Darker Image print runs 0

[Gatsby77]

Apologies if this has been discussed earlier, but I'm wondering about print runs for Darker Image # 1. Specifically, the relative print runs of:

# 1 (regular)

# 1 (regular, newsstand)

# 1 (gold)

# 1 (black and white/platinum)

# 1 (ashcan)

Any details regarding distribution or allocations would help too. Was # 1 gold a 1:50? 1:100?

In part, I'm asking because I suspect that today # 1 gold is actually harder to find than # 1 (B+W), but that doesn't make sense to me.

(And similar to how I think Supreme # 1 -- newsstand, without the foil -- is much harder to find than Supreme # 1 Gold.)

Edited April 22, 2018 by Gatsby77

[RockMyAmadeus]

Cap City sales numbers for Darker Image #1 *might* be in JJM's Krause catalog.

Otherwise, that info wasn't public.

The numbers bandied around for DI B&W (or "Platinum", as it was called back then) and gold were 5,000 each. I have no way of knowing if those numbers are accurate.

Neither are particularly rare. I bought an entire case of golds (150) and have about 140 left.

B&Ws are harder to find, in my experience, but not much harder.

I don't recall any sort of allocation numbers for these books. I believe they were for sale at Image booths throughout 1993. I suspect they may have been a "1 per store" deal. I know that the distributor I worked for had multiple copies of Maxx #1 Glow, because that was also a 1 per store issue, and he simply kept them. He was distributing to card shops that could not have cared less about them, and wouldn't know what to do with them if they had them.

However...the great volume of these books in the hands of individual entities, whether it be Steve Schanes, or the Image offices, leads me to believe that these were made for and sold at conventions, rather than store allocations, because in 1993, a "1 per store" store allocation would have resulted in a complete distribution (much like Spiderman #1 Platinum, which was a thank you gift to retailers in 1990 who ordered Spiderman #1)...there were, after all, nearly 10,000 Diamond accounts alone in 1993, and that was just Diamond. That doesn't preclude an allocation based on orders, though. It very well could have been 1 for every hundred regular copies ordered (recognizing that this was long before the variant incentive program, and these variants weren't available for order, or even generally known, prior to publication.)

[Philflound]

Looking up Ebay offerings on gold and black and white versions, there seem to be more of these at about 8 total of each. The newsstand and ashcan seem to be about 6 each, though the ashcan is priced the highest of all. I think the newsstand is much harder to get than the gold or black and white. I did a specific search on ns though so regular listings may have newsstand copies without putting such in title.

[Carl Elvis]

https://rarecomics.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/darker-image-1-newsstand-1-95-cover-price-variant-1st-maxx-appearance/

But it turns out that Image Comics was not exclusive to the direct market, and newsstand copies do exist.  However, the number of them is so minuscule as to be practically invisible…  According to Chuck Rozanski, they do indeed exist but were a mere 1% of Image’s distribution!

[Philflound]

4 minutes ago, Carl Elvis said:

https://rarecomics.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/darker-image-1-newsstand-1-95-cover-price-variant-1st-maxx-appearance/

But it turns out that Image Comics was not exclusive to the direct market, and newsstand copies do exist.  However, the number of them is so minuscule as to be practically invisible…  According to Chuck Rozanski, they do indeed exist but were a mere 1% of Image’s distribution!

Of course they exist. They're on Ebay right now.

I've been picking up Image newsstands for 2 years now pretty much every time I see them. I don't discriminate any title, but will pass on beat up copies of stuff.

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 hour ago, Carl Elvis said:

https://rarecomics.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/darker-image-1-newsstand-1-95-cover-price-variant-1st-maxx-appearance/

But it turns out that Image Comics was not exclusive to the direct market, and newsstand copies do exist.  However, the number of them is so minuscule as to be practically invisible…  According to Chuck Rozanski, they do indeed exist but were a mere 1% of Image’s distribution!

Chuck's numbers are wrong, and Mr. Nobel is, shockingly, using them incorrectly. 

And that article reads like a 5 year old wrote it, explaining how he discovered his knees to his mother, filled with the usual errors and assumptions that Mr. Nobel makes on a regular basis, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.. "But now they have reassigned it"...?  For example: there were no such thing as "incentive" variants until the early to mid-00's...a decade after Image appeared. So, when Mr. Nobel says things like "There appear to have been two different retailer incentive variants" and "Local comic shop owners who ordered enough copies to obtain the gold or platinum variants", he again demonstrates his ignorance and lack of perspective, and repeats things that aren't true. It is true that there were REWARD variants...but the idea of "ordering enough copies to obtain the gold or platinum variants" is wrong, because there was no mechanism in place for that to be even possible at that time. 

Remember: this was still the era of MULTIPLE distributors, and the variant market was still in its infancy. There would have been no way...remember, this was still before the internet was widespread, and quite a bit before the comics industry got involved with it...for various retailers, many of whom ordered through multiple distributors, to order books the way orders are done solely through Diamond now. The concept of "ordering incentives" simply didn't exist, nor could it, until the consolidation of distribution was completely by Diamond in 1996-1997.

No, the various "golds" and "silvers" and "platinums" and "holograms" were used as REWARDS and GIVEAWAYS, not ORDERING INCENTIVES. They would have been given to retailers or fans who promoted the publisher, or sold at conventions....Steve Schanes, publisher of the defunct Pacific Comics and Blackthorne Comics, ended up with 600 copies each of Brigade #1 Gold (1992), Supreme #1 Gold (1992), Youngblood Strikefile #1 Gold (1993) and Youngblood #0 (1992) that I purchased directly from him in early 2000. Why did he have so many? Was it because he ordered tens of thousands of the regular books? No, of course not. He obtained them directly from Image. They were going to be used as giveaways or sold at the conventions he was promoting in the early 90s.

And, when he says things like "What all of this means for the survivorship difference between newsstand copies and the retailer incentive variants should be fairly obvious: excepting accidental damage and loss, it is hard to imagine much destruction or damage to the incentive variants — nobody would have been taking the condition down by reading the retailer incentive variants they bought from high up on the top shelf where comic store owners kept the highest value books out of reach." also betrays a lack of understanding of the comics market of the entire 90s. By the time of the crash, Image still had TENS and TENS of THOUSANDS of these variants hanging around...see: the golds I reference above. Image was NOT staffed by collectors. When Jim and Bill Jay were buying variants from Image for 5-10 cents each in the late 90s, and selling them for $1 each at the monthly Shrine show, and various other venues, those books were BEAT TO HELL. And they were beat to hell because they had been sitting, unbagged and unboarded, sloshing around in boxes at Image's SoCal warehouse, where they'd been since they were printed several years earlier. SOME of the books were still in their boxes from Quebecor, true, and those books generally survived ok...but thousands more had been unboxed and tossed into short boxes, to be taken to various cons throughout the year and handed out one by one. It's how the publishers dealt with these back then, and, to a great extent, it's how they deal with them today. I went to the Diamond summit at C2E2 a couple weeks ago...and I was handed "rare variants", like the Power Rangers #25 variant, and it was not bagged or boarded.

Publishers don't care.

And, on top of that, when the crash came quickly on the heels of the publication of many of these books, retailers refused to sell them, so they got stuck in back stock, where they, too, ended up getting sloshed around by rotated stock year after year, decade after decade.

So, yes, the small portion of those variants that managed to reach COLLECTOR hands in the beginning WERE probably well preserved...but the vast majority that remained ended up getting abused. Mr. Nobel says "it's hard to imagine much destruction or damage to the incentive variants" because he doesn't have much knowledge of the comics industry or its history.

Sorry, kid. His ignorance of comics history leads him to make many errors, and he is, sadly, opposed to any debate about it.

I do find it hilarious that Mr. Nobel takes it upon himself to point out the errors of other authors, like Todd Allan about Image's exclusivity to the Direct market. In point of fact, Youngblood #1, the first comic published by Image, WAS exclusive to the Direct market.

Do not be deceived: NONE of the Image newsstands are particularly rare...there are perhaps thousands to tens of thousands of each issue, lurking in boxes all over the world at this point.

Perhaps.....PERHAPS...some of the later, 1996 Image newsstands...are tougher to find....but not a "mere 1%." Chuck pulls that number directly out of his arse, and people quote it as if it's legitimate. It's a guess. It's not even an educated guess, because almost from Day 1, Chuck has NEVER DEALT with the newsstand market. He dealt with the Direct market, and has very little direct experience with how the newsstand worked. He looks at his inventory and makes guesses from that, but he buys almost exclusively from other dealers...stores, wholesalers, or convention dealers. But newsstand copies went to readers, not speculators or dealer overstock. So, newsstand issues...and granted, a good chunk were "destroyed; returned for credit"..were distributed far and wide, one copy by one copy, to people who read them. Retailers wouldn't, in the normal course of events, even SEE newsstand issues, unless someone who bought off the newsstand happened to sell them to a retailer who dealt in back issues.

It's why you can find 10 packs of most everything Direct, but very rarely come across more than one copy at a time of newsstands. But that doesn't mean they were destroyed. They exist...they're harder to find, no doubt...but they're out there, waiting to be discovered.

One more error of Mr. Nobel's: by the 1990s, especially when Image came about, even those who bought from the newsstands weren't throwing their books away en masse after they read them. Yes, some of them would have...but at that point, even the casual newsstand reader knew that "comics were collectible"...after all, you had Marge Simpson saying to the entire world that "Todays mom knows to seal 'em in Mylar, so you can never read them again, never ever again." So, even if they didn't take collector care of them, they still didn't throw them out, as they would have in the past (which is the main source of retailer inventory of these issues...they were sold to the comic store.)

Finally, this disturbing paragraph: As of this writing, collectors have not actually sent in a great number of Darker Image copies to CGC for grading, but perhaps the copy count will increase in the future, on account of the recent change by CGC to their 1st appearance credit…  Collectors looking to own the first appearance of The Maxx will see that Darker Image #1 is the book that carries CGC’s 1st appearance credit, and thus will need to own this issue."

That perfectly sums up the lazy, uninformed generation of "collectors" that have swelled the ranks in recent years. They don't know that DI #1 is the first appearance of the Maxx on their own: they need CGC to tell them. It's a subtle, but quite telling, distinction. Instead of saying "Collectors looking to own the first appearance of the Maxx will find it in Darker Image #1", it changes to "...will see that CGC says it is Darker Image #1, so they can know what to buy." It places the credit in the notes as the paramount point of information necessary to purchase the book, rather than regarding the notes as supplemental information that any buyer should already know before purchasing the book.

It is the cart before the horse.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Ha! I hadn't intended to write that much, but Mr. Nobel and his "rarecomics" blog is ripe with errors and mistakes that need debunking.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Suffice it to say that, even with all of that, the gold and platinum versions are still far, far more "scarce" than the newsstand version. And that's true even when we consider ultra high grade: most of the golds were destroyed...irrevocably...by the heat seal on the bag they came in.

Some of the heat seals left deep indentations that can't be pressed out of the embossed, cardstock cover...and some of them took the ink right off. 

So forgot many examples of 9.8s of that particular book.

Don't believe the uninformed hype. 

[RockMyAmadeus]

I did a quick calculation in my head before I went to sleep last night, and came up with the following. At the time DI #1 was published, there were less than 60 total variants that had ever been published. Ever. That's fewer variants than ASM #666 or Godzilla #1 (2011.) And more than a 1/3rd of those were encompassed by a single title: Deadworld. Take that out, and you have fewer than 40.

(For the purposes of this discussion, the definition of "variant" is a book that was published with a purposely made difference distinguishing it from the "regular" item, for sale in the same market, at the same time, and marketed based ON that distinction, which would exclude the price variants, the "back cover variants" from Gold Key of the late 60's, and the various DC "purple" variants of the early 70's, as well as reprints, which were considered rubbish until the early 21st century.)

In roughly chronological order:

Turtles #3

Adventurers #1

Man of Steel #1

Justice League #3

Firestorm #61

Critters #22

Deadworld #5-25 (21)

Legends of the Dark Knight #1 (4)

Sandman #8

Dark Horse Presents #36

Spiderman #1 Silver & Platinum

Cry For Dawn #6, 7, 8, 9 Executive Editions

X-Men #1 (4...Deluxe Edition is a REPRINT)

Archer & Armstrong #0 Gold

Unity #0 Red

Eternal Warrior #1 Gold

Unity #1 Gold & Platinum

Dark Horse Presents: Aliens Platinum

Wildcats #1 Gold

Robocop Vs. Terminator #1 Platinum

Brigade #1 Gold

Hard Corps #1 Gold

Superman #75 Platinum

Predator vs. Magnus Robot Fighter #1 Platinum

Youngblood #0 Gold

Magnus #21 Gold

Did I miss any...?

And, as mentioned, the vast majority of these were distributed according to the designs of the publisher. They were most certainly not "ordering incentives", because there was no way for a publisher to gather all the disparate information from disparate distributors to determine who got what and how.

Some were simply sent out without any advance notice, as is the case with LOTDK #1, Adventurers #1, and Dark Horse Presents #36. Some were mistakes that turned into variants, like Turtles #3. Some were orderable as variants, like Deadworld, Spiderman #1 Silver, or X-Men #1. Some were gifts from the publisher, like Spiderman #1 Platinum or Dark Horse Presents Aliens: Platinum. Some were made to be handed out or sold at conventions, like most of the Image variants.

Of course, 1993 would see the big explosion of variants, and there would be more variants published that year than all previous years combined...but we weren't quite there yet.

 

Edited April 25, 2018 by RockMyAmadeus
The ants in France stay mainly on the plants.

[Philflound]

Actually you are wrong with your statement about incentive variants in the 1990s. I used to have a store from 1993-1997 and I remember having to order so many copies of the regular issue to get one variant. One item I do remember is the Venom Lethal Protector #1. I ordered I believe 50 copies to get one gold. I remember this distinctly because since I did not pay for the incentive book, I used to raffle it to my customers. I think there were Valiant books like this too. Don't quote me on that one, but the Venom is a definite. Since it was so long ago, I can't remember much.

Posted this before reading your latest reply. But you are choosing not to include any deluxe vs regular editions in your list? There were plenty of those. I don't know if Sandman 8 would be a variant. I don't know the history behind why they changed the whole editorial thing, but that doesn't seem to be an incentive for anything.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Philflound

[kpaqu1]

9 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Did I miss any...?

Man of Rust #1 1986 Blackthorne - A and B covers parody Man of Steel

Rust #1 1992 Adventure Comics - regular and gold foil cover

I think they fit your definition.

[RockMyAmadeus]

5 hours ago, Philflound said:

Actually you are wrong with your statement about incentive variants in the 1990s. I used to have a store from 1993-1997 and I remember having to order so many copies of the regular issue to get one variant. One item I do remember is the Venom Lethal Protector #1. I ordered I believe 50 copies to get one gold. I remember this distinctly because since I did not pay for the incentive book, I used to raffle it to my customers. I think there were Valiant books like this too. Don't quote me on that one, but the Venom is a definite. Since it was so long ago, I can't remember much.

Posted this before reading your latest reply. But you are choosing not to include any deluxe vs regular editions in your list? There were plenty of those. I don't know if Sandman 8 would be a variant. I don't know the history behind why they changed the whole editorial thing, but that doesn't seem to be an incentive for anything.

That's not correct. Venom Lethal Protector #1 Gold was a gift variant, for stores that ordered so and so many copies. It was not an ordering incentive. And that wasn't the first time a publisher had rewarded things to retailers for ordering so and so many. For instance...every store that ordered so many copies of X-Men #1 received a silver hologram card. For every store that ordered so many MORE copies got the gold hologram card.

I think...not sure at all, but I think...those numbers were 100 and 500.

 

There's a difference., and it's an important one.

If you have any documentation that says otherwise, please provide it.

The mechanism for having ordering incentives simply didn't exist in 1993. These were given out as the result of orders, not to increase more orders. Can you imagine, the logistical nightmare of tracking incentive orders from the 20 to 30 national distributors that existed in 1993, not to mention the hundreds of sub-distributors? What if retailers ordered from multiple distributors (and some did, for varying reasons)...? That program could only be effectively enacted once there was only ONE national distributor: Diamond. Diamond tracks all those incentives, they tell the publishers how many to print, and the publisher gives the order to the printer. The publishers deal solely with Diamond. 

There were major problems with distribution in the early 90s already, which is why the Distribution Wars took place. Can anyone imagine the chaos if they threw incentive ordering into the mix...? People would be screaming bloody murder.

No, the publishers simply kept track of what the distributors ordered, and sent them enough of the variants to cover them, telling the distributors that they were gifts to retailers who ordered such and such amounts.

Edited April 26, 2018 by RockMyAmadeus

[RockMyAmadeus]

5 hours ago, Philflound said:

I think there were Valiant books like this too. Don't quote me on that one, but the Venom is a definite. Since it was so long ago, I can't remember much.

No, none of the Valiant golds and other variants were ordering incentives. They were, like the others, gift books, to be handed out to stores or fans as Valiant saw fit.

5 hours ago, Philflound said:

Posted this before reading your latest reply. But you are choosing not to include any deluxe vs regular editions in your list? There were plenty of those. I don't know if Sandman 8 would be a variant. I don't know the history behind why they changed the whole editorial thing, but that doesn't seem to be an incentive for anything.

There aren't very many before 1993. They would qualify, but I can't think of any from March of 1993 or earlier. There are tons and tons of them from 1993, 1994, 1995...but before then, hardly any. Example: Amazing Spiderman #358 was the first "gatefold" issue in the run. But the newsstand version was also a gatefold. ASM #365 was the first hologram issue in the run....but the newsstand, aside from the UPC and price box, was identical. Same with #375. It's not until we get to issue #388 (1994) that we have a deluxe version, and non-deluxe version that was different.

Same with FF. #358 was the first "gimmick" variant, but the newsstand was the same. #371 was the same as well. Same with #375. It's not until we get to #387 that you have a deluxe version and a regular.

I suppose we can add Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1, since this was made both with, and without, the gem. 

Wildcats #2 wouldn't qualify, because the Direct edition and the newsstand were sold in different markets, and one wasn't designed to be a variant of the other.

If you have any other examples from Mar 1993 or before, please feel free to share them.

[RockMyAmadeus]

36 minutes ago, kpaqu1 said:

Man of Rust #1 1986 Blackthorne - A and B covers parody Man of Steel

Rust #1 1992 Adventure Comics - regular and gold foil cover

I think they fit your definition.

Thank you! Yes, indeed!

[comiconxion]

On ‎4‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 1:14 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

I did a quick calculation in my head before I went to sleep last night, and came up with the following. At the time DI #1 was published, there were less than 60 total variants that had ever been published. Ever. That's fewer variants than ASM #666 or Godzilla #1 (2011.) And more than a 1/3rd of those were encompassed by a single title: Deadworld. Take that out, and you have fewer than 40.

(For the purposes of this discussion, the definition of "variant" is a book that was published with a purposely made difference distinguishing it from the "regular" item, for sale in the same market, at the same time, and marketed based ON that distinction, which would exclude the price variants, the "back cover variants" from Gold Key of the late 60's, and the various DC "purple" variants of the early 70's, as well as reprints, which were considered rubbish until the early 21st century.)

In roughly chronological order:

Turtles #3

Adventurers #1

Man of Steel #1

Justice League #3

Firestorm #61

Critters #22

Deadworld #5-25 (21)

Legends of the Dark Knight #1 (4)

Sandman #8

Dark Horse Presents #36

Spiderman #1 Silver & Platinum

Cry For Dawn #6, 7, 8, 9 Executive Editions

X-Men #1 (4...Deluxe Edition is a REPRINT)

Archer & Armstrong #0 Gold

Unity #0 Red

Eternal Warrior #1 Gold

Unity #1 Gold & Platinum

Dark Horse Presents: Aliens Platinum

Wildcats #1 Gold

Robocop Vs. Terminator #1 Platinum

Brigade #1 Gold

Hard Corps #1 Gold

Superman #75 Platinum

Predator vs. Magnus Robot Fighter #1 Platinum

Youngblood #0 Gold

Magnus #21 Gold

Did I miss any...?

And, as mentioned, the vast majority of these were distributed according to the designs of the publisher. They were most certainly not "ordering incentives", because there was no way for a publisher to gather all the disparate information from disparate distributors to determine who got what and how.

Some were simply sent out without any advance notice, as is the case with LOTDK #1, Adventurers #1, and Dark Horse Presents #36. Some were mistakes that turned into variants, like Turtles #3. Some were orderable as variants, like Deadworld, Spiderman #1 Silver, or X-Men #1. Some were gifts from the publisher, like Spiderman #1 Platinum or Dark Horse Presents Aliens: Platinum. Some were made to be handed out or sold at conventions, like most of the Image variants.

Of course, 1993 would see the big explosion of variants, and there would be more variants published that year than all previous years combined...but we weren't quite there yet.

 

Nexus Magazine #1 - Signed/numbered of 500 - sold at same time as regular #1.  This pre-dates all of them.

Eagle Special Edition #1 (2500 copies) - Slightly different cover and signed/numbered inside

Thundermace #1 B&W Cover (1000 copies) - Was sent to retailers in advance of the regular color version.  

What about the Milestone Platinums - Hardware, Static?  

The Neal Adams Continuity Books -  Valeria the She Bat #1 (I think there were two variants here - one with an acetate cover and one with a white cover), Deathwatch 2000 #0? 

[Philflound]

Batman Shadow of the Bat #1 comes to mind with a bagged edition and not bagged.

[RockMyAmadeus]

3 hours ago, comiconxion said:

Nexus Magazine #1 - Signed/numbered of 500 - sold at same time as regular #1.  This pre-dates all of them.

Eagle Special Edition #1 (2500 copies) - Slightly different cover and signed/numbered inside

Thundermace #1 B&W Cover (1000 copies) - Was sent to retailers in advance of the regular color version.  

What about the Milestone Platinums - Hardware, Static?  

The Neal Adams Continuity Books -  Valeria the She Bat #1 (I think there were two variants here - one with an acetate cover and one with a white cover), Deathwatch 2000 #0? 

Nexus, if I'm not mistaken, is not a variant. It's just a signed and  numbered edition.

Got a pic of the Eagle Special Edition?

Thundermace #1 works. (That's obscure!)

The Milestones all came out in 1993, just after DI #1.

Valeria, Deathwatch in 1993 after DI #1.

[Brother J]

19 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

Got a pic of the Eagle Special Edition?

 

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 4/27/2018 at 4:03 PM, Brother J said:

 

Thanks BJ...

[comiconxion]

On ‎4‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 8:36 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

Nexus, if I'm not mistaken, is not a variant. It's just a signed and  numbered edition.

Got a pic of the Eagle Special Edition?

Thundermace #1 works. (That's obscure!)

The Milestones all came out in 1993, just after DI #1.

Valeria, Deathwatch in 1993 after DI #1.

I had always thought that the Nexus #1 Special Edition had a different inside front cover, but I just dug out my copy and found that in fact it does seem to be the same as the regular edition, just signed in the bottom area by the creators.  What is different about this edition is that it comes with a special limited print, but that's not a cover variant.  I guess that was the cheaper way of creating a variant edition when they didn't want to print a different cover.  Although the Special Editions originally sold for $5 vs. $1.95, they didn't bother to change the cover price.