Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: batpenis, ebay, Gretchen Felker-Martin, jeff spokes, red hood

Red Hood #1 Is Now A Forty Dollar Comic Book On eBay

Red Hood #1 is now a fifty-dollar comic book on eBay, and Gotham Sampler is $5 a copy, but should you buy it?

DC Comics confirmed the cancellation and withdrawal of Red Hood #1 last week, citing writer Gretchen Felker-Martin's comments on social media about the late Charlie Kirk as the reason. This has impacted the price of the book in a specific way within the market, which has happened before. In the wake of Kirk's passing, media coverage of the comic, the comments, and the cancellation has reached everywhere from The Hollywood Reporter to CNN, and from The Independent to The Daily Mail. This may have led to the cancellation, but it has also fuelled collectors' desire for the comic in question.

The pulling of the series has impacted the market value of the issue that was published in a specific way that has happened with other comics before. Copies of Red Hood #1 by Felker-Martin and Jeff Spokes have risen significantly in value, in shops that still choose to sell them, and more visibly, shops and individuals have sold multiple copies of the comic book in question online, up to $40 each for the standard cover, which has a cover price of $4.99, though it has recently dipped after the weekend high to around $25–$30. The Jae Lee cardstock cover has been selling for around $40, The Jim Lee standard variant has sold for $50, as has the slightly rarer foil variant. The 1:25 variant cover has sold for a whopping $100, though it is now around $55.

The Gotham Sampler, intended to be given out by comic stores and other events on September 20th for Batman Day, with Red Hood previews inside the comic and on the cover, has also been doing a roaring trade on eBay despite specific instructions from DC Comics not to sell it. Copies are selling in the hundreds for $5 each, though some have gone for $25. It was meant to be free.

When Batman Was Cancelled Before

As I mentioned, we have been here before, and while not all withdrawn comic books keep their market value, those that get big media coverage, and are also related to Batman, have a better chance of it.

Batman Damned #1 by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo was published by DC Comics in 2018, featured a full frontal reveal of Bruce Wayne, dubbed the "Batpenis", with media coverage across newspapers, TV stations, and even making it to the monologue of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where they showed a screencap of the Bleeding Cool report to the audience. The publicity for this led to a clamping down of editorial standards across the line from the new DC boss, Pamela Lifford, who didn't want to risk any repeat of such publicity. The comic was officially withdrawn, but retailers just hiked up the prices and sold them anyway. Copies of this version still sell for around $90 on eBay, maintaining their value seven years later.

While All-Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder #10 by Frank Miller and Jim Lee, published and subsequently recalled by DC Comics in 2018, featured the biggest swear words around, the F-words, the MFs, and the Cs, all blacked out with black bars. We know what the words were because they were insufficiently blacked out in printed copies. If you held them to the light, you could read all the words in what was essentially a PG comic book. DC Comics tried to pull it back once they realised, but copies were already in East Coast stores. Picked up by national media, it led to the firing of Batman editor Bob Schreck. A withdrawn version of the comic sold today for $40 on eBay or $150 graded at 9.8.

To Sell, Or Not To Sell, That Is The Question

DC Comics did refund retailers for the cost of ordering the comic. But some of those retailers who chose to burn, rip up, or trash the copies in protest might regret this, considering the significant uptick in price and interest.

There is a dilemma here, of course. Retailers often call the alarm themselves, shocked at having bought a comic book that is not what they expected. It has an aspect that might alarm or offend, especially with characters associated with children, like Batman, even if most of his readers are adults. As the mass media start to report on the story, DC Comics does what it feels is the responsible thing and withdraws the comics from sale. Only for the retailers, who were so shocked and startled a minute ago, to realize now that there is so much media attention and at least the perception of scarcity, that they can charge ten times the cover price, and someone, somewhere, who has just been watching CNN and has gone to Google, is prepared to pay that much.

This kind of event can become a mini payday for some retailers. And these are challenging times for many, making an easy thousand dollars by selling 20 copies of a withdrawn comic book on eBay as the nights are starting to draw in can be very welcome. It's almost worth being outraged at a comic book to see if that can make it sell for more. As long as you know, you don't actually burn them all, because here's the thing about Red Hood; it's not rare. There are loads of copies around, and DC did a promotion where if retailers ordered a certain number of copies, they could get a bunch more for relatively little. But each of them is now a fifty-dollar note in comic book form, and it's not in anyone's interest to question it. No more than it was Batman: Damned and the batpenis.

But what about Gretchen Felker-Martin and the offending statements? She has been paid, and artist Jeff Spokes has been paid… not just for this but for the subsequent two issues that will never be published. Some people will be offended to see even the comic on the shelf. So a retailer who wants the big bucks might want to keep them behind the counter and wait for the right customer to come in. However, some retailers have said they simply don't want to sell the comic, no matter how much it goes for, either out of an abundance of caution or because of the comments that led to the cancellation.

But one retailer yesterday told me that he was selling all his copies of Red Hood #1 at cover price to young newcomers to the store who seemed genuinely curious about what had happened and about Gretchen Felker-Martin, rather than those customers he knows to be eBay flippers. He also understands where his future comics readers may come from, even if DC Comics doesn't want them to read it.

Swamp Thing #88

Maybe they'll just have to wait a few decades. It is espected at New York Comic Con that DC Comics may announce the new Vertigo Swamp Thing series, that will finally publish the cancelled story by Rick Veitch and Michael Zulli, as well as the three following issues as originally-planned when Veitch walked in disgust at the way his story had been treated, condemned for having a time travelleing Swamp Thing meet Jesus Christ and become the cross on which he is crucified. This was considered utterly beyond the pale by the DC powers-that-be in 1989, but now, it looks like it is to be celebrated, promoted, and published. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently over there. And in thirty-five years' time, we will be the past as well…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!