23 Jan Watch & Learn: Free Miles Morales Movie and Advice

Eight months ago I recorded half-a-dozen episodes for the Pop Sequentialism Podcast on our YouTube Channel, but the files got corrupted and couldn’t be uploaded. In those vignettes I recommended picking up overlooked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle keys, and I warned against investing in anything connected solely to the New Mutants movie (which I had seen at a test screening about a year earlier). I stressed that investing in the key first appearances associated with any Marvel film overseen by Kevin Feige (as part of the Disney controlled MCU) was a very good idea with few caveats.
The subject that I spent more than thirty minutes discussing was Miles Morales. Under normal circumstance I’d advise that any investment advice more than three months old is generally redundant, but I still feel strongly that almost all high-grade early Miles Morales key issues are still a smart buy.

In April of 2020 a CGC 9.8 first printing of Ultimate Fallout #4 would set you back about $325. But by early June it was up to $425 and climbing and I was rather aggressive in my assertion that this was nowhere near its ultimate potential. But why was this comic published in September of 2011 suddenly gaining when it had leveled off mere months after Sony’s Into the Spider-Verse Oscar win in March 2019?

Well for one thing, Edge of Spider-Verse #2, the first appearance of Spider-Gwen (which had also benefit from a Spider-verse movie-inspired price hike), had continued to increase with reports about a sequel that was supposedly in the works. But it wasn’t a movie or even a rumor that renewed interest in Miles Morales in June of 2020, so what was the catalyst?

It was a series of #BackLivesMatter protests begun on May 26th centered on systematic police brutality and negligence that resulted in the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. As these events continued throughout the summer, they had the ancillary effect of renewing interest in all black superheroes.

Fantastic Four #52, the first appearance of the Black Panther, whose MCU film broke global box office records in 2018, had seen a slight dip in price, but now was back on the climb along with every other Back Panther key issue. Captain America #117, the first appearance of The Falcon, had already been on the rise after the character was handed Cap’s shield at the end of the all-time box-office juggernaut, Avengers: Endgame (and the announcement of a Disney+ series, Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Exacerbated by the scarcity of NM+ graded copies, all lower grades were rising in price, too. This insatiable desire for key issues featuring heroes of color spread to Asian, Latino, and Middle-Eastern characters and was not limited to Marvel. DC’s Static #1, the first appearance of a character from the Milestone imprint (and a dollar-bin comic for most of the last quarter-century), had achieved a 9.8 value of about $300 by the end of the year–without a current series or a verified media project in the works.
As early as September 2020, many comic blogs (GoCollect most notably) were predicting a crash in pricing on what were deemed “diversity titles” by conservative collectors. But the sudden death of actor Chadwick Boseman, who had lost his secret battle with cancer in August, reignited interest in all things Black Panther as interest in other heroes of color surged, too.

It’s no secret that the vast majority of habitual comic book collectors have been primarily male and pale for decades (if not always). While the readership is perhaps as diverse now as it has ever been, it’s still a primarily white, straight male collector base. So, too, was the vast majority of comic book writers, editors, and artists, until relatively recently. Interestingly, as circulation numbers decreased greatly after the boom and bust of the 1990s, the percentage of remaining readers who were not white males grew–even as superhero comics mostly pandered rather than promoted actual diversity. Revelations of institutional sexism, harassment and discriminatory hiring and firing practices at DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, and even the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund led to a change in the editorial hierarchy and fostered a more inclusive environment that continues to draw top-notch talent more representative of the growing readership of women and people of color. Writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Eve Ewing, Marjorie Liu, Gabby Rivera and G. Willow Wilson have helped breathe real life into characters that previously bordered on tokenism. Collectively this versatile group helped create of a whole new stable of heroes that finally resembled the people in the communities they supposedly protected.

This backstory about the recent history of the Marvel Bullpen may not be news, but it helps to explain the blindness among a still prevalent majority of comic book collectors and speculators to the niche popularity and growing affinity for Miles Morales and his boundless growth potential.

While there has been some backlash among a specific (and very vocal) type of comic fan to the ret-conning of gender, orientation and race of characters that had always been CIS, Caucasian men, Miles Morales wasn’t the object of much ire. While debatably underwritten for years, Miles is not just another Peter Parker. He has different super powers and his Afro-Latino heritage is an honest reflection and integral part of the culture of today’s New York City, so “Black Spider-Man” never seemed ham-fisted. But it took a movie to launch him from comic book curio to pop culture icon.2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse followed a rebooted Sony franchise that was so disliked that the third film in a proposed trilogy was never produced. Sony’s Marvel movies were so poorly regarded compared to Kevin Feige’s MCU that Sony entered into an agreement to let Disney make their next two Spider-Man movies for them. So when it was announced that Sony was going it alone on an animated Spider-Man movie and that it was based on a mini-series that was only a couple of years old helmed by three directors, expectations were suitably low. What happened is a classic Hollywood story: Sony’s own low expectations afforded an extraordinary degree of creative freedom that culminated in one of the best adaptations of a comic book to date, and the film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

To be fair, there are a lot of characters in the film, but the crux of the plot weighs squarely on the shoulders of Shameik Moore’s Miles Morales. The young actor conveyed a relatable innocence and a fundamental likability that pleased audiences worldwide. It was pretty clear that there would be a sequel even before Sony announced one, but the long production required of animated films left plenty of time for fans to forget. It is hype, after all, that fuels market value. The popularity of this film had brought a lot of non-collectors into the hobby, and many of them were probably surprised that they could buy this new Spider-Man’s first appearance so cheaply. An influx of new, casual buyers helps to motivate massive price increases, but would they stay?

The GoCollect Fair Market Value this week for a 9.8 CGC version of Ultimate Fallout #4 is $975 for the standard 1st printing, but you can’t find one online for less than $1100. On eBay right now there are several priced above $1400 with recent verified sales to support it.

In most cases, prices like those fall and stabilize as speculators chase the trend and impulse buyers drift back out of collecting and both sell short when the demand subsides. But this past year has been anything but typical, and Miles Morales has been the beneficiary of incalculable karma and genuine affection. 2020 was a perfect storm of stalled production, over-consumption, discretionary income and social awareness. People who were used to spending their expendable funds on travel, restaurants, clothing, and beauty products found themselves working at home, in sweatpants, online, and watching Netflix. Collectibles experienced a new renaissance that was kick-started during the last financial collapse of 2008 when investors moved their money out of stocks and bonds into tangible goods like art and comics. This time, regular people followed.

A general lack of grading aptitude among wealthy, novice collectors after the housing crash led to an explosion of interest in slabbed, CGC graded books and a widespread obsession with condition was born. The transparency of census data, which made it easy to track the available supply by title, coupled with the easily attainable expertise that comes from being an avid comic book reader must have seemed like legal insider trading to the junk bonds crowd. The inherent nostalgia of comic book collecting may have hooked them, but the verifiable return on investment turned this new hobby into a sound financial plan.Lifetime hobbyists, familiar with accurate grading tables, sold innumerable books that had been languishing in long boxes for many times more than the posted Overstreet value. They had been quick to sell without reinvesting, remembering the great comic book crash of 1996. They forgot that it was only new comics–not vintage comics that lost their value. Before too long, they had priced themselves out of their own hobby. Collector mentality is hard to shake, however, and many of those same people that sold their collections in the mid 90s and late 2000s were spurned back into collecting by the addictive drug known as the MCU. Maybe you are even one of them. Now you have to compete with a bunch of rich Johnny-come-latelys who brought a pump-and-dump mindset with them from Wall Street.

By now you may be thinking, “Ok, but why shouldn’t I sell my copies now, before the peak, and then just buy them again when them price drops?”

In a nutshell, because the market is different now, and you may never get to buy back in.

At one time there was a recognizable pattern whereby a movie gets made, the first appearance soars, and a few months later it drops again. But that hasn’t been basically true of a Marvel Movie in about a year and a half, and it hasn’t been specifically true for any Marvel Hero not killed on screen. The altruism about only MCU movies being immune to massive price fluctuation is given a caveat of sorts here because Disney recently negotiated with Sony to be able to continue to use Spider-Man, and the next Into the Spider-Verse movie will be released by a company with a newly flawless record with animated films. We also know that the next MCU Spider-Man film is a Spider-Verse movie, too (of sorts) via the confirmed casting of former Spider-Man actors Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and former Doc Ock and Electro villains Alfred Molina and Jamie Fox.

As compelling a reason as that may be, we are still nearly a full year away from a new Spider-Man movie, and there is no proof that Miles Morales will be in it. So how is Ultimate Fallout #4 still a good investment?

Because on November 12th Insomniac Games released the Spider-Man: Miles Morales video game for the PS4 & PS5. It is objectively one of the best games of the year, and certainly the best game yet based on a comic book. 660,000 units were sold in the first two months and people are still in quarantine all over world.

The gameplay, voice acting, and animation are top notch. It’s more akin to an actual film than to a videogame, and a full game demo runs about three hours and forty-two minutes. Just as the animated film had done a phenomenal job of fleshing-out the characters from the comics, this videogame expands well beyond that, providing an even higher level of engagement and cultivating an exciting new villain for the rogues gallery. It’s one thing to read a comic or see a movie, but it’s another thing entirely to play the lead in an intricate, interactive narrative. These characters, which were previously enjoyed passively, are now avatars for an entire community of new collectors who have actually been Miles Morales in a first-person, totally immersive experience that takes months of skilled dedication to complete.

Courtesy of Gamer’s Little Playground, here’s the full 3 hour and 42 minute movie:

This ven diagram of demographics is not something we’ve seen before, and as successful as it has been thus far, it still has a proportionately small global audience for a game garnering this much acclaim. Chinese collectors single-handedly drove up prices on Dragonball and Pokemon animation cels when the former hit Chinese TV and the latter became a mobile augmented reality game. The last few million-dollar comic book sales have had Chinese, Japanese and Saudi collectors bidding and sometimes winning at the top tier of Golden and Silver Age high-grade comics auctions. If a single new international clientele connects with this game the way that Brazilian fans recently took to Future State: Wonder Woman #1–featuring a new, Brazilian Wonder Woman (and generating an exponential increase in demand and price), the likelihood of Ultimate Fallout #4 CGC 9.8s crossing the $2,000 mark will be swift and immune to price drops.

The wide net of potential new buyers for Miles Morales key issues sets a specific precedent, because two massive pocket s who have been comparatively underserved by representation in comics (Latino & African-American) are only just discovering a character reflective of their respective cultures that the aggregate of comic collectors has known and enjoyed for almost a decade. The billion-dollar-grossing Black Panther opened up a market for Marvel Comics in Africa–home to 140,000 millionaires with massively expendable incomes. The death of beloved actor Chadwick Boseman leaves an opening for a massively popular black superhero to capitalize on the new interest in this hitherto untapped territory. And the pieces are already in place.

Skeptics will point to the census numbers, and say that there is no shortage of Ultimate Fallout #4. According to GoCollect, there are 2600 copies in 9.8, and 2430 in 9.6, with just over 8800 total graded copies reported. Comichron estimates that there were 60,000 of the first printing and two second printings totaling 12,000 units shipped the same week. The exact number reported of all editions shipped totals 73,764 units, which would have to include the Djurdjevic 25:1 incentive variants, as well. Some of those also appeared in $5 Back Issue Bags sold at Five Below Discount Stores, but only 658 are thus graded: 158 at CGC 9.8 and 230 at CGC 9.6. The perceived scarcity of those incentive editions has generated robust pricing with the latest 9.8 selling at auction last week for $14K, and 9.6 copies logging a $4k FMV with no recent sales. If you compare the ratio by quantity to the pricing of the standard first printings, the variant is actually underperforming. It would be wise to sell your Djurdjevic 9.6 or 9.8 and put that money toward any of the other editions, because if there are only 6,000 units of each 2nd printing, they are significantly rarer than the first printing by a ratio of 10:1 and accordingly the census numbers show only 1,465 graded copies of each (with approximately 660 in 9.8 and 472 in 9.6). When you look at the rate of appreciation across the standard first printing and the two 2nd printings, they are experiencing a much higher relative percentage increase, and the Pichelli 2nd printing variant in particular appears to be significantly undervalued.

Admittedly, 8800 graded units may seem like a lot, and to be honest that is a lot for a modern book. The general circulation across all editions that shipped within one week of initial street date was the fifth highest of that particular month. But when comparing to other high-demand Spider-Man key issues, the number of graded copies has to be assessed against the appeal and not the actually scarcity.For example, there are over 24,000 graded copies from a print run of approximately 470,000 units of Amazing Spider-Man #300 (the first full appearance of Venom), which sells for between $4000 – $4800 in 9.8 and $1400 in 9.6. That leaves almost 95% of the print run yet to be graded as opposed to the nearly 12% already graded copies of Ultimate Fallout #4. It’s worth noting that the cover of Ultimate Fallout #4 has black ink printed on 60% of the surface, including along the spine and outer edges providing a surface that exposes every flaw quite visibly. That leaves a slim chance that many more yet-to-be graded copies could receive high ratings. I’d also be remiss to not mention that almost the entire standard edition first printing was poly-bagged, which further decreases the odds of flawless copies being discovered later. In that capacity, the existing stats for 9.6 & 9.8 CGC rated editions are likely to remain close to where they are now. By the most liberal projections we are probably within 5% of the final tally.

One of the second printings is nearly identical to the first printing. It’s a variation of the Mark Bagley cover that reveals the new hero’s face in front of the same title treatment that hides his identity on the first printing. The Pichelli 2nd Printing variant has a white cover, so it’s not as prone to condition issues as the editions. While that allows for a greater number of high grade specimens to potentially hit the market later, as the only cover to feature an unmasked close-up of Miles Morales (and significantly different by design than all the other covers) it has already attained a slightly greater desirability among 2nd printings. Registering on GoCollect with a FMV of $200 it’s kind of stupid NOT to invest in this particular version of Miles Morales’ first appearance. In fact, by the time you read this, it may have already jumped to a $300 average buy-it-now price on eBay.

There are other Miles Morales key issues, and some of them are also very worth buying now before they become impossible to find or too expensive to acquire. Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1  is the second appearance of Miles Morales and the first issue of his first ongoing series (also featuring the first appearance of Ultimate Prowler). It is already selling at about 25% higher than the stated FMV of $625 in 9.8, but in 9.6 at an average price of $170, there is definitely room to grow, and this is another book with a lot of black ink on the cover. There are 217 copies in CGC 9.8 and 211 CGC 9.6s from a total of 691 units on the census. The very next issue, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #2, sporting an already classic cover by Kaare Andrews, is the third appearance of Miles’ and the first appearance of his best friend, Ganke Lee and has sold for between $170 – $220 in CGC 9.8, but there are only 4 in the census.

Got that? I’ll say it again: there are only 4 CGC 9.8s on the census right now.

There are only 13 copies in any grade, overall. That quantity is guaranteed to increase, but so, too, is the realized price for the each subsequent copy listed. There is little doubt that they will pace ahead of the registered census quantity. The subsequent second and third printings with white and red backgrounds, are also somewhat rare on the census, so you may still be able to find high-grade raw copies rather affordably.

Another book to keep an eye on is the Spider-Man #1 (2016) Adi Granov Hip-Hop variant (a tribute to Nas’ influential Illmatic album cover), which is part of a whole series of comics that pay tribute to classic Hip Hop album covers, most of which have increased in value solely because of the cover art. A CGC 9.8 will cost around $500, and there are 232 on the census, but CGC 9.6s are generally available for under $200 and there are only 84 listed on the census. The Marvel Hip-Hop variants have attracted collectors who don’t collect anything else, and that has influenced the market from without rather than within. That makes this an investment-worthy book, though not quite in league with the other books in this column.
An even better hip-hop variant to buy now is Silk #1 (a tribute to Mos Def’s The New Danger album cover) because it’s the first issue of the first ongoing series featuring Marvel’s first Korean-American hero, and the stunning Woo Dae Shim cover is not just the best cover image of Silk, it’s probably the best Hip Hop variant cover. It ties with nine other Silk #1s for first solo cover. The Hip Hop variant sells for $60 raw in high grade, and about $200 in CGC 9.8 (of which there are 40 on the census). Again the CGC 9.6 might be a wiser low-impact buy at $80 FMV since there are only 16 of those on the census. It’s not strictly comparable with Ultimate Fallout #4, but Silk’s first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #4 (2014) is already selling at $250 or so, and it might tumble a bit before her appearance in the next animated Spider-Verse film, so there is probably time to get one a little bit cheaper.

I hesitate to mention Marvel Previews #95, which was the first consumer-facing cover image of Miles Morales (predating Ultimate Fallout #4 by three months) because it is really just a catalog, not an actual comic book. The validity of out-of-canon first appearances is a serious debate among collectors, but there is no doubting the growing desire for them among investors. A CGC 9.8 copy of Marvel Previews #95 sold last May for $2,500 and a 9.6 sold last November for $4,200! Raw copies in high grade are selling for over $700 because they are legitimately extremely rare in high grade. So if you might want to check your stash for a high grade raw copy or keep your eyes peeled for one in the wild, as it could be very worthwhile at a reasonable price. The image on the front is virtually identical to the cover of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1 except for the substitution of the Marvel Preview title. As more and more non-collectors enter the hobby with their own ideas about what constitutes a first appearance, books like this become more valuable.
The Key Collector app has promoted multiple posts about “true” firsts that include preview images in trade publications, convention programs, and fan magazines, and even listed back cover advertisements as key issues. This outlook hasn’t been adopted by the collector community at large, but it has indisputably manipulated the prices on these erstwhile overlooked collectibles.

Remember: collecting is not the same as investing. It can be but it doesn’t have to be. You should buy the things that make you happy regardless of their perceived value. I don’t only buy for investment and neither should you. I write this column to give you a personal, researched perspective with the hope that it yields results that provide a little extra purchasing freedom but I make no guarantees. The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. All investment strategies and investments involve risk of loss. Nothing contained in this website should be construed as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit.