The 2009 film and 2019 TV series are dated facts; their effect on the price of 1986 issues is not one, and no statement taken today can establish it.Measuring the effect of an event involves framing this event with two comparable measurements, before and after. No one has this for 2009, and the September 6, 2026 reading comes seventeen years after the film, seven years after the series. What it shows, on the other hand, is instructive: the supply of booklets remains massive — 146 announcements on the second issue, 109 on the third. An adaptation that would have emptied the market would have left a different mark.
Two dates, and a poorly asked question
The Zack Snyder-directed feature film was released in 2009. The HBO-produced series aired in 2019. These two benchmarks are indisputable, and they are the only indisputable elements available to anyone who claims to describe their effect on the original book market.
Question « quel impact ces adaptations ont-elles eu sur les prix ? » seems legitimate. It is in reality poorly posed, because it presupposes the existence of a measure which does not exist. To attribute a price change to an event, you need at least three things: a before measurement, an after measurement, and a reason to believe that nothing else has changed in between. The first is missing, the second cannot therefore be compared to it, and the third cannot be demonstrated over an interval of seventeen years.
This impossibility is not a shortcoming of this particular survey. It is due to the nature of the publicly available data: no one recorded, in February 2009 and again in May 2009, the number of advertisements and the median prices asked for each of the twelve issues, with identical filtering. The figures circulating on this subject are therefore reconstructions, and a reconstruction is not a measurement.
What the September 6, 2026 reading actually shows
What remains is what is observable today, and which is not nothing. The supply of original issues is abundant: 146 announcements for the second issue, 109 for the third, 94 for the fourth, 67 for the sixth. Posting levels are modest, between $10 and $30 median for all numbers except the first, at $60.
This picture is incompatible with the image of a market dried up by notoriety. A work whose adaptations massively pushed readers towards the original booklets would present the opposite profile: little supply, high prices, tight dispersion. We observe exactly the opposite on eleven of the twelve issues.
Two readings remain open, and the reading does not allow a choice. Either the adaptations have never shifted the demand towards the original fascicles. Either they moved it for a while, and the effect dissipated — the attracted buyers having been served, then the copies having returned to the market. Both hypotheses produce the same picture in 2026.
The collection as a natural destination
A viewer who wishes to read the work after an adaptation is looking for the story, not the subject of 1986. The bound volume contains it in its entirety for a price lower than that of three issues. This is the channel that the attention of an adaptation most likely feeds.
The booklet as a collector’s item
Anyone who buys the original twelve issues already knows the story. His motivation is possession of the dated object, not access to the story. These two audiences only marginally overlap, and an adaptation massively affects the first.
The first number apart
$60 gross median compared to $10 to $30 for others, and 30.6% of certified copies compared to less than 13% elsewhere. This gap exists on all recognized series, adapted or not: it is due to the status of the opening number, not to an external event.
Seven years after the series
The 2026 reading is outside any window where a diffusion effect would still be legible. Even a real effect in 2019 would have had seven years to resolve, and nothing would distinguish it today from ordinary market developments.
A causal statement is judged by its refutability. « The adaptation drove prices up » does not say by how much, on what number, between what dates, nor in relation to what starting level. Formulated this way, it can neither be verified nor denied, which makes it comfortable and useless.
The refutable version exists: « between such a date and such a date, the median asking price of issue X went from so much to so much, on sample sizes of so many and so many, recorded using the same method ». It requires data that no one seems to have compiled at the time.
What an adaptation really moves
It remains possible to reason about the mechanisms, provided that this reasoning is presented for what it is: a coherent hypothesis, not a measurement.
An adaptation first produces attention, and attention converts into purchases on the most accessible medium. For a work published in collections for decades, this medium is the collection. The original booklet requires searching for twelve distinct objects, verifying their condition and edition, and devoting a budget unrelated to the price of a volume. The barrier is considerable for a curious spectator.
An adaptation then produces lasting visibility of the work, and this is perhaps its most tangible effect on the booklet market: it keeps the series in catalogs and in conversations, therefore in research. This effect cannot be read in a price; it would be read in a volume of searches, data which an ad statement does not have.
An adaptation, finally, can make the offer stand out. A holder who had not thought about selling thinks about it when the title comes back into the news. This effect acts downward on prices, not upwards, and it is systematically omitted from reasoning which only considers demand.
Confondre notoriété et rareté
A well-known work is not a rare work. The second issue was offered 146 times on the day of the survey: notoriety did not reduce the offer.
Confondre lecteur et collectionneur
The audience of an adaptation seeks the story, available in a collection. The original booklet is aimed at whoever wants the object, a much narrower audience.
Mesurer trop tard
A diffusion effect, if it exists, can be seen in the months surrounding the release. Seventeen years later, no method separates him from the rest.
Oublier l'offre
The renewed attention is also pushing holders to sell. The net effect on the price cannot be determined a priori: it depends on which of the two curves moves the most.
Rebuild instead of measure
The figures put forward retrospectively over these periods come from heterogeneous sources, aggregated after the fact. They do not constitute a comparable series.
Raisonner sur des demandes
The statement lists the prices displayed. Even a net change in these prices would not prove a change in transactions.
A possible test despite everything: the booklets highlighted
A partial verification remains within reach, and it deserves to be carried out rather than remaining as a general impossibility. If an adaptation had shifted demand towards the original issues, it would have done so unevenly: the issues whose content is most directly reproduced on the screen would have moved more than the others. An adaptation effect leaves a signature, it doesn't go up all evenly.
However, the statement does not show any signature of this type. Excluding the first issue, the medians of the eleven others fit within a narrow band from $10 to $30, and the only issue that stands out from it — the tenth, at $30 — is distinguished by its high floor and its low dispersion, two characteristics which can be explained by the rarity of the offer at the end of the series rather than by significant content.
This test is weak and it must be said: the absence of signature in 2026 does not prove the absence of effect in 2009 or in 2019, since any signature would have had time to disappear. It only rules out the hypothesis of a lasting and localized effect, which would still be visible today in the form of a hierarchy between numbers.
It's not much, but it's honest, and it's better than a comfortable statement. The little that can be established must be presented as little, otherwise an absence of data is dressed up as a conclusion. A reader who leaves knowing precisely what is not measurable is better equipped than a reader convinced by a figure of which no one can say where it came from or how it was obtained.
How would we measure next time?
The question deserves better than an observation of helplessness, because the protocol is not complex and remains applicable to any announcement of future adaptation, on this series as on any other.
The principle is to pick up first. As soon as an adaptation is announced - and the announcement precedes the broadcast by several months - we note for each issue concerned the number of announcements, the median of the prices displayed, the floor and the range, excluding lots and reissues. This initial reading is the only thing that can never be reconstructed after the fact.
We then repeat the measurement at fixed intervals: at broadcast, three months later, one year later. The comparison then becomes legitimate, since protocol, source and filters are identical. And we note in parallel a control series – a comparable non-adapted work – in order to distinguish what comes from the adaptation from what comes from the market as a whole.
Without witness, an increase observed after an adaptation may only be the general increase of the segment. With a witness, the comparison becomes interpretable. This is the methodological minimum, and this is what no one seems to have put in place for the two adaptations of this series.
There is nothing to confirm or deny it. Establishing this effect would require a measurement taken before discharge and another after, according to an identical protocol. These surveys do not exist publicly, and a survey carried out in 2026 comes seventeen years too late to fill this gap.
An abundant supply and modest prices: up to 146 advertisements on the same issue, with medians of $10 to $30 excluding the first issue. This profile is incompatible with the idea of a market dried up by notoriety, without however demonstrating that the adaptations had no effect in their time.
Because the audience of an adaptation is looking for the story, and the collection contains it in its entirety for less than three booklets. Bringing together the twelve original issues requires a collection process, a budget of approximately $242 at the median of the survey, and research spread over time.
This is a mechanism rarely mentioned but perfectly plausible. The renewed attention reminds holders that they own the object and encourages them to offer it. If supply increases faster than demand, the net effect on posted prices is downward.
By noting from the announcement, before any distribution: numbers, median, floor and range by number. Then by repeating at discharge, at three months and at one year, with the same protocol, and by following in parallel a comparable series not adapted to serve as a control.
The measurement from before is the one that cannot be repeated
My Comics Collection keeps your estimates dated, so a reading taken today remains comparable to one you take after the next event.