Superman’s death and the sudden resurgence of the popularity of comics truly brought on the comic bust of the 1990s, where holofoil cover variants and quantity over quality, bad Liefeld art and lamer stories were excused, making almost all of the comics that came after it fairly worthless for a good eight or nine years. Tons were being sold for a few years, but disillusionment set in pretty fast. It’s exactly like you said – because everyone was buying everything, nothing was worth anything ultimately, so I think that true collectors have learned from this publicity stunt stuff while the outside ‘investors’ still have no idea about the mechanics of it all and how unique a medium that comics are. Where else can you read a sequential story that’s been evolving for almost 80 years?

It’s a really interesting thing to observe – that the Death of Superman, the crappy comics that came out afterwards and the quality comics that were produced to re-write / counteract / explain those crappy 90s comics in the 2000s were a kind of renaissance in comics. While a lot of people might not agree with the huge, sweeping storylines of today, they’re rarely flat out BAD. Which is why the Superman stunt was great.

My polybag is still sealed – but I was already reading comics at that point anyhow.