. It was always going to be a step down from the first generation of War Stories artists - you're never going to match Ezquerra, Kennedy, Lloyd, Gibbons, Weston and Higgins - but these comics didn't even try. And my local comic dealer kept giving me the covers with the 'good girl nose art' variants, and I never had the heart to tell him they're the ugliest fuckin' things I've ever seen, and the main reason I decided to sell these off is because those covers are just so embarrassing.

And that's all in one week. I've been selling comics online since the late 2000s and it's truly never been this easy. Our lockdown lasted almost two months, and I think people are hungering for consumer goods, and need some comic goodness.

That's okay. I've got what they need.

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