The Venom movie is a hit, not so much with the critics (who actually seem to despise it) but with regular moviegoers and comic book movie fans. The latter have made it a great financial success at the box office over the last two weeks.

In a sense, the success of Venom can be compared to the earlier box office success experienced by Deadpool. Both films featured Marvel characters and managed to have successful movies that were produced outside of the Kevin Feige/Disney planned mainline MCU. Both characters also needed two films to succeed (Deadpool was terrible in 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine', and Venom was not so hot in 'Spider-man 3'), and both characters are anti-heroes who fans can cheer for.

In what follows I want to see if the comparisons between the two characters and their movies can be extended to the available data about the performance of the respective key comics that premiered these characters.

Both New Mutants #98 and Amazing Spider-man #300 soared in value as a result of the big-screen publicity Deadpool and Venom have received.

If there’s a structural similarity between the performances of these two anti-heroes on screen, can the fate of NM #98 [which first gave us Deadpool] allow us to speculate about the possible fate of ASM #300? Since these are both modern books with a huge print run (currently NM #98 has 15,528 units on the CGC census and ASM #300 has 17,452 certified copies listed), I’ll use their performance in 9.8 grades to compare the two [I will ignore all signature series and other outliers, i.e. CBCS copies].

New Mutants #98 (February 1991) - First appearance of Deadpool

First let’s start with NM #98 and the spectacular performance of the first ‘Deadpool’ movie. Fox gave a Reynold’s helmed ‘Deadpool’ movie the green light to proceed on September 18 of 2014.

If we look at sales of NM #98 before that time, we see the following:

In May of 2004 a Heritage Auction sold for $47.15. Nine years later, by February of 2013, NM #98 certified 9.8 grades are selling for between $300.00 and $400.00. At this point, the comic is selling consistently and the numbers leading up to Sept of 2014 look as follows:

April 06, 2014 = $416.11
May 09, 2014 = $300.00
June 03, 2014 = $360.00
July 07, 2014 = $425.00
Aug 07, 2014 = $469.95

Average fair market price at this time is around: $394.00.

The September news hits and we see sales for: Sept. 18 =$525.99, Sept 19 = $599.99, Sept 21 = $690.00. Presenting a noticeable price-spike that will see sales averaging from $600.00 - $700.00.

After an unorthodox marketing campaign, the first trailer for the film dropped the second week of July at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con. The week of July 09, we can find sales producing the following numbers:

July 08, 2015 = $839.80
July 13, 2015 = $849.95
July 15, 2015 = $850.00
July 18, 2015 = $999.99
July 22, 2015 = $850.00

Average price is now $877.00.

Finally, the standalone ‘Deadpool’ film was released February 12, 2016. It would go on to earn over $783 million dollars, while costing only $58 million to make.
NM #98 sales leading up to and immediately following the release of the film are as follows:

December 28, 2015 = $780.00
January 5, 2016 = $740.00
Feb 01, 2016 = 785.28
Feb 14, 2016 = $850.00
Feb 19 2016 = $810.00

This gave way to a price frenzy however, since starting in late February 2016 and up to early 2018 prices on NM #98 ranged from a low of $600.00 to high of $1,499.00 (Sale on 05/06/2018, just before the release of 'Deadpool 2'). Now two years after the release of the original movie and five months after the release of the successful sequel, NM #98 has a FMV of $800.00 which is where it was after the first film was released. Obviously, if you paid $1,500.00, you lost quite a bit of money

The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988) - First full appearance of Venom

The story with ASM #300 is strangely similar, but with higher prices because a more popular name brand: Spider-man versus New Mutants. Still looking at prices before and after the Venom film announcement, this book has seen NM#98 level movement and then some. Before any talk of a movie, 2004-2016 ASM #300 was selling in 9.8 grade for between $700.00 to over $1,000.00:

August 13, 2004 = $776.25
May 11, 2008 = $836.50
Feb 02, 2009 = $836.50
July 25, 2010 = $537.75
July 9, 2012 = $600.00
May 25, 2013 = $703.76
Jan 13, 2014 = $860.00
July 26, 2014 =$1,100.00
Jan 11 2015 = $1,029.00
June 30 2016 = $1,165.55

The average FMV on a 9.8 by the middle of 2016 is around $844.00 and gradually and noticeably trending upwards. Then In March 2017, talk got out that there would be a Venom standalone film, prices immediately spiked:

March 29, 2017 = $1,300.00
April 10, 2017 =$1,999.99
April 12, 2017 = $1,710.00
April 24, 2017 = $1,675.00
April 27, 2017 = $1,750.00

And, after a teaser in February of 2018, the first full trailer was released April 23, 2018. Prices on ASM #300 looked as follows:

February 27, 2018 = $2,097.00
February 28, 2018 = $2,100.00
March 4, 2018 = $2,031.50
April 03 2018 = $1, 950.00
April 30, 2018 = $2,199.99

After the October 1st release of the Venom movie, we are now at the point where the FMV of 9.8 copies is $2,450.00, and sales from just before and after the film’s debut reflect those prices.

However, remember that NM #98 didn’t spike until after the first film and then it dropped like a brick and has stayed down. Will Venom suffer the effects of the same gravitational forces? Is it time to sell ASM #300? Well, I certainly wouldn’t buy at current prices, but that’s just me….