Vision led the charge to the bottom of the Hottest Comics, and Avengers #57 amounted to the single coldest comic of them all.

As always, we have to ask the question: what are the Hottest Comics? Based on eBay sales, these are the best-selling single issues across the auction site. Including both graded and raw varieties, the market is constantly moving, which is why the numbers you see in today’s post don’t always match what you may see on the market overview tab.

Instead of focusing on the comics feeling the love from investors and collectors, the Coldest Comics is all about the issues that took a dive in the sales department.

89. AVENGERS #57 (-59)

I’m sure you’ve heard the joke by now - what do Daredevil and Scarlet Witch have in common? They both lost their vision. Judging by the sales for Avengers #57, buyers are not helping to find him, either. 

As always, the main culprit in keys landing on the Coldest Comics list is the lack of news. The secondary market lives and dies by the movie and television adaptations, and that goes double for any of those Marvel keys. Even though fans may be complaining about the quality of Phase Four, it does not deter buyers from gathering the key issues. In this case, we haven’t heard any updates on Vision’s Disney Plus series, and that is the most likely reason collectors and investors steered clear of this issue. 

Vision’s first appearance took a mighty dip in the rankings this week, but it won’t stay in the dumps for long. With Vision Quest still reportedly in the works at Marvel Studios, investors and collectors will be scouring the auction sites for his key issues. That list will forever begin and end with Avengers #57. For that matter, it remains one of the most iconic Avengers’ covers, so buyers have another reason to want to add it to their sets. 

99. THE MANDALORIAN #1 (-54)

Mando’s third season is in the books, and most fans agree that there was a substantial dip in quality. With that lack of enthusiasm for The Mandalorian comes a change in attitude toward the related key issues. After season two, anything Star Wars was red hot, especially those comics tied to Mando. It trickled into the speculative picks as well, and any character deemed worthy of the hit show was given an ample dose of inflation. 

Maybe season three didn’t live up to fan expectations, but it doesn’t mean Mando spec is dead in the water. Hopefully, Disney will listen to the audiences and step up its game when season four rolls around. Even if they don’t, the first trailers should bolster the sales for Din Djarin’s first in-story comic appearance. 

91. VENOM: LETHAL PROTECTOR #4 (-53)

It was a rough week for the Venom speculation, and Venom: Lethal Protector #4 was leading that charge. With 53 positions lost in the rankings, LP #4 nearly took the prize of coldest comic. Of course, it’s not a surprise to see this issue falling on hard times. Although Venom 3 is in the works, fans aren’t exactly expecting much after the first two movies, neither of which were actually good. Entertaining? To some extent. Good? Hardly. 

Since we’ve already seen Riot in the original Venom and Carnage in the sequel, Venom 3 may shift away from another symbiote villain. That would leave Lethal Protector #4 hanging out to dry. After all, this issue is collectible for the first appearances of several symbiotes, including Scream, Riot, Phage, Agony, and Lasher. At this point, we don’t know anything about Venom 3’s plot, but if Sony doesn’t include a new symbiote (besides possibly Toxin, who was teased in Let There Be Carnage) then this issue will be spending plenty of time at the bottom of the sales charts. 

On the plus side, there’s still a chance that we could see one or more of these characters in the MCU. Eventually, Marvel Studios will come back around to that Spider-Man: No Way Home Easter egg with a piece of the Venom symbiote crawling around the MCU. That could be fertile ground for, say, Scream to make her live-action debut.

88. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #300 NEWSSTAND (-34)

The Venom keys kept falling down the chain. Traditionally, ASM #300 and its iconic cover art is one of the single most popular keys in all of collecting. There’s an endless number of homage covers, and it’s considered one of Todd McFarlane’s best works. He’s even put Spawn in the pose, which means he’s done an homage to himself in a way. 

All that being said, it’s no surprise that ASM #300 would rank high each week. At the moment, the standard edition is 10th in the Hottest Comics sales index, but this is the case virtually every week. Why, then, is such a mainstay comic listed among the Coldest performers? We aren’t talking about just any edition; this is the newsstand. In recent years, these have become much more popular among collectors and investors.

In many ways, buyers look at them as variant editions. For those new to the game, there are direct editions and then there are newsstand editions. After the rise of comic book shops in the 1980s, publishers began printing and shipping comics directly to the stores. These were known as direct editions. On the other hand, non-comic shops, like grocery stores and newspaper stands, were still selling comic books. These had a barcode to make them easier to scan at the registers. 

What makes some newsstands so expensive, at least in higher grades, is the quality. Generally speaking, direct editions are handled with much more care, given that they are being sold directly to comic book collectors. On the other hand, newsstands are treated like any other magazine. They’re manhandled and shoved into racks with many fingers touching the covers. That degrades them, making key issues harder to find in higher quality. Hence the significance of an ASM #300 in a newsstand edition. 

Because a high-grade newsstand is relatively tough to find, it causes the prices to inflate. That is enough to deter buyers who might prefer to opt for the direct edition to save money. It helps explain why the direct edition sits in 10th while the newsstand is all the way in 88th.

66. OMEGA MEN #3 (-33)

Lobo goes up, and Lobo comes down. That is what made Omega Men #3 an official member of the Usual Suspects. It joined the ranks of those issues that could fall under either the hottest or coldest categories at any given moment. There’s so much potential for returns here that buyers can’t stay away. However, it’s all been quiet on the news front for months, and that doesn’t help the sales department.

The reason Omega Men #3 is prone to sudden jumps in the rankings is the huge amount of DCU hype. Although he wasn’t mentioned in James Gunn’s Chapter One reveal, that doesn’t mean the Main Man isn’t on the radar. Shortly after Gunn was confirmed as DC Studios’ co-chair, he posted a cryptic photo of Lobo among other characters. It gave fans hope that the intergalactic bounty hunter would be coming to live action, something that’s been on many wish lists for years. 

So far, there are no rumors or speculation about when or how Lobo could arrive in the DCU. Nothing is certain, but the odds are good that it will happen…eventually. Gunn’s vision of the DCU doesn’t actually kick off until 2025’s Superman: Legacy, so it’s much too early to know what other characters we will see in Chapter One. Given time, we will likely find Lobo on the silver screen. 

*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.