Date: Thu, 6 Oct 1994 01:35:43 -0400
From: [g--l--n] at [falcon.bgsu.edu] (Metroplex)
Subject: FTP 501

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FIT TO PRINT
by cathrine yronwode
for the week of September 6, 1994 [Happy Labor Day 8)]

THIS IS FIT TO PRINT NUMBER 501: I was browsing the local flea market last
weekend and i saw a guy selling comics-cheap. His stock consisted mostly of
new but slightly dinged Marvels and DCs. He had a full complement of titles
in all genres, which he told me he buys for a dime a piece. He sells the
books for fifty cents each-until the boxes have been pawed through, at which
point they get demoted into a quarter box.

Hoping to keep my finger on the pulse of the industry, i asked this man which
titles had been selling, and which had not been, and, in his opinion, why
that was. Here, in his own words-"under the condition that I remain anonymous
because the IRS and the DMV are looking for me"-is what The Flea Market
Dealer had to say about what's hotx and what's not.

Superheroes: "I think that after they did Superman in and brought him back,
it was like the people said, 'We've been had.' They were through with it. It
was like DC throttled the duck that laid the golden egg.

"And did you know how many Batmen there are now? There's like four or five of
them too now. All different.

"This woman came by and she wanted a Superman, but what she wanted was like
what you would have bought when you were a kid, like when he saved the city
by putting his finger in the dam or something, not like whole cities being
destroyed and robots killing millions of people. I told her we don't have
Superman like that anymore. I told her i remembered him, though. So i sold
her a Superboy-there was three or four of them there-but I don't know if she
liked it or not.

"One of the mothers saw a comic with a woman dressed in leather with a whip,
one of those Marvel 'heavy hitters.' This thing was nastier than Cherry ever
was. And it wasn't marked 'adults only.' This was not cool. This mother, she
had a son, and she said to me, 'You're trying to sell this to my kid?' And i
looked at it and it embarrassed me! Inside the back cover there's this
dominatrix woman with this whip and for 85 dollars you can get this statue of
her, whip included. It was embarrassing to be selling something like that.
And I don't embarrass that easy. I had to pull it out of the box."
Kids' Comics: "You have to go down and deal with the real world and see what
the real world's like. Mothers do not like Beavis and Butthead. Kids do. But
mothers' don't. Kids want Ren and Stimpy, too, but mothers don't like it. All
the Beavis and Butthead and Ren and Stimpy I sold today-and I sold out-were
either to unaccompanied kids or to adults. If there was a parent close,
Beavis and Butthead were out. Moms don't mind Looney Tunes, though. That's
okay with them.

"This Grooxnow that can almost be for kids because there's not any nudity in
it, but my nephew Tommy tells me he doesn't understand the words in it. It
sells, though.

"Nobody buys Barbie. We didn't sell one copy today. Women's lib mothers don't
want their daughters buying Barbie. This is a 25 cent comic. This is not an
old comic. This is a new issuexbut we gave them away today.

"I don't sell many Mermaids, either. I did sell one yesterday to a woman who
said she'd take anything from Disney for her kids. And the others i gave
away. I tried to do it where it might lead into a sale. Like to the little
daughter where they had a couple of boys. Everybody likes Beauty and the
Beast, but it is a three-part thing and people don't like getting hung up on
three-part things. About the only decent things there were for little kids in
this lot were the Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. They had the good
artwork."

Graphic Albums: "You know those nice, thick, six dollar and fifty cent books?
I still have four or five left after discounting them for a quarter. It
doesn't matter what you give them away for. People don't want them."
How much money does the Flea Market Dealer make? "Well, after expenses-a dime
a book, fifteen bucks a day for the table and five bucks for gas, plus giving
away stuff to the kids-I guess I clear fifty bucks on Sunday xa little less
on Saturday. It's not too bad.

"I'd do better, though, if I could get my hands on more kids' comics. There
are lots of kids here, and not enough kids comics."

Thus spake the Flea Market Dealer.

Marvel and DC: Are you listening?

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Fit to Print appears in print each week in Comics Buyers Guide and is
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Copyright 1994 Cathrine Yronwode.  All rights reserved.

Greg Pallenik

--
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