The Four Color Media Monitor

While nowhere near as high a sum as some of the Golden Age comics on the speculator market, a Star Trek comic from Gold Key sold for over $45,000, according to CBS News:

The first "Star Trek" comic book sold at an auction for a record-breaking price of $46,500, according to Certified Guaranty Company, a Florida-based comic book grading service.

The comic book "Star Trek No. 1," which was published by Gold Key in 1967, was sold at a Heritage Auctions sale on Nov. 3.

[...] The inaugural issue contained "The Planet of No Return" and the story was written by Dick Wood. The series' first cover featured Spock, Kirk and Hikaru Sulu, and went on a 12-year, 62-issue run under Gold Key. The series ended in 1979 when Marvel Comics acquired rights to the series and began its own, according to ComicBook. The current license holder of the series is IDW Publishing, which launched its first issue in October.

Strange they don't mention DC acquired the license in 1984, and continued to publish ST comics until about 1996, after which Marvel won the license again, though it only lasted 2 more years, IIRC. In any case, I'll have to be honest, but if the speculator market, as noted before, has done more harm than good for the medium with the way Marvel/DC products are sold from one auction buyer to another, then obviously, it's not going to improve with ST-based comics becoming trade-arounds for would-be investors.

Interesting though, that IDW now got a license for publishing Trek comics. Presumably, this is to offset their loss of the Hasbro license to publish GI Joe and Transformers comics. But who knows whether the writers IDW hires will proceed to inject wokeness into the scripts of the planned Trek comics, and who knows how long they'll last as a result?

Labels: history, licensed products, msm propaganda, sales