Marvel's G.I. Joe #150 & 155 - rescued!

Most serious collectors know that the print run for Marvel's G.I. Joe title suffered low print runs towards the end.  I was in a thrift shop in Brooklyn recently and found #150 and #155.  I was especially pleased with #155 because it was the final issue.  The comic is a little beat, but for a dollar, I wasn't complaining.  It was in the bottom of a basket of comics, just waiting for someone like me to rescue it.

Undervalued Comic Book Collecting trend: Price Guides and Preview magazines

Speculators abound in the comic book market these days as they search for paper gold among these categories:  variants, first appearances, small press/low print copies... I do my best not to get caught up in the hype for hot titles and comics.  So I look for books that genuinely interest me.  I've been having fun with a ton of Price guides and preview magazines as you can see from my recent posts.  They are fun to read and really cheap!  I just found this copy of Overstreet Comic Book Monthly #3 for a dollar.  It is still sealed in its plastic wrap.  What is great about it is that it has a reproduction of Overstreet's very first publication.  Very nice collectible.  Recent eBay sales of this reprint is around $15 to $20 dollars.  I really want to break open the wrap and take a look at how much Amazing Fantasy was going for in 1970, but...well, you know...

Anyway, a lot of guides in dollar bins are from the 80s and 90s, so they're about 20 to 30 years old.  Nostalgia for Wizard, Hero, Overstreet, Comic Reader, Comic Buyer's Guide and related guided and preview magazines will grow, I believe, because, well, who didn't remember thumbing through them to get a glimpse of the next hot comic?  Most of these magazines were most likely abused or thrown out.  Some have first appearances.  I'll leave it to the market to decide what is a "real" first appearance.  If you're a collector and you want a preview appearance of Spawn, you go right ahead and buy it while it's still cheap.  Collect what you want and you'll always be happy.

Spawn's First Appearance is ... In Comic Buyer's Guide Price Guide!?!

Most comic collectors will rightly argue that Spawn #1 is the first appearance of Spawn.  After all, what is an appearance in a preview or advertisement page mean, anyway?  But I feel that collectors should collect what they want, and completists may want all kinds of appearances.

Spawn #1 was released in May 1992.  Benjamin Nobel's blog, spawncomics.wordpress.com, demonstrated that Rust #1 Special Limited Edition was published in April 1992 and had Spwan in an ad.  Malibu Sun #13, a preview magazine, had Spawn on its cover a couple of weeks before Spawn #1 was published.  He cogently concludes that Rust #1 Special Limited Edition had the first print appearance of Spwan.

But I just found a copy of Comic Buyer's Guide Price Guide April - June 1992  #10 (Vol. 3, #2).   It has a print appearance of the character in the first interior page.  Rust #1 has Spawn on the back of the back cover.   The price guide was published as a quarterly up to this point and had articles predicting which comics coming out the following quarter would be "hot."  This issue covered comics scheduled for April, May and June release.  The magazine, therefore, most likely was released during the prior quarter between January and March 1992.  Take a look at the photo of the indica page and you make up your mind!