Today, when Mr. Rivera walks past comic book street vendors, he smiles at the sight of stacks of 1991’s X-Men number one placed on the 25 cent bins. “It makes me laugh to think that I actually bought all those comics, at $1.50 a pop, thinking they could have been worth a whole lot more someday,” he said. “At the time, I could not see all the speculators and the kids around me doing the same exact thing.”

X-Men issue one has become the all time most purchased comic book. The next couple of years after 1991, brought on a boom in sales due to the increase of speculators buying multiple copies of fan favorite comics like X-Men, believing they would make big profits by selling them in a couple of years. By 1994 most speculators had stopped buying comics after realizing that the comics they had bought did not have the value they had hoped for. The industry has been trying to deal with stagnant sales ever since.

The main reason speculators were attracted to comics in the first place were the gimmicks that were so prevalent in comics in the early 90s. These gimmicks ranged from glow in the dark and metallic covers, to the ridiculed small plastic purple diamond pasted on to the cover of DC Comics' Eclipso #1.

“Because of those gimmicks, people would pick up [the comic books] thinking ‘Oh, this is the first comic of its kind to have this kind of cover,’” said Eric Foster, manager of Jim Hanley’s Universe, a comic book store, explaining why speculators felt they had to buy the comics even with what was thought to be the sillier gimmicks.

Besides comics with gimmicks, speculators were also interested in comics with characters that were popular among readers, and comics that were written or drawn by the more popular creators. In the early 90s, many new titles were launched specifically for the most popular creators.

Marvel launched Spider-Man under artist Todd McFarlane, X-Force was launched under artist Rob Liefeld, and X-Men was launched under Jim Lee. These comics proved so successful in sales that the three artists, along with a few other popular artists, left Marvel in 1992 to form the successful independent company called Image Comics. In this way they felt they could better reap the benefits of their own popularity.

Some time after 1993, two years after the boom started, speculators realized that all those comics with the cover gimmicks and the popular artists did not have nearly the value they had hoped they would have. “Once people found out that they couldn’t finance their college education with comics, they got out,” said John Miller, Editor of Comics Retailer, a monthly magazine that is distributed to comic book dealers. This led to the stagnant sales still seen today in the industry.

According to Mr. Miller, comic books have gone from being an $850 million industry in 1993, to being a $650 million dollar industry in 1995. However, Mr. Miller is quick to point that in 1991, comic books were only a $350 million dollar industry. He says the market has always had booms and crashes, and that 1993 was an “unusual” year.

As a result of the lack of speculators, the industry can not rely on using gimmicks to stimulate sales anymore. Ben Cataldl, of comic book store The Sleep of Reason, wishes the industry makes efforts to attract readers by telling good stories the way it used gimmicks to attract speculators before. “Hopefully if [the publishers] do good books for people who are readers and so forth, rather than the gimmick stuff for the speculators, that should increase the market because people would be more interested,” said Mr. Cataldl.

On method to increase interest has been the “crossover.” Companies have increasingly worked together on special comic books called crossovers, where each company's character would meet and possibly fight.

A year ago Marvel Comics and its chief rival, DC Comics, home of Superman and Batman, had a special crossover series in which each of the rival companies had their characters meet and fight in order to save their respective comic book universes. The many fans who dreamed of knowing who would win if Marvel's Hulk ever had to fight DC's Superman, finally got to see it happen.

The comics, appropriately titled DC versus Marvel, were well publicized, and sold very well. Each of the series’ four issues was number one for its respective month in Wizard magazine's Top 100 ordered comics. This is an incredibly rare feat. While inter-company crossovers such as DC versus Marvel were very rare 10 years ago, due to their overwhelming popularity, they have become very common. On any given month now, one can find at the very least one new major intercompany crossover book on the racks.

Publishers, most notably DC Comics, have increasingly relied less on gimmicks and more on boasting well crafted stories when promoting its books. While DC does not have many of the most popular artists in the field, it has many of the field's most popular writers, such as Mark Waid, Peter David and Ron Marz. Mark Waid, for example, slowly became one of the most popular writers in the industry through the word of mouth of his good work on DC's Flash.

One such comic book boasting a good story to sell itself was DC's Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid. It was among the top 10 selling comics for each of the four months it was out according to Wizard and other comics book publications.

DC has also created different imprints that publish non-super-hero comics in order to attract people who do not normally read comics. In the past couple of months it has created Helix, which publishes science fiction comics. It is too early to determine how successful the line has been, but if it is anything like Vertigo, DC's fantasy and horror imprint, it will be successful in bringing new readers into the industry.

Marvel is also trying a similar approach to DC's in attracting new readers. Marvel is focusing many of its relaunches away from super-hero comics and into new genres. New comics by Marvel in the next few months could include a Dracula book as well as other horror books. “We are going to be trying to find different genres to publish, just in case super-heroes are going down,” said Joe Andreani, an Assistant Editor at Marvel.

However, a horror line of books may not bring in younger readers, which is something the industry is looking for. To do that, Marvel will try to "target its core super-hero titles to younger readers," said Mr. Andreani. Marvel wants to make the super-hero books, many of which have Saturday morning cartoons, “something kids pick up and latch on to,” said Mr. Andreani.

The latest and very high profile attempt to revitalize the market has been Marvel's “Heroes Reborn,” a relaunching of some of Marvel's core super-hero characters and titles. The relaunch is headed by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. Mr. Lee is handling the Iron Man and Fantastic Four comics, and Mr. Liefeld is handling Avengers and Captain America. Unlike other creative relaunches, Marvel is basically licensing out its characters to other studios. Just this month however, Rob Liefeld has stepped down, and Jim Lee will now supervise Captain America and Avengers.

Mr. Sanchez, along with many comic book fans and experts, is skeptical of “Heroes Reborn.” He thinks after their twelve months under contract are up, the artists will most likely drop the titles. The books will then have to return to being what they were before the relaunch, which were for the most part going in storytelling directions that were unpopular with the readers. “It's a very short term solution to try to fix up the problems they're having with their titles,” he said.

Whether this will save these comics for Marvel or just leave them back where they started after 12 months is unclear. However, Buddy Scalera, Online Editor of Wizard, doesn't see the deal as a short term solution. “It's a short term experiment that could have repercussions with Marvel for the rest of its publishing life,” he said. He believes that if this deal between Marvel Comics and these creators succeeds, other similar deals with other big name writers and artists might follow.

At press time, neither Mr. Lee's WildStorm Studios or Mr. Liefeld’s Extreme Studios could be reached for comment. No one at Marvel's Manhattan offices could be reached to comment on “Heroes Reborn,” since the project is being handled by WildStorm and Extreme in California.

For now, the “Heroes Reborn” titles are selling very well. According to Wizard magazine, the four books ranked in the top four in sales for its month. Whether the titles can maintain that, and do well for Marvel, a year from now is up in the air.

Mr. Miller of Comics Retailer, said the industry has always had cycles. There was a boom in 1975 and a crash in 1979. Then there was another boom in 1986 and another crash in 1988. “The comic book industry is right where it ought to be [right now],” he said in terms of boom and crashes. According to him, the industry should just about be ready for another boom in the near future.