Colossal collection

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This article was published 07/02/2015 (4181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Doug Sulipa doesn’t necessarily agree with pundits who refer to the new Star Wars comic book — a title that has sold over 1 million copies since its mid-January release — as the shot in the arm the comic book industry desperately needed.

The book’s sales figures are impressive; there’s no doubt about that. It’s just that after close to 50 years in the biz, Sulipa has seen and heard it all before.

“People have been predicting the demise of comics and their worth since the early ’70s,” says Sulipa, owner of Comic World (dougcomicworld.com), a Manitoba-based mail-order business that stocks in the neighbourhood of 1.5 million comic books, as well as hundreds of thousands of vinyl records, sports cards and periodicals. “The naysayers are always proven wrong because something always comes along to trigger yet another resurgence.”

Case in point: Prior to the theatrical release of Guardians of the Galaxy last August, Sulipa had a glut of material featuring the Marvel Universe characters portrayed in that flick. It was a slightly different story after the film went on to become the highest-grossing superhero movie of 2014 — and the second-highest-grossing movie of the year, period.

“Guardians… resulted in probably the biggest boom in comic back issues in the last 10 years,” Sulipa says, seated in Lecoka Café House, a funky coffee shop in downtown Steinbach. “Nobody cared about the comic when it came out originally — nobody bought it.”

Rocket Raccoon, the Guardians’ anthropomorphic munitions expert, made his debut in 1976, in Marvel Preview No. 7. For almost four decades, that issue fetched around $15, even if it was in near-mint condition, Sulipa says.

“After the movie came out, professionally graded copies were going for as much as $5,000. I had about 50 and sold them all within three months for insane prices.”

 

“There are a few people who have more (comic books) than me, but those numbers include a lot of duplication,” Sulipa says, when he is asked how his cache compares to other dealers’. “As far as different comics go, mind you, I don’t think there is a person on the planet with more different comics than me.”

Although he can’t watch it these days without cringing, Sulipa became enamoured with comic books — and superheroes in particular – because of Batman, the campy, TV series starring Adam West as the Caped Crusader that ran from 1966 to 1968. Every Saturday, his father would drive him to book dealers across town, where Sulipa would use money he earned delivering newspapers, mowing lawns and shovelling snow to buy every comic he could get his hands on.

In 1968, Sulipa, then 12, began purchasing his school buddies’ comics as soon as they were finished reading them. No problem if he ended up with doubles; during the summer he would set up a table at the end of his driveway on Pasadena Avenue and — just like a kid hawking lemonade — flog anything he didn’t want or need. Of course, every cent he made went back into his collection.

Sulipa was still in Grade 12 in 1974 when he opened Comic World, arguably the first dedicated comic book store in Winnipeg, on Carlton Street. As soon as the bell rang to signal the end of classes, he’d hop in his car and drive downtown to man the cash register for a few hours, each evening. (Sulipa never had trouble hiring staff given that he paid his comic-loving employees in store credit.)

After graduating from Fort Richmond Collegiate, Sulipa studied commerce at the University of Manitoba. He dropped out during his second year, however, because he felt he wasn’t learning anything he didn’t already know from dealing with customers one-on-one.

His parents weren’t too concerned; after all, not every person in his mid-20s gets to be the subject of a National Film Board documentary called His First Million: Tale of a Comic Czar. (We’re still not sure if the numeral in the title referred to books or bucks.)

Sulipa bounced around from location to location throughout the 1980s and early ’90s — largely because his inventory was constantly outgrowing his floorspace. In 1996, Sulipa decided he was done with the retail biz. He moved to rural Manitoba, built a climate-controlled warehouse minutes from his home and began selling via mail-order, only — a move that paid off in spades a couple of years later when a little thing called the Internet became a part of everyday life.

“I don’t know if there is a country on Earth I haven’t shipped to,” says the married father of two. “When I open my in-box first thing in the morning, there are usually 50 to 100 emails waiting for me, from all over. I have to use a (online) translator sometimes, because the wording is often a little awkward.”

Spider-Man and Batman are still kings of the hill, popularity-wise, but Sulipa — a long-time adviser for the Overstreet Comic Price Guide — has made a name for himself by specializing in comic books of all genres, including western, horror, war… even romance.

“Superhero stuff is where the money is but when you have the only copy on the planet for sale of something, you can get more money for it,” Sulipa explains. “So that sort of inspired me to hunt out the obscure, too.”

About that “where the money is” reference; through the years, Sulipa has owned some of the most valuable comic books ever produced. In 1982, he sold a copy of Action Comics No. 1, an issue that marked the first appearance of Superman, for $5,000. In 2012, a copy in roughly the same condition as the one Sulipa used to have commanded — up, up and away! — a cool $250,000.

Sulipa has a hunch an in-the-works movie based on Dreadstar, a Marvel character introduced 35 years ago in Epic Illustrated #3, could be the industry’s Next Big Thing.

“It was one of the best-done space operas in comic history and if done right, it might rival Star Wars in terms of popularity,” he says.

But he has a word of caution for anybody who waits until the flick hits theatres, to get their hands on a copy or three.

“People buy these things at the height of their popularity, which is not really the way to invest. The way to do it is to have it already and sell it when its value goes through the roof; when something has gone up a thousand per cent, that’s when you sell it, not when you buy it.”

Sulipa, who works 80 to 100 hours a week filling orders and tracking down requests, is fairly certain he won’t be uprooting his collection again. After all, when he transferred his lot from Winnipeg to his current digs 19 years ago, it took the equivalent of 50 five-ton trucks to facilitate the move.

“If there is (another move), it will probably be my son Reg taking over,” he says, responding “No, but people ask me that all the time.” when questioned whether his 19-year-old, who recently started his own poster business, was named after Reggie Mantle of Archie Comics fame.

“I have a lot of friends who retired and kind of lost their identity. I expect to be doing this as long as I can. Or maybe I should say as long as my wife will put up with me.”

 

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca