Elongated Man #2, DC Comics, 1992
This is David Diep and I’ve decided to hijack this week’s Undervalued Spotlight from our regular writer; Walter Durajlija. After I saw that Walt put Fantastic Four #1 into last week’s Undervalued Spotlight I decided it was time to lighten things up. To me, a book that is truly undervalued is a book that at first glance is worthless but has amazing potential based on its contents. And brother, issue #2 of Elongated Man has coils of potential!
Elongated Man #2 contains the very first appearance of the team of villains known was the Wurstwaffe. They are a team of supervillains with a sausage theme! I kid you not, these guys dress up as sausages and have sausage themed abilities. The team consists of Blutwurst, Bratwurst, Knockwurst, Leberwurst and Weiswurst. They all have super-human strength and become stronger when they link themselves together into a sausage chain. Wurstwaffe is a branch of an even greater European crime syndicate called Eurocrime which consists of villains from different countries based on their national foods. We’ve got Lutefisk from Norway, Gyro from Greece and so on and so forth.
This is such a truly undervalued book in that the Overstreet price guide doesn’t even offer a price breakdown across the different grades. A 9.2 copy is listed at 2.50 and there aren’t any copies of this at any grade in the CGC census.
The potential for value in this book comes from its sheer absurdity. There’s been a precedence for books with crazy covers or insane stories driving up demand. Examples of this phenomenon include the pearl necklace and beating off covers of Archie or the Alf cover molesting a seal or even Hansi the girl who loved the Swastika. These are prime examples of collectible prices being driven by the craziness of the subject matter.
Some of the qualities of this fantastic book that make it a strong undervalued candidate are:
- First appearance of a completely absurd themed group of villains
- None on the CGC census, so you can easily advertise yours being the highest on the census
- It’s showing up in a column called Undervalued Spotlight so it’s gotta be good!
