Yeah both you guys are correct- crap stories and investor buying BOTH contributed to the near-death of comics. As always there were other factors but those were the biggest. I managed a comic store from about '93-'98 which was the height of this painful time. My heart dropped everytime I sold 20 copies of a comic to some person who would say "This will put my kid through college!" Even if it meant the sale being lost I would still try to explain that it was quality and more importantly SCARCITY that made comics financially valuable. I personally find the value in comics to be the level of enjoyability I get from reading them... waiting to find out what happens next... great art and great story and the feelings you get when experiencing them as a whole. Too many kids and adults 'collected' comics as opposed to reading comics. Sigh. I used to tell these investors that if they REALLY wanted to increase their chances of the comic becoming valuable then they should buy 20 copies and DESTROY 19 of them. In fact the more that are destroyed the more 'valuable' the remaining ones become. I call this 'forced scarcity' but regretfully it never caught on.

I actually toy with the idea of someday opening a comic shop in the city where I now live which really doesn't have one. Those were good times for me, working in the comic shop. A place where geeks and non-geeks alike could hang out and discuss fun but useless stuff- much like we do here!