That thing where fans only talk about the same 5 storylines

I was at a con in Portland last month and every table had someone praising The Killing Joke or Watchmen again... don't people read the deep cuts anymore? Has anyone else noticed how hard it is to find a fan who actually brings up obscure runs from the 80s?

2 comments

2 Comments

pat_murray1617d ago

You mentioned "obscure runs from the 80s" but I gotta gently push back on that a little. A lot of what folks call obscure from that decade actually sold pretty well back then. Stuff like Walt Simonson's Thor or Frank Miller's Daredevil run were big deals in their time, they just don't get talked about much now. Your mileage may vary, but I've had good luck finding people who love John Byrne's She-Hulk or Steve Gerber's Man-Thing at smaller local shows rather than the big cons. The thing is, Portland cons tend to draw a mainstream crowd that sticks to the movies and famous graphic novels. If you want deep cuts, try hanging around the dollar bins and talking to the dealers who've been in the game since the 70s.

claireg8117d agoTop Commenter

Actually I think there's a small mistake in there. John Byrne's She-Hulk started in 1989, so it's technically more late 80s, and even then a lot of folks didn't pick up on it until the 90s collections came out. In my experience, the books that really sold well back then but feel obscure now are more like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing or those early 80s Roger Stern runs on Doctor Strange. I've been digging through dollar bins at a few different shows around the Portland area and the guys running those tables usually tell me the same thing - the stuff that flew off the racks in the 80s was mostly X-Men related, everything else was more of a cult thing. Your mileage may vary of course, but I've noticed the smaller local shows in places like Hillsboro or Beaverton tend to have more of those deep cut discussions than the main Portland events.