I’ve had a lot of fun at the expense of Atari and DC’s attempts to make spinning comic book covers or game cartridge boxes a thing. I’d have to pay someone to care enough to even watch my little box or floppy disk spin slowly back and forth, back and forth. A hundred of these things spinning slowly, back and forth. I’ve seen large collections of these things and the only real question I ever had, was “why?”
I don’t know. I don’t know why. They don’t increase in value – not these, anyway.
The DC NFT marketplace has a lot of stuff of the slowly spinning variety. It also has “Bat Cowls”, which are NFTs that having possession of gets you first in line to buy yet more NFTs. (One of those was just listed on the marketplace for $1,549, but you can get one for $525.)
But… they also sell comic book NFTs.
They gave out a free one – the Harley Quinn #1 one, shown above. Once you have the NFT, you can read the comic. There are more common and more rare covers, because of course there have to be artificial scarcities, but the comics are perfectly readable.
Which brings us to the one on the left – Future State: Wonder Woman #1. Future State is a linked series of comics from DC dealing with a far future Justice League, with all new people taking on the roles of the famous DC heroes. This isn’t the first time this has been done. It’s at least the third, that I know of. But, it’s always a good way of introducing new voices into the industry.
Yara, the new Wonder Woman, has been chosen by the god Tupã (of Paraguayan legend) to be the liaison between the divine and the mortal world. True to her South American roots, she uses a shining golden bola instead of a lasso and uneasy relations to the locals. More than that, I can’t say, because that’s all that really came up in this first issue, which leaves her in the Underworld (which resembles a modern airport) on her way to force Hades to return her sister warrior, accompanied by a jungle fairy who rides a capybara. It’s weird in a good way, and it’s the sort of thing I really wanted to read.
Amazon sells the digital comic for $4, mine to keep forever (or until Amazon decides I don’t get to keep it after all). The DC NFT marketplace also sells it for $4 and, here’s the cool part, if I don’t feel like keeping it forever, I can sell it right back to the marketplace.
Free comics, and totally legit.
Bargain, right?
There’s a couple of catches. DC has to get their taste, so buying the comic NFT comes with a service fee – $0.72, in this case. And selling also comes with its own fee – 10%, or $0.40. So if I list this for what it was listed as, it will have cost me $1.12 to read. I don’t tend to re-read digital comics. If I like them, I wait until there’s a collection and just buy that physically.
There’s another catch. Once sold, there is a $25 fee to cash out your account. While selling a picture of a pink Batman helmet might net enough to make that worthwhile, all buying and selling comic book NFTs will do is give store credit. I suppose there are some people who want to have the rare covers, though not sure why. Buying the collected editions usually comes with all the variant covers, sketches, character outlines and so on.
Buying these comic book NFTs is a little bit of a hassle. Selling them is an entirely different story.
I had to send my driver license AND a selfie, as well as my current location and oh my god, I didn’t want to do any of these things, and I am really regretting it still. But, I had to see this experiment through.
I put it up for sale at the price I paid – $4 – and it hasn’t sold as of yet. But, it’s only been a few minutes. This whole crazy plan hinges on being able to execute the “sell” part of “buy/read/sell”.
If it works? Maybe I will be able to catch up on all the comics I just can’t afford. And if it doesn’t? I’m out four bucks for the experiment.
Now, there’s other ways of getting the comics online for less than the cover price. DC Universe Infinite has a $7.99/month subscription, and comics are available there after a few months – 30 days if you pay a bit more. All the Future State series available so far are there.
Amazon and Comixology has the Future State: Wonder Woman collection out already – eight volumes for $10. Of course, you can’t sell them, but it is definitely a great deal for a digital comic series.
And of course, there’s always supporting the local comic book store by just going there and buying what I want with real, physical, crinkly comics that will be read in a couple of minutes and then give me a vague sense of wanting to something more with those comics, after I’ve read them, than as improvised coasters.
As of this morning, the comic NFT has not sold. So… maybe this was a terrible idea? But, I did, at least, get to read the comic. And it was pretty good.
Update: It sold the next day.