When did you notice the comic crash of the mid 90s?

[Glitch]

Obviously to us who were reading comics around that time.

In the spring of 94, I was in 5th grade and noticed all the boys taking out comics during recess and during reading time.
Come fall season and into 6th grade, absolutely no one was reading comics at school. I was pretty much the only one.

[Joe Neglia]

When the comic shop I owned had to close down.

[BrodietheSlayer]

Yeah, around 95/96, a lot of the comic stores around me started to shut down. I think the market just became so swamped with gimmick comic crap that it just overwhelmed everything, and caused people to burn out from even wanting to buy comics anymore. You also saw a lot of the collectors getting out, as they started to realize that they were standing on an artificially created, and quickly eroding mountain of garbage that isn't worth $1 now. Heck, even a lot of the REALLY huge books from that 1991-1995 period; your X-MEN/SPIDER-MAN/X-FORCE #1's, can be picked up for less than $5 a piece now, which is insane when you think about how popular they were/how much they sold then.

[The Legend of Groose]

Never really knew anyone who was really into comics during my grade school days, so I never noticed.

[Duke Cameron]

That never happened around where I was from. I only had one friend who was into comics besides myself, but all the comic stores were still open around the time I moved when I was in my 20s. (2002) Never brought comics to school though. Didn't want to get them damaged.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Jul 27, 2017 22:57:15 GMT -5 BrodietheSlayer said:

Yeah, around 95/96, a lot of the comic stores around me started to shut down. I think the market just became so swamped with gimmick comic crap that it just overwhelmed everything, and caused people to burn out from even wanting to buy comics anymore. You also saw a lot of the collectors getting out, as they started to realize that they were standing on an artificially created, and quickly eroding mountain of garbage that isn't worth $1 now. Heck, even a lot of the REALLY huge books from that 1991-1995 period; your X-MEN/SPIDER-MAN/X-FORCE #1's, can be picked up for less than $5 a piece now, which is insane when you think about how popular they were/how much they sold then.

The LCS's cheap bins has piles of copies of X-men,Spiderman and X-force #1.

For me I realized by summer of 92 I realized the market was heading for a major crash. I had been working at a comic shop the past 2 years and had watched more and more of the regular customers going from buying what they wanted to read,to buying multiple copies of books "Cause in 5 years they will be worth piles of money."

I even speculated a bit. Bought 50 copies of Spawn #1 and Youngblood #1. The Spawns I sold off around the time the Spawn movie hit theaters. The Youngbloods ended up being used a bonfire material in the late 90s.

For me while the big two were mostly publishing stuff that was pretty to look at but read like crap,the indies were putting out some great stuff.

[Amazing Kitsune]

I never saw anybody reading comics in my hometown. They were not available for purchase at any store, aside from a short stint at the local grocery store for a handful of years.

I recall the comics I did see had very bad art and seemed obsessed with blood and death.

It all seemed vastly inferior to my Dad's comics from the 60s and 70s.

[ToyfareMark]

I noticed when action figures started becoming the new trendy thing to collect, especially Star Wars figures.

[Surfer Sandman]

I didn't really follow comics, except for the ones for various Kevin Smith movies, Beavis and Butt-head and the Simpsons. I didn't care and still don't care for superheroes.

[agent817]

I never knew about any crash at the time. I didn't become an avid comic reader until I was in my teens or at most, when I was 18 or 19. During that time, I read some comics that were given to me as gifts or if my uncle had some.

[Deleted]

There are actually still a pretty decent number of comic shops where I live. I only know there was a crash in the 90's because of people talking about it online. When it comes to actual comic readers, I know about the same amount now that I knew 25 years ago.

[MC Blowfish]

I grew up in a small town and we had one shop that had comics and sports cards. He ended up selling off his comics and went to only sports cards.

[WoodStoner1]

Personally, just before the you-know-what saga.

[mizerable]

I noticed that when you started seeing more mature themed comics become mainstream, a lot of those places became ghost towns for kids.

[Stu]

Around 1995. It was similar to WWE in that the industry and its popularity grew to a point where fans got burnt out or the companies were trying too hard to be special.

In my case, a big issue was that Marvel began using glossy paper for its comics and the prices began going up. Plus, storylines were becoming convoluted instead of sticking to traditional good versus evil.

[A Platypus Rave is Correct]

Jul 28, 2017 13:38:31 GMT -5 Stu said:

storylines were becoming convoluted instead of sticking to traditional good versus evil.

It's a good thing that comic companies don't do that any more

[Deleted]

Jul 28, 2017 11:57:25 GMT -5 MC Blowfish said:

I grew up in a small town and we had one shop that had comics and sports cards. He ended up selling off his comics and went to only sports cards.

Ours got hit with the old one-two. First the sports cards got overproduced, so he cut down on those; then the comics caused him to shut his doors.

[Ultimo Gallos]

In 92 the area of MS I lived in had 5 comic shops. 2 of them were baseball card/comic shops. By 94 they had 1. By 2005 they had none. As far as I know if you live on the MS gulf coast you gotta drive to NOLA or Mobile AL to get comics now.

[wildojinx]

My town does have a LCS, but it focuses more on Yu-gi-oh and Magic: The Gathering tournaments than comics. Still, those do get a lot of traffic and it's likely helped keep them in business, so I have no problem with that.

[cabbageboy]

This topic is right up my alley. I can't really deride the gimmick cover craze because it kinda got me into superhero comics in March/April of 1993 (Uncanny X-Men #300). I had already become aware that there were a ton of comic shops in the Louisville area, or baseball card shops that became hybrids, or places like Book and Music Exchange that have a bit of everything (CDs, books, comics, VHS tapes, etc.). One really major chain was Squeeze Play, they had locations all over town. To this day it was the most amazing comic shop I've ever seen.

I blame Image for some of this stuff. I recall in late 1993 the guys at Squeeze Play were really pissed at how late the Image books from Deathmate were, especially Liefeld's Red issue. More than anything I think Deathmate really was the death knell on a lot of shops, since the books were so late that shops had so much money tied up in them that they just couldn't get the money back once the books arrived and there was no demand by that point.

It was about March of 1994 when I gave up reading. I was sort of a reader and semi speculator even though I didn't really know what that meant. I was very interested in the Valiant stuff form that time period but the back issues were so expensive there was no way to afford them (though I did get most of the valuable stuff in 2006 when the market was down for it, some years before Valiant came back). The last straw for me was the terrible Batman/Spawn crossover, which I thought was awful and soon after I just canceled my pull list at Squeeze Play and that was that.

The problem back then to me is that there were so many titles and so many wild hotshot storylines that it became impossible to follow it all. That's why the fancy covers drew eyeballs to the product.

Take a look at this article for a great explanation of the whole scene in the early 90s:

badmouth.net/the-comic-book-apocalypse/