FOMO vs Speculating: D'Orc Edition

02/11/2026

February 4th, 2026, a beautiful New Comic Book Day like any other. A new indie comic from good ole' Image, D'Orc, is released. It's written and penciled by Brett Bean, who is best known for his work with Skottie Young on I Hate Fairyland. This book has, unexpectedly gone absolutely insane on the secondhand market! It may have calmed down a little bit (or gotten worse, I don't know) by the time you read this. Why is this happening? There's a lot to unpack here? Besides my usual loving/disparaging comment of "mass psychosis!"... my main point here is to try to encourage you all to have healthy purchasing habits!

Let's lay down a few things, though. The comic book community is not a monolith, and many styles within the hobby come in shades. Collecting, reading, and speculating are, broadly, the triumvirate at play here. You may do some of one, but not the other, or all three in various amounts. That's not the issue. Also, when a newly released comic goes up in price like this, it's not usually a supply/demand issue. Kinda. It's hard to scalp comics like sealed Pokemon TCG products when publishers do regular reprints of hit books. If you want one and don't care that it's not gonna be the first printing, you can easily get a reprint through your local comic shop. You can also wait for a trade paperback collection.

I think a couple of interesting things have lined up here to cause D'Orc to spike in price. First off, as usual, we can probably point blame at Absolute Batman. A-Batman has been a consistent, extremely hot, collectible seller, whose #1 issue and first printing have, so far, held value. People are looking for the next book to get in early on. Remember what I said previously about hit comics selling hit comics? It's true here. We've seen a relatively new wave of interest in that speculator and collector side since 2024 or so. Keep in mind that I dove back into the comic shop world in full about midway into 2025, so I wasn't following everything as closely as I do now.

Now, D'Orc is a new IP (sorry for talking corporate-style), whereas Batman is a known popular seller. Really popular. Maybe too singularly popular for an industry to hang on to. D'Orc points to an overall good thing. In today's comic climate, more people than you might expect are looking to publishers like Image and BOOM Studios for their next big hit or fun series to dive into. Folks are looking for the next Something Is Killing The Children or Ice Cream Man. I wouldn't say that Mr. Brett Bean is an unknown artist, Fairyland has its fans, but I'm comfortable saying that this book came out of nowhere for a few people. I thought it looked cute in solicitations (I talked about those last time!), but decided to pass on it to stay within my budget.

You may have noticed that none of this market stuff has to do with, like, the quality of the story or artwork necessarily, or even the cover (which is, thankfully, not a corny homage). Though I would defend that A-Batman is the perfect storm, because it is really awesome in the writing department. But remember also that even readers who have no interest in selling their pullbox to collectors (if they're even getting paper copies!) also speculate on which series will be worth subscribing to 2/3 months out. I haven't read D'Orc or even Fairyland myself, so I can't comment too much on that. I'm sure it's pretty good though, at the very least. It's hard to even judge a new comic these days on a #1 issue.

But will readers pay $70+ dollars on eBay for a $4.99 issue that might still be at their LCS? Probably not. Let's remind ourselves that when a book gets hot like this, it's speculators and collectors selling it to each other, again, trying to get in early. You probably can't sell your six copies of D'Orc #1 to Average Person (legal name) who might not know anything about comic books.

So yeah, D'Orc is hot right now, and possibly other books by Mr. Bean has previously worked on could too. Even the uninterested might have an ear perk up at the thought of turning a five dollar comic into a 70 dollar eBay sale. If that's you, that's okay! Comic speculation isn't like, amoral the way scalping is. If you're speculating on a book for value, you can order as many copies as you want from your LCS, pretty much, because it's all print to demand. But I want to tell you that it is usually a losing game.

One of the first lessons a lot of comic folks will share with recently initiated or curious is this: Don't listen to FOMO! That's fear-of-missing-out, just to be ultra clear. But doesn't all this fervor betray that advice? It totally does! Which is why I felt the need to mention that everyone is a little different in how they engage with comic books.

Just like any other kind of collectible, there's no real inherent value. Collectors, speculators, and investors give it value. And sometimes we (the comic community) will assign certain things to try and give things a sense of consistent value, but that's all it is. A sense. A hope. Are all number one issues valuable? Definitely not. Are all first appearances valuable? Depends, but not always. Does a movie or TV show adaptation of a comic make the value go up? To speculators and investors, it often does, but does your friend who watched Homelander Being An Evil Douche For 14 Minutes Straight really want a #1 issue of the original The Boys comic?

We can guess all we want, because that's what it is. Basically, I don't want you to make purchases like this for this specific reason.

At least not at that amount. Maybe you have more money than me, though. And maybe that comic fan will hit it big. I have nothing for or against this Facebook user. I just want to demonstrate that this is the OPPOSITE of "Don't Listen To FOMO" looks like!

"No FOMO", to me, means that you stick to your budget (you SHOULD have a budget, big or small!) and don't look at all this hotness. It can be a lot of fun. I keep up with it, but I'm not adding new things to my pull list right this minute, even though April has some stuff that looks really freaking cool. I've made my choices with which series and miniseries I'm following, and it would take some time to move stuff around or cancel with my LCS. You don't have to comic (verb) like me or think like me exactly, but I like to imagine I have healthy goals and keep decently firm on my spending.

This is the fun of comic books and comic collecting, but it's a pitfall to look out for too. New comic books come out every freaking Wednesday. There are new series, endless exciting variant covers, deals on eBay and Whatnot, and interesting artists and writers everywhere. It's awesome. This is a fun hobby. And that's just on the newer side of things! There's always and endless amount of reading to be had. So, I encourage staying focused and doing a little bit of planning. Who are your favorite characters? Have any creators caught your eye? Do you have a local comic shop, or do you wanna do your subscriptions online? What are you comfortable spending per month? Do you just wanna read one or two titles? If you're collecting or speculating for value, how will you sell your books, and when? Heck, that's probably a good plan to make even as a casual reader!

Think about that kind of stuff, and I think you'll have a fun, fresh hobby, if you're not into it already. If you miss something now, don't worry about it. Fear is the mind killer!

Pst, by the way. If you want to hear me talk about comics and magazines and stuff with my voice and video, check out my little YouTube channel!

Happy reading, everyone!

- Jane "Dog Barker" Parker~!