Sector 7 comics

[Onslaught Six]

I wouldn't have learned to paint with Mastodon dung. I would wait until somebody invented paint.

[Dominic]

There were fewer locked in hobbied back then. And, even those were less available.

Superhero toys have been consistently available at retail for a spot more than 20 years now. Before that, there would be long stretches of nothing. It was, in theory, possible for a kid to go their who childhood with no "current" superhero toys. (I got the back end of "Secret Wars" and "Superpowers", and would have missed the post-Batman rennaissance in '89 had I followed the standard path.) Thus, even crap like those early ToyBiz figures was considered a gift from above.

It was well into the 90s, and after McFarlane made quality an issue, before mainstream superhero toys were held to any meaningful standard. I recall being a freshman in HS and *hunting* for figures that an elementary schooler would pass on. Have you ever seen those early "X-Men" figures? They were pure shit. I knew that at the time. But, dammit if they were not the best "X-Men" figures available.

And, availability is key.

The simple fact is that there were fewer hobbies, and fewer options within the hobbies back then. People like to blame video games for the decline of the action figure market. That is partly true. But, it is not digital wonder that is cutting into plastic's share of the market. The market itself is being divided into ever smaller bits. (Look at TF. It effectively has 2 "live" lines now. And, a reasonable person might argue it is more like 4 or 5.)

To be conclued.....

[Onslaught Six]

Dom, just compose your post in Notepad and post it as one, man. It's so much easier.

[Dominic]

Shockwave and I remebmer a time when if your hobby went away, you damned well had to go and find another one, because there was not another one just waiting there for you.

"Transformers" is going through a dry spell, (2 or 3 months of no new product), you can either sit it out, fill in gaps in your collection, or dip into....say, "Iron Man". Granted, distribution patters were different back then. But, if your hobby went away, it went away. If you liked "Star Trek", you damned well had to be happy with reruns. Because that was it. (You might not even have had access to a VCR.)

Dom
-actually going to post an epilogue.

[Dominic]

Dom, just compose your post in Notepad and post it as one, man. It's so much easier.

You kids and your new-fangled notepad and computers.....

Joking aside, that is a good lead in to my point with this post.

Even the social and economic aspects of the hobby have changed. If you wanted to enjoy a dead hobby, odds are you did it on your damned lonesome. Lee's and Tomart's seem quaint now. Trade newsletters like the one published by Mastercollector seem absolutely primitive. But, I remember discovering Lee's and being *floored*. Just the existence of such a magazine implied that there were others like me. (Even in a comicbook store, one was not likely to find many, if any, Transfans.)

As people aged out of, or simply abandoned, old hobbies, collectors become more solitary in their hobby. (Guess where the stereotype of the anit-social toy/comic collector *really* comes from? Anti-social Otaku types are self-selecting now. But, it used to be a price one paid for their hobby, which is why more people abandoned it.)

The economics were much different as well. Long distance contacts and trades were initiated through the classified sections of the magazine listed above or through (often low circulation) fanzines. Flea markets and yard sales were not just a viable option, they were damned near a necessity. (At this point, I do not even check them, as all the worthwhile merchandise is posted to eBay long before signs are posted around the neighborhood.) Ya know that stereotype about toy/comic collectors spending too much time with kids? Well, who were we supposed to buy/sell/trade with? (Operationally, this was still problematic as kids tended to have smaller collections consisting of more recent, and thus easy to find, items. I had to disappoint many kids by refusing to trade my old figures for the thing their parents just bought them.()

I know you intellectually understand this, just as Shock and I intellectually understand that we do not need to support the hobby to keep it going. But, our visceral understandings are different. And, in Shock's case, this understanding is tied in with a habit learned over many years.

Dom
-just realized how old he is.

[Onslaught Six]

I can understand that, and I do acknowledge that a fair bit of this probably is indeed a generational gap. I'm afforded the technology and media forms of today, and that highly influences how I purchase and consume goods.

There's a reason I don't buy new Marvel or DC--most of it sucks terribly. I would seriously rather they 'stop making Batman comics entirely' instead of continually producing really bad Batman comics. Because sooner or later, somebody's gonna come around and go, "Hey, remember that Batman guy? We could make that 'awesome.'"

[Shockwave]

Yeah sure that's how it is now, but as Dom was saying there was a time when your chosen hobby was not only not gauranteed, it was likely to never see the light of day again. Even Trek has gone through stages like this. It's one of the reasons why I always support Trek games when they come out no matter how bad they are, because I'm hoping that someday instead of someone saying "let's make a low end Trek game", they'll instead say "hey remember that Star Trek game that sold like hotcakes? Let's do that, only better!". I have often felt that way about TF comics. When G2 ended I really thought we'd seen the last TF comic ever. I certainly was not gauranteed that someone in the future would say "hey remember TFs? Let's do that". It happened and I'm obviously glad because we got some great stuff from it. But at the time it seemed like it was dead forever. As for superhero toys, I came in on the tail end of Mego. I had Supes and Batman and Spiderman. And of course the full range of their Trek toys.

EDIT: I forgot the point of my post, I would rather have bad stuff than no stuff, be it toys or comics. Bad toys at least can be customized. Bad comics can also still have some entertainment value and if the line at least sells well, could lead to getting good stuff down the road. I basically grew up in a time like Dom describes where if your chosen hobby didn't sell well, it just got cancelled, never to see the light of day again. Fortunately we don't have that now, but it's still very hard to get out of that line of thinking where you have to buy the bad stuff and hope for good stuff later on.

[Dominic]

When G2 ended, it was assumed by all but the most rabid fans that TF comics were gone forever. In fact, I would have told you the hobby was dead (again) by late '94. There were no new toys announced at that point. (And, believe me, I was scanning the toy magazines for any news I could find.)


But, I tend to agree with O6 about it being better to have nothing than garbage. If I have to force myself to buy toys that are not fun to fiddle with and do not display well, the hobby is not doing its job. If I have to suffer through unreadable comics, the hobby becomes a self-defeating chore.

Even in the dark days of the mid-90s, I knew this. I dropped more comics at that point. And, I explored other toy lines, even getting out of the hobby briefly. Truth be told, I got heavily into 'Trek when it looked like TF was not coming back. And, if 'Trek was not there, I would have found something else.


Dom
-this would almost make a good webcomic.....