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scottedelman
scottedelman
16 August 2008 @ 02:21 pm
Nitpicking a New Novel  
Remember the book I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago, titled The Swap, by Antony Moore? I had been bothered by the fact that the MacGuffin of the story—a copy of Superman #1—was stated as being valueless when traded away by a kid in the UK in 1982, and now that I've finished the book, I'm still bothered by it.

I (first of all) found it difficult to swallow that a 12-year-old kid in 1982 would even have a copy of Superman #1 (especially when that kid lived in the UK, and there are only a total of 46 copies extant in the world today), and (second) even if he did manage to end up with a copy, that he would not suspect its worth at the time, considering all the newspaper coverage in the previous decade about the value of Golden Age comics.

The fact that the novel revolved around that particular comic took me out of the story right from the beginning, and even though it turned out to be a well-written book with nice touches of character and setting, it annoys me still. As I wrote back on August 3, I was hoping for an explanation as to how the protagonist could be so ignorant of its worth back then, and ... well ... I didn't really get any.

Here are some quotes from further on in the book:

"It was just a comic. I swapped it years ago with Charles Odd, when we were twelve. When I had it it wasn't worth much, but it has gained in value and become rather rare." [page 118]

"Gingerly and with great caution he opened the plastic sheath in which the comic was wrapped. He recognized the seal on the package that was stuck as he had stuck it in 1982. It had never been broken. Bleeder had never read it. The comic was old then, of course, not as valuable as it was now, but old. Forty years old." [139]

"Standing up, he pushed the Superman One into the back of his trousers." [145]


That last detail, from a scene set in the present, really struck me, because doing that could damage the condition of the comic and knock tens of thousands of dollars off the value, so even if the protagonist needed to do such a thing to avoid being found out (for what, I'll let you discover yourself), the author should have had him wince while doing so.

As you can see, I didn't get a backstory that satisfied me.

As for the value of Superman #1 in 1982, none of my readers here rose to the challenge, but I just discovered the value of some other comics from that same time frame. According to Mark Engblom's site Comic Coverage, in 1982, the Overstreet Price Guide valued Action Comics #1 (the first appearance of Superman) at $13,500, Detective Comics #27 (the first appearance of Batman) at $7,500, and Marvel Comics #1 (which contained the first appearances of the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner) at $16,000. Even the Silver Age comics Showcase #4 (with the first Silver Age Flash) was $1,100, Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first Spider-Man) was $1000, and Fantastic Four #1 was $1,200. So in 1982, Superman #1 wasn't just your average comic book which unexpectedly rose in value later. It was already a treasure.

It will be interesting to see whether anyone else is bothered by this. (I'm also bothered by the fact that a couple of sentences added to the backstory could have removed the distraction, and explained the kid's ignorance.)

Here's hoping that this complaint doesn't make me sound too much like Comic Book Guy!
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Stephen Dedman: metatronstephen_dedman on August 17th, 2008 01:23 am (UTC)
I haven't read the book, but I think it would depend on the depiction of the character. There's an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is sorting through goods at a yard sale and going "Junk... junk... junk..." One of the items he flips over while doing this is a copy of Action Comics #1. It's a throwaway gag, but a good one, because it makes a few viewers cringe and reinforces the idea that Homer is an idiot.

I can't speak for Britain in 1982 (though both Superman: The Movie and Superman II had already been released in the UK before that)... but in 1985-86, I was working in an sf bookshop in Australia that also sold comics. When a copy of Action Comics #1 was sold at the comic-con in Sydney for some huge amount, it did make the news, and we had people calling in to see whether their copies were worth anything (sadly, they were all reprints). And we had plenty of customers who were 11-15, bought Overstreet, and knew the values of at least some comics. Don't forget, this was the 1980s, the age of the yuppie - and that arguably started earlier in the UK than anywhere else.
RealThogrealthog on August 17th, 2008 01:36 am (UTC)

Refreshing to have a break from the lots of Americans on this page who're pontificating confidently about what Brits knew and thought 'way back when . . .

Yes, by 1982 the notion that comix might be valuable was slowly percolating into the Brit consciousness -- at least among those Brits who thought comix could be put to better purpose than being torn up to put on the bottom of the budgie's cage. But there were plenty of people whom this realization hadn't reached -- and still hasn't reached. If my aunt or one of my cousins came across an antique Superman comic lying around in the street they would, like good litter-conscious citizens, jam it in the nearest trash can without a thought. They're not into comix, never have been, and why should they be?

We all regard some items as just junk that others value highly, and we're often unaware that this is so. Some of the crockery my wife treasures (and often resells for high prices) looks to me like standard fast-food restaurant crap; if the novel's protagonist had been unaware at age 12 of the value of Boggins Lancashire Tweedlecraft Saucers I bet you no one here would have raised an eyebrow.
scottedelman: Jack Davisscottedelman on August 17th, 2008 02:35 am (UTC)
lots of Americans on this page who're pontificating confidently about what Brits knew and thought 'way back when

I don't discount what you're saying about the Brit consciousness in 1982. But I do feel that the author should have made clear to those readers who might come to the book with no outside knowledge of the value of comics in 1982 what actually happened to his protagonist, who did not trade away a valueless comic that later became valuable, but instead traded away a comic that was likely already worth a couple of grand, that later became worth hundreds of thousands of dollars ... which made him even more of a cosmic loser.

I do think there's a difference between the two, and in the absence of evidence, we don't know who was ignorant of the comic's 1982 value, the protagonist or the author. Now that you've stepped in with an explanation of the 1982 UK zeitgeist, I'm OK with an unknowing progtagonist. Just not an unknowing author.
RealThogrealthog on August 17th, 2008 02:57 am (UTC)

"I don't discount what you're saying about the Brit consciousness in 1982."

I wasn't counting yourself among the pontificating Americans, Scott! You've taken the point and we seem to be in complete agreement. I was referring to the stack of others who're blithely proclaiming about what Brits "must have known" while ignoring the evidence of One Who Wuz There!

Of course, in 1982 Americans must surely have been aware of the excellent record Geoff Boycott was building up as a Test opening batsman, even though earlier many had dismissed him as yesterday's man. I can't credit that this was not widely known in the North American continent; after all, it was known throughout the rest of the English-speaking world.


scottedelman: Jack Davisscottedelman on August 17th, 2008 12:59 pm (UTC)
Of course! All Americans were incensed when Boybott wasn't offered a contract by the Yorkshire Committee in 1983. So angered was I that I almost flew over to take part in the October 9, 1983 protest in Ossett, but money was tight, and so I had to fume long distance.

Yet still I rage.
RealThogrealthog on August 17th, 2008 03:05 pm (UTC)

Precisely.
Stephen Dedman: Dirty bathrobestephen_dedman on August 17th, 2008 04:44 am (UTC)
Something similar (a ceramic that isn't obviously valuable, except to a collector) is a major plot element in Richard Adams's excellent novel The Girl in a Swing.

(An example that comes to mind is when an American film-maker visiting his kid in a children's hospital in Australia realized that one of the pictures on the wall was an original cel from Disney's Pinocchio, and pointed this out. It was, IIRC, auctioned off for enough to buy a new wing for the hospital.)
RealThogrealthog on August 17th, 2008 03:04 pm (UTC)

"It was, IIRC, auctioned off for enough to buy a new wing for the hospital"

This seems like a tale that's grown in the telling! My wife's an appraiser of animation art, Disney a speciality, and she's just told me the max for a Pinocchio cel (complete with background, and assuming it's one of the most desirable images) is, at a stretch, about $40,000 -- less than that today, because the animation-art market has been depressed the past decade or so. Charity auctions can fetch one-off higher prices, of course, but even so the "new wing" claim seems far-fetched!
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