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Tomorrow at noon, Marvel's "The Incredible Hulk #1” is set to IPO on Rally. The financials:
The Background
• The Green Giant... wasn't immediately a smash success. Published in May, 1962, Marvel's "The Incredible Hulk #1" is famous for the introduction of Dr. Bruce Banner and his alter ego, The Incredible Hulk. Remember, first appearances are a key factor towards determining a comic book's value. Today, The Hulk is celebrated as one of the top superheroes of all time, which is what makes his hard to come by first appearance so valuable. It also makes it hard to believe that The Hulk's original feature comic book series was cancelled after only 10 months and six issues. Fortunately, there was nothing for The Hulk to get too mad about, as he didn't have to wait long for another shot. The angry green giant was reintroduced as a founding member of The Avengers in September 1963.
• The Silver Age... of comic books lasted from 1956-1970, and saw the re-emergence of superheroes and the introduction of superteams. In addition to The Avengers, The Justice League of America, Fantastic Four, and the X-Men were all introduced in this era. Whereas preceding Golden Age heroes were a little more super and a lot less green, Silver Age heroes had human frailties and insecurities that made them more relatable to readers. Can't control your temper? Neither can Bruce!
• Pumping Iron... Not just any actor can play The Hulk. Bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno carried the character for 5 seasons on a CBS TV show that first aired in 1977. That's 5 seasons of flexing his pecs in a rage. The 70's were simpler times.
• Big Green Crush Big Screen... To qualify to play The Hulk in a movie, you have to have been nominated for 3 Academy Awards, or be Eric Bana. Edward Norton's 2008 "The Incredible Hulk", just the 2nd movie in the MCU, did 1.9x its production budget of $137.5 million. Eric Bana's 2003 "Hulk" did 1.8x with the same production budget. Both were successful. Mark Ruffalo replaced Norton in the MCU in 2012's "The Avengers", and another 5 movies since. Why did Ruffalo replace Norton? It's not public information, but probably has something to do with Norton criticizing and trying to rewrite "The Incredible Hulk" script. Given the success of the MCU and popularity of The Hulk, we hope Ed Norton isn't green with envy.
The Takeaway
• Rarity + Popularity... Rally has acquired 1 of 12 existing CGC 8.0 grade copies of "The Incredible Hulk #1". Per Heritage Auctions, there are only 43 copies with an 8.0 grade or higher out of 1210 existing graded universal copies accounted for by the CGC census. Translation: it's rare. It's also had a recent surge in popularity among collectors despite its status as a holy grail comic that few can afford.
• Comic Books as an Asset Class... We have yet to see how comic books perform on Rally's secondary market, but we'll have our first chance on 6/2 with 1963's "Amazing Spider-Man #1". Rare books are currently outperforming any other sector on the platform, with the 4 books that have entered Trading Windows thus far trading at an average of +26.08%. Will comic books follow suit? This is the last comic book IPO before we find out.
• Early Access... shows us this IPO is currently 28% funded (at 8:30 PM EST). Comic book IPO's across the industry are selling out in a matter of minutes over the last 2 weeks. If you don't want to get gamma ray'd away from your chance to invest, be logged into Rally at 12 PM EST tomorrow.
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