Mint Condition Copy of The Helm Available for $1.5 Million

That's right. And what's more, I have several mint condition copies of The Helm available at this astonishingly good price so that anyone with $1.5 million can buy their own. You see, The Helm is not just for the elite few, it is a comic book for regular folks--especially those who happen to have $1.5 million to spend on a single graphic novel.

Now, I know what you're thinking. $1.5 million? Isn't that a little...cheap? Yes, you're right. If I go by the popular pricing model, I'm undervaluing mint condition copies of The Helm by nearly $223.5 million. So, what am I thinking? Yes, I know that Action Comics #1 originally sold for only ten cents and it just went at auction for $1.5 million, whereas The Helm has a list price of $14.95--that's nearly 150 times more than Action Comics #1. I know that means that The Helm should sell for almost $225 million--it's just simple math. Even a rat could figure that out. Well, a genetically modified rat with an enlarged brain capable of conceptualizing the idea of math and then doing simple calculations like multiplication. But, and this is important to me, I want The Helm to remain a graphic novel for the masses. If I restrict the book only to people who can afford to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for it, I'll be limited to a pretty small audience. Sure, I'd only need to sell four or five copies a year to maintain my modest lifestyle, but I'd miss the satisfaction of knowing the book was being read not just by a handful of chortling billionaires but by dozens of other, less massively wealthy (but still rich) people.

Also, I'd have to live with the serious possibility that people who could afford to pay $225 million for a copy wouldn't actually read it, but would probably put it in a vault or something so as to protect their investment. I didn't write The Helm so that it could languish in Bill Gate's or Phil Knight's comics vault (no offense Bill or Phil--having been in both your comics vaults, I understand and respect what you are doing.) I wrote The Helm so that fantastically wealthy teenagers could delight in its pages. So that ostentatiously rich 40-year-old males with great computer but poor social skills could thrill to the adventures of Mathew Blurdy. I wrote The Helm so that people with the modest sum of $1.5 million dollars to spend on a single comic book could enjoy a full graphic novel just like people with hundreds of times that much money.

And so, as a matter of principle, I won't accept a penny over $1.5 million for a mint condition copy of The Helm. Unless it is autographed.