shaxper, The rise of Valiant and Image Comics - especially Image Comics took away some of the fanfare of both DC and Marvel Comics and what I'm adding here is that these companies offer something new and afresh look of Comics than ever before and having said that I remember many comic book readers complained the constant re-booting of Batman, Superman, Spiderman, X-Men, X-Force, and other titles that I just got tired of them right around mid-1992 and by time 1993 rolled around I've shifted my attention to both Image and Valiant Comics for 2 years and I didn't find anything that I like except this title below that was a favorite of mine for several years that Image created in the first place.





I just eat this up in a heartbeat for a good 2-3 years and I just loved the Cartoon Show - That Jim Lee and his production company put together.





At that time during early part of the 90's ... I was spending 30% of my Comic Book Monies to Image Comics and that's causes my time with both DC Comics and Marvel Comics to go downhill fast by time mid-1994.

Well Marvel was doing some of those things earlier than your timeline-mutliple part storylines in multiple titles like Asgardian Wars in X-Men/Alpha Flight/New Mutants annuals and minis circa 1986, Fall of the Mutants running through all the X-books 1987 etc. And Marvel was the one experimenting with formats, the Marvel Graphic Novel line seeing if higher priced products with higher production values would sell in the direct market as far back as the early 80s, with several of those receiving multiple printings and having first prints increase in prices due to speculation or what not well before the Bat-mania hit. Then you have the indy books selling similar page counts as the big 2 with higher paper quality for a much higher price point in the mid 80's proving the market would be such before O'Neil did it. He wasn't so much experimenting as chasing a trend already in place. 

And the speculation boom had its infancy much earleir than your time lime with the black and white boom and bust of the mid-80s when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (not Image of Valiant) was the darling of speculators and any small press black and white book (Adolescent Black Belt Hamsters anyone?) was quickly getting snapped up and going for multiples of cover in a few short months and the market was inundated with them as anyone who could hold a pencil and pay for the books to be printed was putting out books , and some collectors were dutifully buying each one to see if it would be the next TMNT and the term hot books entered into the collector lingo at that time. O'Neil was still writing at MArvel and not editing at DC when all this was happening, so he is not the innovator of all these trends that lead to the speculator boom. He looked at what worked and didn't work, and so did a lot of other folks, and applied those lessons to mainstream comics and others to start up companies in the early 90s. The speculator boom and bust of the 90s was basically a lockstep repeat of the black and white boom and bust of the 80s, just on a larger scale because it encompassed the whole industry and not just the indy corner of it that the B&W cycle did. Those who were in on the b&w boom and learned from it managed to avoid some of the excesses and survive the crash of the 90s (i..e a lot of the well established retailers who emerged fro the crash still fairly healthy who didn't sacrifice their core business model chasing the illusory brass ring this time around-they still had cases of unsold b&w books laying around to remind them of the dangers of doing so). 

DC had been experimenting with variant covers before O'Neill arrived as well. Man of Steel #1 had different newsstand and direct covers well before Marvel or DC did variants. There were test covers to Justice League #3 and Fury of Firestorm (forget the issue #) that sold only in certain markets just after the Legends mini, which built on the model of DC testing cover prices in select markets (like they did with the Amethyst maxi back in '82-83 with 35 cent variants selling in certain markets while other books were 60 cent cover prices).

I'd also push the rise of the direct market back to the early 80s. A lot of publishers that were direct market only were emerging in the period between '80-'82 (Eclipse, First, Comico, etc. all emerging in that period). You also have the experimentation with mini-series and maxi-series in the ealry 80s to test formats, pricing, etc. that paved the way for the later experimentation with formats (Prestige, New Format, Baxter series, etc. in the late 80s), and some of DCs better sellers (Titans and Legion) going direct only as early as 1984, which they wouldn't have done if the direct market hadn't already proved itself viable to sustain a book at the level of sales those did. 


So I would say you are laying a lot a the feet of O'Neil that was actually a byproduct of trends running in the market much earlier than his tenure as Bat-editor, and the origins of the speculator boom/bust of the 90s has its roots much earlier than your timeline suggests. The infrastructure which allowed for it to happen and earlier occurrences of it on a smaller scale were occurring in the early-mid 80s. 

-M

But those tactics largely didn't work. In my mind, those marked a first era of attempting to raise revenues, which ultimately failed. The multi-arcs and creative marketing of the late 1980s was sort of a version 2.0, tried on a different generation of readers, as I see it.

DC was also experimenting with formats in terms of different paper stocks and printing technologies in the 80s (and I think largely under Dick Giordano as EIC), but that was presented as attempts to provide a better product (and justifying higher prices)

One of the major differences in the publishers that came out in the early 80s and those that appeared in the 90s (Image, Malibu, Defiant) is that the 80s publishers seemed to position themselves as a clear alternative to the big 2, while the 90s group competed more head-to-head with their own superheroes.

I don't have any data to back this up, but I wonder if some of it might be attributed to a generation of readers/collectors reaching adulthood in time for companies to take advantage of their greater disposable income? I liken it to the growth of the video game market in the 90s and early 21st century. Console games in the 80s were largely marketed towards children, and you have a whole generation who grew up playing them. As they grew older, the companies realized that this wasn't a fad and that kids were sticking with games. So as they grew older and demanded better graphics, sound, and more sophisticated game play, companies were happy to cater to their demands, with increased price points to grow the revenues. At the turn of the century, it was becoming abundantly clear that video games customers were now mostly adults -- the same adults who grew up on the Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, etc -- and you see this reflected in the content, marketing, and price points for games.

Would the speculator boom still have happened if comics were still being purchased mostly by kids with allowance money?

Your analogy is the point of the documentary Video Games: The Movie, available on Netflix. The strength of the market now is because it's has a strong consumer base (even though the video game industry had a boom/bust when the Atari was at it's peek) which I don't think comics still have to this day, despite their growth. I think that's because as Randel mentioned, kids started playing video games with the Atari, aimed at kids, but as these kids grew up so did the industry, and so now it's a more sophisticated industry, along with it's consumer base. It also reached out to try to appeal to all people, to get a even bigger consumer base, and continues to do so, finding out what people want. I don't think comics themselves are ding that, it's movies, action figures, apparel, video games, etc they are the cash cows. I don't think the video game industry's paraphernalia is that big a part of it's success as the games and consoles themselves.

I thought it was Heroes World Marvel bought, not Capital. And in reaction DC and others struck a deal with Diamond leaving Capital out in the cold. I could be wrong there though. 

-M