AboutChris Brown Expertise I have extensive knowledge on comic books published from 1897 through 1975. My knowledge goes beyond superheroes to include early strip reprints from 1897-1930 or so, science fiction, horror comics of the 50s and 70s, love, crime, satire and other genres. I can provide advice on buying or selling comics as well as answering general queries.
Experience I am a longtime collector and occasional seller of older comics.
Question Hello how are you? Im thinking about ordering some of the Marvel Star Wars comic books from a website. Now my uncle has been collecting these comics since he was a kid he was even on the mailing list back when they were coming out but he had some holes in his collection and wanted some better copys so he ordered some of the same website. Some of the comics he recieved had the barcoade in the coner and others had the box with the spider man face. Now being a long time collector he knew that the originals were the barcodes and the reprints were not so he called up the company saying he felt they ripped him off by selling him reprints. The company said that in the later issues on the comic they started replacing some of the barcodes for spiderman faces and they are a first edition as well and only the competly blank conners were reprints. With the hassel of mailing them back and what not my uncle just let it go and is now curious if he was right or if the company was.
I have been trying to do research on the internet for this and came across a somewhat similar question you had awnsered and thought Id see if you could awnser mine.
Throught the entire comic book series of Marvel Star Wars are the first editions the barcodes only or are these spiderman faces first editions as well? Thanks for your time I really apricaiate it cant wait to finaly be certain on this topic.
Answer Hi Alex
I will tell you my understanding of this, which a couple other people on a comic-related chat group I participated in confirmed for me.
Independent comic shops started competing with more traditional newsstands and party stores right about the time Star Wars comics were being issued. A major difference between the comic shops and the newsstands was that newsstands could return unsold comics to Marvel for a refund whereas comic shops could not.
To make sure that comic shops didn't circumvent this rule by having a newsstand return their unsold comics, Marvel issued slightly different covers on comics sent to each. Since most comic shops didn't have UPC scanners anyway, they got rid of the UPC code and replaced it with a Spidey face on the issues sent to the comic shops. Only the newsstand issues got the UPC codes.
So in this case, both these variants would be originals and not reprints. Someone mentioned to me that they believe the early Star Wars reprints had the issue number in a diamond in the upper left corner of the front cover. However, later on Marvel started putting the issue numbers in diamonds on original issues as well, so a diamond will not necessarily indicate a reprint.
Hope this is helpful and not too confusing. Let me know if it is unclear, and I will let you know if I learn anything else about these issues.
