Nerdly » eBuying Comics: Week 75

24th Mar2022

eBuying Comics: Week 75

by Ian Wells

Welcome to the first Versus of 2022 and it is a big one to start! This year I wanted to go bigger than just pitting similar characters together. 2022 is also the 30^th anniversary of the birth of Image Comic, so what better way to start than by having the Image 7 face off in the versus arena, with their biggest and best issues going toe-to-toe. The story of Image Comics is still fascinating to this day and it still represents the biggest seismic shift in the comic industries landscape. In a nutshell, the era is the early 90s, the seven biggest talents in the industry are all working for Marvel Comics and they have had enough of the way the industry works. They get a lot of flak for being the cause of the comic market crash. That is a sign of the impact they made. DC and Marvel were scrambling to keep up with their popularity and flooded the market themselves with sub-standard gimmick comics. Yes, they made mistakes, mostly with deadlines, but at the same time they were laying a blueprint. It would be a broad statement to say a lot of today’s independent publishers wouldn’t exist without what happened in 1992. But in reality, they are all standing on the shoulders of the Image Seven. SyFy Wire put out an excellent documentary on YouTube that tells the story of Image Comics in much better detail than I just did. It goes from the very beginning right through to what was new at the time the documentary was made, that being The Walking Dead. On a personal level, the very first issue of Wizard Magazine I ever read (#119) featured a 10-year perspective, well worth tracking down if you can find it.

The Tournament – Fittingly I have selected 7 rounds to see who will reign supreme. As always here at eBuying Comics the values are supplied by Zap Kapow Comics for 9.8 NM. 7 points will be awarded for the winner of each round, 6 points for second and so on, down to 1 point for last. Just for fun I will do a final count for on all the contestants values for all rounds added together. Maybe if I am still writing this column in 10 years we will have a rematch! It was challenging finding 7 rounds all the creators could feature in, especially since I included Whilce Portacio. For those not in the know, he was originally a founding member, but in the time it took the company to become a reality his sister tragically passed away. Because of this he gave up founding member status and his first series was much delayed.

Meet Your Fighters

Hailing from Canada, he has the power of hell on his side. Which I’m sure is illegal in this contest. Representing himself at any cost. He is ‘The Todd Father’ Todd McFarlane!

He is the ‘Minnesota Monster’ putting the highbrow into brawling. I present to you Erik ‘Savage’ Larsen!

A wild storm is coming in all the way from Korea. But don’t let his businessman like persona fool you, here is here to win. The one and only Jim Lee!

Things are about to get extreme as this guy uses every tool in his belt of many pouches. Lets hear it for the local boy in this battle Rob ‘Extreme’ Liefeld.

Packing the X-Factor, with he full fighting pride of the Philippines behind him in this battle put your hands together for ‘Wild Whilce Portacio’!

From the sunny east coast of Florida he is the best of the best, top of the pile. Slinging ink and making it sexy. Ladies and gentlemen lets hear it for Marc Silvestri!

You won’t see this challenger leap out of the shadows before its too late. I give you ‘The Bronx Backbreaker’ Jim Valentino!

The Running – If I was a betting man I would have money on Rob Liefeld taking the crown. He has two creative inputs in two of Marvel’s hottest characters right now. But it really is an open field. 90’s comics are much maligned but in recent years there has been a real buzz about them. With both creators and fans tracing back to those days for good nostalgia. These 7 artists worked on comics that were formative for a lot of today’s audience. I mean we live in a moment where we have had 2 Venom movies and a Prophet movie is on the horizon. Spawn is now a universe of comics and Savage Dragon is well over 300 issues! We have had event Marvel events based around small nuggets of information based on 90s continuity. People just can’t let it go. But in reality I am not a betting man and sentimentality rules my heart. So my money would be on Marc Silvestri after all, he was responsible along with Larry Hama for a huge bulk of my Wolverine back issues. Everything I knew about the character from the animated series stemmed from that run.

Round 1 – First Marvel Work – We are kicking things off with a trip back in comics history. All these guys broke away at the same time and then went on to have varying degrees of success either with Image, their own publisher or back with the Big Two. By the time they came to Marvel it was the industry leader. Thanks to the works of creators like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Walt Simonson. The Image 7 were all inspired by these pioneers and their future work would reflect that. But first they had to get their collective big breaks at Marvel. Each of them would begin on titles a million miles away from what they would become famous for. I’m not saying Whilce Portacio isn’t talented but it could just be a case of being in the right place at the right time, as his ink work on the ever-popular Art Adams on Longshot #1 (1985) sees him take an early lead. Looking at the list it is interesting to see there is a seven-year spread between the first one getting their Marvel break to the last one. The obscurity of McFarlane’s debut is surely what drives up the price. In that 80’s period Spider-Man, Thor and Shang-Chi were a million times more popular than Coyote! On a personal note, this issue of Master of Kung Fu is shooting right to the top of my want list.

Whilce Portacio – Longshot #1 (1985) – £48.18 – 7points
Todd McFarlane – Coyote #11 (1985) – £38.54 – 6points
Jim Lee – Alpha Flight #51 (1987) – £9.64 – 5points
Rob Liefeld – Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 (1989) – £5.78 – 4points
Jim Valentino – What If? #3 (vol.2 1989) – £3.85 – 3points
Marc Silvestri – Master of Kung Fu #119 (1982) – £2.89 – 2points
Erik Larsen – The Mighty Thor #385 (1987) – £2.89 – 2points

Round 2 – Biggest Marvel Contribution – To narrow the seven creators Marvel work down to one character is a disservice to their overall contribution to the House of Ideas. After all, it is no coincidence they worked on what were Marvel’s most popular series of the era. They had built up reputations for themselves and the fans were willing to follow them and speak with their wallets. This round more than the others is going to see the values affected by the biggest of outside influence, those being appearances on the silver screen. For come it was easy to narrow a telling contribution down to a single character, for us a single issue was more appropriate. Silvestri and Larsen were the hardest two to find one stand-alone moment or character for. For Silvestri I narrowed it down to a toss-up between the start of the ‘Outback Era’ X-Men or Inferno, before settling on the former. There are so many heavy hitters in this round that the highest selling comic book of all time is in second to last place!

Rob Liefeld – Deadpool – New Mutants #98 – £481.77 – 7points
Todd McFarlane – Venom – Amazing Spider-Man #299 – £144.53 – 6points
Erik Larsen – Cletus Cassiday – Amazing Spider-Man #344 – £53.19 – 5points
Whilce Portacio – Bishop – Uncanny X-Men #282 – £53.19 – 5points
Jim Valentino – Guardians of The Galaxy #1 – £24.38 – 4points
Jim Lee – X-Men #1 – £9.64 – 3points
Marc Silvestri – Outback Era X-Men – Uncanny X-Men #229 – £7.71 – 2points

Round 3 – Wolverine Wednesday – This is the round that really counts! (Well to me and anyone who reads Wolverine Wednesday). All of these creators at some time have worked on Wolverine, whether in the pages of X-Men or elsewhere. Jim Lee has memorable contributions in Uncanny X-Men and Punisher War Journal. Silvestri as mentioned has a long stint on the Wolverine solo series. Larsen would return to Marvel in the late 90s to write the same ongoing solo series. This round definitely threw up some curveballs. My research told me these are the first times each creator worked on Wolverine in any format or series. In the case of McFarlane and Liefeld it is from the days when the ongoing series had a pin-up on the back cover. For Silvestri and Lee I plumed for the first issue of the Wolverine ongoing they worked on as opposed to the first time he drew X-Men, maybe this handicapped them, but I feel Wolverine is the character that is most in line with the Image Comics target audience which is why I went for it.

Todd McFarlane – Wolverine #8 – £86.72 – 7points
Jim Lee – Wolverine #24 – £9.64 – 6points
Whilce Portacio – Uncanny X-Men #267 – £9.64 – 6points
Jim Valentino – What If? #7 (vol. 2) – £5.78 – 5points
Rob Liefeld – Wolverine #9 – £5.01 – 4points
Marc Silvestri – Wolverine #31 – £3.85 – 3points
Erik Larsen – Marvel Comics Presents #43 – £2.89 – 2points

Round 4 – Last Marvel Work – As they say, all good things must come to an end and nothing is different for this story. For there to be new beginnings there has to be a closing of a chapter. The seven had reached the end of their tether when it come to work for hire contracts. Creative differences were part of the argument. But at the route of it all was money. Marvel was making a fortune off of merchandise baring images from their most popular creatives. Those creatives felt the trickle-down was unjust and the time to seek creative freedom and ownership was a calling that could no longer go unanswered. The comics media dubbed it the X-odus and Marvel was about to pay the price. It appears comic fans don’t care so much about endings as they do firsts. It could be a case of the creators not doing anything significant in these issues because of how they felt, so there is nothing noteworthy driving the values up. That said 5 of the 7 issues were probably in Marvel’s top 5 at the time. Wolverine could possibly be in there too, if not very close.

Jim Lee – X-Men #11 – £9.64 – 7points
Erik Larsen – Amazing Spider-Man #350 – £5.01 – 6points
Rob Liefeld – X-Force #12 – £3.85 – 5points
Todd McFarlane – Spider-Man #16 – £3.85 – 5points
Marc Silvestri – Wolverine #57 – £3.85 – 5points
Whilce Portacio – X-Factor #69 – £2.89 – 4points
Jim Valentino – Guardians of The Galaxy #28 – £2.89 – 4points

Round 5 – First Image – This was it, the dawning of a new era and Wizard Magazine was losing their shit! The Image Seven were the comics media darlings and they used this to their advantage. In the early days they were using column inches in Wizard Magazine to flesh out their stories before the issues hit. As well as sinking Dollars into full-page ads, which secured the magazine talking about the comics more! When the issues began to hit shelves fans so realised a lot, if not all of the back story was actually in those articles. It would be polite to say the early issues were of course style of substance. What did you expect from seven artists? I am not surprised but the winner of this round, I am surprised by the winning margin though and even more surprised bout who took second! Savage Dragon #1 is from the first 3 issue mini-series. This round sees the #1’s facing but some of the creators had their characters appear first elsewhere so there are some bonus points on the table.

Todd McFarlane – Spawn #1 – £28.91 – 7points
Marc Silvestri – Cyberforce #1 – £5.78 – 6points
Rob Liefeld – Youngblood #1 – £5.01 – 5points 1^st Appearance Megaton Explosion #1 – £17.38 1bonus point
Whilce Portacio – Wetworks #1 – £5.01 – 5points
Erik Larsen – Savage Dragon #1 – £2.89 – 4points 1^st Appearance Megaton #3 – £48.18 – 3bonus points
Jim Lee – WildC.A.T.S #1 – £2.89 – 4points
Jim Valentino – Shadowhawk #1 – £2.89 – 4points – 1^st Appearance Youngblood #2 – £19.27 – 2bonus points

Round 6 – Image X Month – A good gimmick done right is a good thing. Image X month was the now 6 founding members switching up and drawing each other’s titles. Fun right? Could you imagine DC or Marvel trying anything like that now? Exactly. It was almost like some of them had characters that screamed out to a certain other Image founder’s strengths in drawing. I think both the winner and runner up in this round speak to that point. Erik Larsen would later reissue another #13 to keep up his running of being the sole creator on the longest-running independent title.

Marc Silvestri – Spawn #25 – £5.01 – 7points
Jim Lee – Savage Dragon #13 – £3.85 – 6points
Erik Larsen – WildC.A.T.S #14 – £2.89 – 5points
Rob Liefeld – Shadowhawk #0 – £2.89 – 5points
Todd McFarlane – Cyberforce #8 – £2.89 – 5points
Jim Valentino – Youngblood #9 – £2.89 – 5points

Round 7 – Variant Covers – The ’90s and variant covers go together like mac and cheese, like night follows day. Does a bear… you get the idea. With all that said McFarlane and Larsen both ran their debut issues without variant covers. Spawn #1 would later have a load of reprints with variant covers. But for this round it had to be at the time to qualify. Perhaps McFarlane had worn himself out on Spider-Man #1!

Jim Lee – WildC.A.T.S #1 Gold variant – £38.54 – 7points
Rob Liefeld – Youngblood #1 B cover – £5.01 – 6points
Whilce Portacio – Wetworks #1 Chicago Comic Con cover – £5.01 – 6points
Marc Silvestri – Cyberforce #1 Gold variant – £3.85 – 5points
Jim Valentino – Shadowhawk #1 Silver foil – £2.89 – 4points

So there we have itm here are the final standings for the points-based system. The brackets tell their final total values and where they would stand if this were used to define the contest (this includes the values for the bonus points). All I can say is I am glad I’m not a betting man! Silvestri can take comfort in the knowledge that the over Image founder consider him to be the best artist amongst them!