aerischan

The April Fools parody covers Plastic #1 and Black Science #29 are fun, too. The Plastic #1 variant might have some legs.

The Saga schedule of 6 months on then hiatus seems to be the new standard for a lot of Image books. Still, that's probably better than indefinite release schedules.

Not sure about X-Men Gold but Secret Empire #1-3 all have 1:50 JSC. Haven't seen the April solicits yet.

Thanks for the link. Reached out to the seller and they're willing to customize for a nominal fee. I love how mine turned out. I requested inner dimensions of 8" x 11.75" instead of the normal 7.5" x 11" so should fit E. Gerber Silver/Gold Archives 775R just fine.

I actually like some of Marvel's themed variants, the Young baby variants being a particular favorite. The main gripe I have with Marvel's themed variants is the threshold in order to qualify. For example, for the Secret Empire #1 Skottie Young variant, "Meet or exceed 200% of orders for Civil War II #8 with orders for Secret Empire #1 regular cover, and this variant is order all you want". Easily reachable if the store ordered only one copy of CW2 #8. Maybe not so much if they ordered 100. I preorder from my LCS two months in advance but because of the gating on themed variants (more often, the LCS doesn't qualify for all the ones I like), I just order those from Midtown. But yes, the themed variants could do with some trimming down, too.

I think 730K preordered has been mentioned. The thing is Image and Kirkman were probably losing money for each copy sold. Walking Dead #163 has 1:200 and 1:500 variants. There was an ebay seller who had those up for pre-orders up until FOC for $40 and $100 respectively, iirc. Honestly, this plus the $0.25 1:100 Red Sonja #0 and Vampirella #0 JSC variants are just blimps on the radar. These are fairly inexpensive to acquire and the $0.25 price point really encourages reader sampling. I've started adding Red Sonja and Vampirella to my pull list because of the teaser issues (I didn't get the 1:100 variants though, just the regular cover at $0.25). Besides, acquisition costs for these are probably similar to FCBD comics so retailers aren't losing $2 or so for each unsold copy. And therein lies the question of sustainability. It's not so much the variants themselves, rather it's the sheer volume being released every week that make people question the sustainability. For every hot variant fetching a nice premium, how many more are sitting unsold in dollar bins? I think a bunch of brick and mortar shops have gotten burned and reached the point where if a regular customer isn't preordering incentive/ratio variants and paying at least cost for the extra copies needed of the regular cover, they just won't buy the variants anymore.

Yes, publishers make their money from retailers. Still, if the title has poor sell through and consumers don't buy the comics, then retailers are gonna start reducing their orders. Star Wars is Marvel's bestselling property but sales of Marvel Universe titles have been less than stellar. Sales on some of their titles are at DC levels from a year ago. While Marvel's higher price tag has kept their dollar share higher than DC's, their single issue unit sales have been dropping. Moreso if you look purely at Marvel Universe titles and don't include Star Wars. There are actually Marvel Universe titles selling less than 10K and plenty more selling less than 20K. December 2016, based on Comichron dollar rank, I estimate Marvel gave away ~400K+ free overship of select issues (IVX #1, Star Wars #26, Hulk #1, Invincible Iron Man #2, Avengers #2, Gamora #1, Hawkeye #1, Champions #3, GotG #15, etc). January 2017, with 10% linewide overship, estimated ~200K+ free overship. With no free overship in February 2017, Marvel's single issue sales are neck and neck with DC's. Mind, ~140K of their sales were from $1 True Believers reprints and ~260K from Star Wars. Star Wars, events/crossovers and variants seem to be propping up Marvel unit sales at the moment. Still, gotta wonder, if variants are doing a good enough job of boosting sales, why would Marvel need to resort to giving hundreds of thousands of comics away for free? Mind, I'm not preaching doom and gloom, and neither do I expect variants to go away. I just think we might see some eventual toning down on new variant releases.

You know, I do wonder if Marvel's overproduction of variants is creating negative public perception of titles before they're even released. I know whenever I see a new Marvel #1 with 5+ variants particularly high ratio incentives, my thought process goes "Is the title so bad that the only way Marvel thinks the series will sell is through 1:1000 variants?" After Black Widow ends, I'm pretty much done buying Marvel single issues for reading. I would've sampled more Marvel but priority goes to NM Skottie Young Baby variants and they seem to have ramped up production on those from 1-2 to seemingly 5+ every month.

It's got a Skottie Young Baby variant which is an automatic purchase for me. I usually read those before putting them in storage. Too bad Marvel got rid of the digital copy. That was my preferred method of reading so I didn't damage the comic too much due to handling.

I dunno. I think Marvel's been suffering an over-reliance on variants and events to boost Diamond single issue unit sales. That said, I think their efforts at expansion away from the direct market is commendable. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Marvel's marketshare if they stop printing all these variants and doing stuff like 50-100% free overship on select titles or 10% free overship linewide. Although I personally think a temporary moratorium on events would do Marvel some good. USAvengers #1 - 110,729 (50 state variants, Jan 10% linewide free overship) USAvengers #2 - 29,523 (Jan 10% linewide free overship) Champions #1 - 334,937 (Scholastic deal, variants - 1:1000, retailer exclusives, etc) Champions #2 - 49,733 Champions #3 - 47,481 (est. 7K free overship based on $ rank) Champions #4 - 34,969 (Jan 10% linewide free overship) Champions #5 - 31,344 And Champions happens to be one of Marvel's higher selling titles that's not an event or a #1.

I expect the answer will be the same as comics in general. Some will. Most won't.

Some other way: RRP - Retailer Roundtable Program

He was referring to his store exclusive variant so that was a plug, not a critique.

And on the Marvel side, it's the Spidey books.

Mind, both Thors are actually doing pretty well sales wise. Jason Aaron is on writing duty on both, I believe. Iirc, Jane!Thor sells better than Nick Spencer's Captain America: Steve Rogers. Per Steve Jobs: “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” I reckon people just want good comics. Marvel's made a huge push for diversity but to me, most of their attempts just feel condescending. More like, "Look at me, I'm diverse!" without any actual substance.

Marvel's problem is partly people have stopped blindly adding the new books to their pull list (likely also due to the massive volume Marvel releases every month). New #1s, rather than being jumping on points, have become jumping off points. There are collectors who still pay a premium for variant covers (or really any cover that catch their fancy) but if these books are not being read in order to keep them in NM/MT condition, chances are the cover collectors are not buying the next issues. Marvel has been appealing to collectors when they should be appealing to readers. And can we get better interior art please? Jim Zub's writing was okay but Jon Malin's art on Thunderbolts was an eyesore.

Marvel is relying on incentive variants quite heavily. Just look at their slew of #1s (variants galore) and compare unit sales of those to their #2s. Meanwhile, DC has switched to open to order variants on all issues for their regular ongoing series. Based on comiXology pull lists, I'd estimate the open to order variants add around 5-10% to their sales. Marvel's already seeing some push back on all their #1s. In general, their new #1s seem to debut at lower unit sales compared to the previous volume and #2s onwards sell less than the last issue of the previous volume. Even their events, while still being one of their best selling issues, draw less and less sales compared to before. I think Marvel ratio variants have been overused at this point that even as they're providing life support to new titles, they're probably not generating the sales numbers they used to. That's likely partly why we're seeing higher and higher ratios. Paraphrasing the Incredibles animated feature, "when everyone's special, then no one is."

Publishers, no. Retailer exclusives, yes. Yup, quality of stories, not just pretty covers. In fairness, I'm really enjoying DC Rebirth at the moment particularly the Superman titles. Meanwhile, Marvel's top talent all seem to have fled to Image. Honestly, there are very few Marvel titles that I feel are worth $3 (my discounted cost) for 20 pages of story. I think it's kinda sad that majority of my new Marvel preorders are solely for the Skottie Young baby variants.

Full-color version at impulse buy price. http://www.midtowncomics.com/store/dp.asp?PRID=All-New+Wolverine+%2318+Cov_1607853 Preordered this and Gamora #4 (CA Stephanie Hans).

Interestingly enough, to me the bag and board just signifies I probably won't be interested in the price tag. I'll stick to the lowly plebeian regular covers and open to order variants at normal cover price. The store clerks are busy talking Magic or whatever TCG is en vogue with store regulars so no upsell here. Actually, it's hard to get a clerk to pay attention to you at the payment counter if you're not a regular. Got to say, having multiple covers for all issues of DC Rebirth and some Image titles can be confusing when buying back issues (I got into Rebirth kinda late). I would constantly need to look at the issue numbers to make sure I'm not getting multiples of the same issue.

Interesting. My LCS's backwall is full of high priced statues and action figures, not comics. Ratio variants, if they carry them, sit on the shelves along with regular copies difference being the variants are bagged and boarded and have a price sticker.

In fairness, 1:25 or less is typically $12-15 tops so around the cost of movie tickets in my area. I buy them if I like the cover enough to waste money. Otherwise, they're something I ignore. Anything 1:50 or higher is an automatic ignore since those tend to be at least $40 on the outset. The open to order variants are actually harder for me to ignore since they're "just" $1.80-3.50 after discount.

The retailer exclusives also get added to Diamond sales numbers. That's how Batman #1 and Harley Quinn #1 got 300+K unit sales. For something with 3 cover variations like JSC frequently does, that's an extra 5,500 copies sold (Cvr A 3000, Cvr B 1500, Cvr C 1000). Granted, that's a lot less than if 1,000 people were to pay a premium for a copy of the JSC 1:50 (51K minimum sales).

DC JAN17 0239 BATMAN #19 $2.99 JAN17 0246 BATWOMAN #1 $2.99 JAN17 0305 SUPER SONS #2 $2.99 JAN17 0224 SUPERMAN #19 $2.99 JAN17 0314 TRINITY #7 $2.99 JAN17 0320 WILD STORM #2 $3.99 Marvel JAN17 0914 MONSTERS UNLEASHED #5 (OF 5) $4.99 Image JAN17 0693 I HATE FAIRYLAND #11 CVR A YOUNG (MR) $3.99 JAN17 0737 KILL OR BE KILLED #7 (MR) $3.99 Dynamite JAN17 1674 RED SONJA #3 CVR B CAMPBELL $3.99 Manga JAN17 2183 SKIP BEAT GN VOL 38 $9.99

The thing is that's how the normal book market works. Publishers have relied on bestsellers such as Stephen King, James Patterson, Michael Crichton, etc. to find the Dan Browns and J.K. Rowlings.