Judging Books by their Covers

I've been looking through my comics collection from when I was a kid and young adult.  Over about a 15-year span, I amassed a huge collection of comics and kept them neatly organized in boxes.  All of my weekly allowance went toward comics, not to mention my entire paycheck when I worked part-time at a comic book store for a year.  Plus there was Christmas and birthday money.  These sometimes went toward older comics at comic book conventions.  

There are literally 30 long comic boxes full of individually bagged comics from that period of my life.  That's thousands of comics!  I've been going through them so I can sell them on eBay, cataloging them and taking photographs of individual comics and/or sets of comics.  It's been quite a monumental task to say the least.  But that's actually been the easy part.  The most time-consuming part has been rating their condition, reviewing their value, writing eBay descriptions for each one, and coming up with a fair price. 

While I've been doing this, I've glanced at the photos I've taken, remembering the stand-out issues.  Their covers really meant something to me at the time, and they still hold a special place in my memories.  There are so many classic covers that remind me of a different time, and are so meaningful or works of art that they give me pause.  They may not be considered "classic" in the traditional sense, such as Fantastic Four #1 from 1961 or Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 from 1985, but to me they're classic because I had/have a special affinity for them.  

It made me realize that a lot of comic book covers today don't "grab" me.  There's nothing unique or special about most of them.  I couldn't tell you much about the contents under the cover, and I couldn't tell you, "Oh, that's issue #213."  Mainly because the cover doesn't tell me anything or strike an emotional cord with me, but also sometimes because DC and Marvel restart their comics every other year, never allowing them to even get into triple digits anymore.  (Wink wink, DC New 52 and Marvel NOW!)

Take for example these two Uncanny X-Men comics.  One is from 1980, the other from today (2013).  The one on the left tells me that Kitty Pryde joins the X-men -- yay!  It makes me want to read it right away.  The one on the right tells me...nothing.   It gives me a generic team action pose.  If I didn't already read the poorly illustrated comic on a monthly basis, what incentive would I have to pick up this comic if I saw it on a shelf next to other comics? 

As a side note, comparing these two issues: it irks me that Marvel is putting the comic titles and numbers at the bottom of their comics now (or is it NOW!)?.  Don't they realize how hard that makes it for comic book shops and customers to find comics on a shelf when the pertinent information is tucked behind other stacked comics?  Or for collectors when the comics are safely stored away in comic boxes?  You actually have to lift up the comics all the way to see what the titles and numbers are, instead of quickly glancing the shelves or flipping through a box.  It's really poor marketing, and for a company now owned by Disney who's known for their brand and retail marketing, it's pretty shameful. 

Much like the fashion industry magazines, DC Comics has taken over September as their month to do something spectacular.  It all started with the New 52 in September 2011, continued with Zero Month in September 2012, and just recently DC Comics took another stab at a Villains Month for September 2013.  The New 52 was a new concept, but Zero Month was a rehash of a comic marketing stunt that DC pulled in 1994 in conjunction with their Zero Hour crossover event.  Villains Month, too, is a rehash of a marketing stunt, but only dating back to 2009 when they did their (lame) Faces of Evil event.  When I first learned of the latest attempt at Villains Month, I thought, "Oy vey," and I'm not even Jewish.

Instead of visiting a local comic book store, I order my comics online now, about three months in advance.  They arrive once monthly in a well-packaged box, complete with bags and boards.  All that's left to do is read them...and I can manage that!  

In June 2013, I saw the DC Comics listing for September and thought, "Are you freakin' kidding me?"  Every issue was listed at $3.99.  What a joke!  I wasn't even aware of any special 3-D covers at the time.  Or maybe they never mentioned it either.  Or maybe I just thought it was another stupid stunt like hologram issues in the 1990s.  I remembered back to Faces of Evil in 2009 and thought (in the words of our former [cough!] inspirational [cough, cough!] leader), "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."  Although I didn't buy ALL of the issues, I did manage to purchase a great majority of them, increasing my monthly expenditure by 50%.  

Like a monthly menstrual cycle, my box of September comics arrived via UPS yesterday as scheduled.  In it were all of the DC Comics with lenticular 3-D covers.  (Did anyone even know what lenticular meant before these comics created such a buzz?  Chalk one up for DC for expanding America's vocabulary.)  

I usually file the comics away alphabetically in a box to read before moving them into their regular comic boxes.  (Hello, OCD!)  It took me much longer to do last night than usual because I was in awe at how beautiful the covers were.  They're all so colorful and so full of...life.  This was truly a great marketing stunt, and -- I hate to admit it -- worth the $3.99 each (these .gifs shown don't even do them justice).  I even felt disappointed that I didn't preorder ALL 3-D issues, and I don't even read on a regular basis such comics as Green Lantern, Flash, or Swamp Thing.  I just wanted to look at ALL of them.  This was the first time in a long time that a comic book cover truly caught my eye.  They may not go down in history as "classic" covers, but they're damn nice to look at.  Shame on DC for not printing enough so every fan who wanted one could get one, though.  

Now, I can't review them for their content yet, because I haven't read any of them yet (I'm afraid I'll destroy their beauty!).  For now, I'm judging these books by their covers.