ics that changed the industry forever, such as: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spawn, The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. The later half of this era is also marked with one of the worst downturns in the Comic Book Industry since its inception. Comic book stores and retailers all closed thanks to the speculator market and their ignorance of the industry and the effects of supply and demand. Let's look at how this all started...In the late 1980's classic comic books (such as The Amazing Spider-Man #1 and Action Comics #1) were selling for thousands of dollars at auctions and comic book stores all over the world. This sparked interest not only in collectors, as it should, but also general traders who get their hands on something just to turn around and sell it for more. Mainstream newspapers perpetuated the problem by reporting these sales and eventually collectors were buying several copies of the same comics.
Publishers responded by manufacturing collectors’ items, such as trading cards, and “limited editions” of certain issues featuring a special or variant cover and foiled stamped covers. This led a market boom, where retail shops and publishers made huge profits and many companies, large and small, expanded their lines.
Many of these lines did not have the artistic quality or enough readers to actually hold any worth... sadly people continued to buy tons of these comics thinking they'd be worth something... they were wrong. A crash occurred, sales plummeted, hundreds of retail stores closed and many publishers downsized. In 1996, Marvel Comics, the largest company in the industry, declared bankruptcy (it has since rebounded and bought by Disney).
Since the crash film adaptaions have kept the industry on its feet, but the industry has still not yet fully recovered from the speculator crash.
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