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Why is Spiderman #129 now a mega key comic ?
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183 posts in this topic

5 hours ago, Mercury Man said:

Interestingly, the ROM action figure was developed and produced, before it hit comic form.  So makes you wonder, why Marvel pushed him so much, given that the toy underwhelmed in terms of sales.  Maybe they thought to re-invigorate the toy side. 

They might have been influenced by the terms of the licensing agreement, whatever they were. Or maybe they just thought they had a property that could make some money, despite its problems outside of comics.

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20 hours ago, Logan510 said:

It's amazing how someone can have such detailed recollections of events that they didn't experience for themselves but only read about years after the fact.

Truly amazing.

2c

Well, RMA was around. Sure, he was 1 when ASM 129 came out... With all of that said as an 8 year old in 1980 I liked the punisher a lot and fondly enjoyed his, mostly, spidey apps I read second hand from my older bro. It did not occur to me to hunt down 129. I didn't think like that. He was a spidey character. But he got a fair amount of play in spiderman.

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1 hour ago, the blob said:

Well, RMA was around. Sure, he was 1 when ASM 129 came out... With all of that said as an 8 year old in 1980 I liked the punisher a lot and fondly enjoyed his, mostly, spidey apps I read second hand from my older bro. It did not occur to me to hunt down 129. I didn't think like that. He was a spidey character. But he got a fair amount of play in spiderman.

Who is RMA? (shrug)

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2 hours ago, the blob said:

Well, RMA was around. Sure, he was 1 when ASM 129 came out... With all of that said as an 8 year old in 1980 I liked the punisher a lot and fondly enjoyed his, mostly, spidey apps I read second hand from my older bro. It did not occur to me to hunt down 129. I didn't think like that. He was a spidey character. But he got a fair amount of play in spiderman.

1 and a half. Those extra six months made all the difference. I bought a case of ASM #129 and stashed it away in my warehouse.

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I was a high school senior when ASM 129 hit the stands.  I didn't really like the Punisher too much but I did like the stories he appeared in.  I just wasn't a fan of the anti-hero character. 
However, iirc, the fan response in subsequent issues was pretty positive, if not a little controversial (I'm too lazy to dig out the issues and check the lettercolls so I'm goin' by memory).
Maybe management didn't believe the Punisher was ready to carry his own series, but he did start to appear on a  regular basis over the next few years.  Back then, if you saw a character appear a couple times a year he became a regular character.  And the lettercolls after these appearances reflected the popularity of the character.

Those were the days when Marvel was upping its output - 30 to 40 books a month to over 50 (including their magazine line - more than I could afford at the time :p) but they diversified a lot.  Mostly super-heroes and horror with a smattering of westerns, sci-fi and a little war, romance and kung fu.  Even the major guys like Spidey, the Thing, and Conan only had 2 regular series devoted to them (and in the case of Spidey and the Thing their second books were team-up books and Conan's second book was in the magazine line) and it seemed just as likely that Marvel would introduce a new character to start a series (like Shang-Chi, Iron Fist and Killraven and Deathlok) where guest stars like the Black Panther and Hercules had stayed guest stars (or been in the Avengers) for a while before they got their own series.  Even the increasingly popular horror characters like Morbius took a couple of years after they were introduced before they would get their own series - except for Man-Wolf.  And all those guys above were popular at the time.  It was a big deal to get a regular series back then.

But yeah, it did take an inordinate amount of time for him to get his own series.  But he was a popular guest star.  

That's my take, anyways. 


 

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RMA has provided an excellent overview of The Punisher’s humble beginnings in ASM 129 to his rise to peak popularity in the early 90’s, his denouement in the late 90’s, to his more recent rise in popularity again over the past few years.

Whether he used his memory or gleamed timelines from other sources is irrelevant because it is correct and provides newbies with wonderful insight into the character and his comings and goings over the years.  And for us old-timers, it definitely serves to bridge some gaps in our collective memories.

I would also like to add a few more contributing factors that led to the underlying popularity of the Punisher.

1.  The Wolverine mini-series (1982) was wildly popular and proved that a ‘hero’ with a violent, disturbing past can be profitable and successful in delivering a self-contained solo story as the lead character, without the tradional (xmen) supporting cast.  Although it took 4 years, similar success was achieved with the Punisher mini (no Spidey).

2. Hearts of Darkness one-shot (1991) Featuring Wolverine, The Punisher, and Ghost Rider vs Mephisto and Blackheart.  A marketing gamble to see if Marvel’s anti-heroes had enough drawing power to sell well in an expensive, prestige format book with a double gate-fold cover.  And it was a roaring success, resulting in a ‘family’ of darker titles that kicked off Marvel’s Age of Darkness through the mid-90’s.  This wouldn’t have happened without the popularity of The Punisher.

 

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On 1/17/2020 at 11:46 AM, Logan510 said:

That's not entirely true. In the early 1980's I held a dozen copies in my hands at my LCS and they were $10 each, like an insufficiently_thoughtful_person I didn't buy any of them :(

 

If your store was charging $10/copy in the early 80’s, then they were ripping off their customers.  They were still readily available in NM for $2-$3 until 1986.

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Punisher issues broke out in 1986.  1986 also was when a little publication called Comic Value Monthly first appeared. In my shop, CVM outsold X-Men and they changed the way many people priced their books. Quite a coincidence.

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1 hour ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

If your store was charging $10/copy in the early 80’s, then they were ripping off their customers.  They were still readily available in NM for $2-$3 until 1986.

I remember it being priced at that price, wish I would have bought a short box fill LOL 😡😡😡😡

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27 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I've always like the ASM Annual 15 for the cool cover and the Miller art.  It came out in 1981 and had Punisher in it and gets overlooked quite a bit.

I agree. To imply punisher was obscure for a decade after he first Appeared is silly. I feel like he was probably a notch above black cat as spidey's greatest frienemy. That marvel was too dumb to realize how popular he was among spidey fans seems to miss the point. Had he gotten a mini in 1982 or 1983 like many other characters it would have exploded. I would have bought 3 copies of every issue. I was out of comics by 1986 though. Sports, girls, and various forms of inebriation were more interesting.

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3 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

If your store was charging $10/copy in the early 80’s, then they were ripping off their customers.  They were still readily available in NM for $2-$3 until 1986.

Really? You visited every store in the Chicagoland area at the time?

You never paid over guide for HG copies?

 

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16 minutes ago, Logan510 said:

Really? You visited every store in the Chicagoland area at the time?

You never paid over guide for HG copies?

 

Aside from Mile High copies, very few people paid over Guide for comics in the early 80’s, and especially so for such a common comic book as ASM 129

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1 hour ago, the blob said:

To imply punisher was obscure for a decade after he first Appeared is silly.

And yet, everything about the character says otherwise. Again: 25 total appearances from late 1973 to late 1985, with two separate periods where he didn't appear...anywhere...for 2+ years.

That was Dominic Fortune territory (11 appearances, by the way.)

Same time period: Moon Knight 80 times (and Punisher had a year and a half head start) and Rom appeared a whopping 96 times (with a nearly 6 year head start by Punisher.)

The world just wasn't ready for Frank Castle yet...

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2 minutes ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Aside from Mile High copies, very few people paid over Guide for comics in the early 80’s, and especially so for such a common comic book as ASM 129

Oh OK, if you say so it has to be true lol

 

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Punisher was definitely a D list character. There was no set hype to get him to where he was only a short while after the mini. You gotta remember, in 1986 the biggest thing that marvel was hyping was The New Universe. I mean... Pun-Who?!? 
It really was the mini-series that blew him out of the water... those covers.. the dark ultra violent story... the art... u had to live back then to appreciate it

Couple that with a very hot climate in the comic book market leading towards 1987 when everything went to second print carrying big big price tags on the first, Punisher experienced a major breakthrough with a movie that came out only a few short years after

but even as a young(er) collector back then I didn’t even flinch nor thought for a second to pick up an ASM129. 
Are u kidding me?? With books like TMNT, Cerebus, Albedo, TDKR/Watchmen LTD hardcovers commanding prices in the hundreds, you would be a damn fool to seek out puni’s first appearance. Everyone was after hot expensive modern titles.

 

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37 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

And yet, everything about the character says otherwise. Again: 25 total appearances from late 1973 to late 1985, with two separate periods where he didn't appear...anywhere...for 2+ years.

That was Dominic Fortune territory (11 appearances, by the way.)

Same time period: Moon Knight 80 times (and Punisher had a year and a half head start) and Rom appeared a whopping 96 times (with a nearly 6 year head start by Punisher.)

The world just wasn't ready for Frank Castle yet...

Maybe it was growing up in New York City in the 70s I was eager to admire a vigilante type. We needed a few.

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39 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

And yet, everything about the character says otherwise. Again: 25 total appearances from late 1973 to late 1985, with two separate periods where he didn't appear...anywhere...for 2+ years.

That was Dominic Fortune territory (11 appearances, by the way.)

Same time period: Moon Knight 80 times (and Punisher had a year and a half head start) and Rom appeared a whopping 96 times (with a nearly 6 year head start by Punisher.)

The world just wasn't ready for Frank Castle yet...

Marvel not understanding they had a character worth pushing doesn't mean kids and angry teens didn't like the character. Marvel pushed all sorts of terrible characters and titles that failed. Wolverine had a very popular mini and was obviously very popular and how many years did it take before he got a title? I think the vigilante nature of the character(s) scared marvel off.. They probably didn't want parents groups or the CCA dumping on them (and we were in Reagan's America..), which is odd because vigilante movies were popular, but rated R, etc... But they probably wanted to be safe with all ages comics. Anyway, my fondness for the character and my brother's and friends' is anecdotal, of course. We were all victims of street crime and wished someone was out there murdering criminals (coincidentally, the Deatbwish apartment was only a few blocks from where I grew up). Maybe kids in Kansas couldn't identify.

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