THE NEW TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT

The book is called THE STANDARD CATALOG OF COMIC BOOKS (ISBN 0-87341-916-2), and is written by the same people who edits and publishes COMIC BUYERS GUIDE. It is a little expensive at $34.95, but it's worth it if you're a collector as it is a good price guide and checklist, and for the fact that it's 1237 pages long.

Although, in most guides, they do tend to miss certain variant comics and/or just plain inaccurate. I just checked the 31st Edition to OVERSTREET'S COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE, which is the latest version, and it still lists DARK HORSE #50 as having a Pérez story (see "Settlements").

Anyway, in addition to a summary of some titles, SCCB also list, in some cases, Diamond Preorder numbers and Capital City's order numbers. What I found very interesting is that THE NEW TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT TP is quite rare! According to this book, Capital City only received and shipped 2,500 copies (note this number does not include Diamond Distribution).

Compare this number to some other, like ACTION COMICS #643 (Capital City: 35,100), BATMAN #400 (Capital City: 27,650), THE NEW TITANS #50 (Capital City: 18,750), PRIME #15 (Capital City: 14,450), CRISIS #3 (Capital City: 42,050), CRIMSON PLAGUE #2 (Diamond Predorders: 23,680), and WONDER WOMAN #168 (Diamond Preorders: 27,185).

I am saving the last bit for AVENGERS #1 (vol 3), which they listed the following:

AVENGERS #1 (vol 3)

AVENGERS #1 (vol 3) Circulation Statement: 166,903 Diamond Preorders: 194,439 Statement, filed 10/1/97,; avg print run 209,391; avg sales 163,342; avg subs 2,704; avg total paid 166,046; samples 270; office use 125; max existent 166,441; 21% of run returned

INHUMANS #1

The book was actually designed as a price guide, but I mostly find the circulation statements more interesting than the actual list value. Personally, I always think a value of a comic book is based on the buyer's wants and needs (not dictated by a book). I disagree with some of the prices on the catalogue - just like you'd find WIZARD's pricing ridiculous.

The induction of Comics Guaranty LLC (CGC) in the price guide, I find a little annoying. I don't believe in CGC and I find the people buying them at extraordinary prices a little crazy. For about $600 for a perfect "10" SPAWN #1, you can get a pretty cool three figures unique George Pérez artwork, or heck, get yourself a new digital camera. Basically, the guide lists how many comics were CGC'ed and what the highest number it got. For instance, INHUMANS #1 there were 32 sent in to be graded and the best of the lot is a grade of 9.6. According to this guide, we're supposed to multiply 7 to its worth (which is valued at $8), so a CGC 9.6 INHUMANS #1 should fetch about $56.

As always, opinions expressed here are strictly my own. Buy this book, it's worth it!

Page 21 of CRIMSON PLAGUE #2

The page for "Settlement" was indeed intended to be part of a short story to appear in DARK HORSE PRESENTS #50. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances (an all-too common occurrence for me at the time) it never got beyond the fully pencilled and inked first page, the rough pencils of page two and the layouts of a couple more pages. It didn't have as much to do with Terra-forming as it did with Earth's re-colonization to another planet, which ends up being a living being that disguises itself as a violent, deadly, uninhabitable world so that the humans would be forced to bypass it and not do to it what they did to their own world. It was more of an ecological sci-fi parable. The story was announced in the trades at the time and it is probably that information that was used for the 1998 OVERSTREET GUIDE.

The spaceships that were drawn in the "Settlement" splash did eventually see print on page 21 of CRIMSON PLAGUE #2. I pasted in photocopies, leaving the original intact.

To date, my only published Dark Horse work was the cover for COMICS' GREATEST WORLD #4.

(Vu: I mentioned that according to THE OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE (28th Edition, June 1998), they erroneously listed DARK HORSE COMICS PRESENTS #50 as having a "S/F story by Perez".)