Midnight Nation 1 covers / labels / census 1 1

[Qalyar]

So, Midnight Nation 1 shipped with a 50/50 ratio of two covers. One shows David Grey in full figure, and has a primarily black background. The other has David's face over a skyline with a bright red background. By convention, the former is the "A" cover and the latter is the "B" cover. There are also a bunch of other versions of this book: a Dynamic Forces variant cover, the DF cover with a gold foil logo, the DF cover with a blue foil logo, a DF "European Exclusive" variant cover, and a 2nd printing of the comic itself (which uses the "B" cover, color-swapped from red to blue). And that doesn't include the black and white re-issue under a slightly different title, which we can safely ignore for the rest of this thread!

The CGC Census for this book lists 29 copies with no variant, 4 copies of the DF variant, 5 copies of the DF gold, 4 copies of the DF blue, and 4 copies of the European Edition. Presumably, no one has ever bothered submitting the 2nd printing for slabbing. Strangely, it also notes "Gold foil logo" as "Key Comments" for the issue as a whole, which is factually incorrect (of the 7 distinguishable versions of this book, only one has gold foil). But what concerns me is that, based on the Census, all normal (non-DF) copies of the book have been slabbed identically without regard to the A/B cover distinction. I was able to locate one such slabbed book -- a CGC SS 9.6 (fair disclosure: I don't own this; it's currently listed on eBay, but I don't collect signed comics). I've cropped and attached the label from that book's listing. It bears a note that "Two different covers exist both by Gary Frank.", which is certainly accurate, but doesn't really do anything to enable distinct collection of slabbed copies of the two covers. I suppose that it's possible, if immensely unlikely, that all 29 submitted copies are, like that book, cover A?

If a submission for grading and slabbing included both a copy of Midnight Nation 1 (A cover) and a copy of Midnight Nation 1 (B cover), how would those be labelled? Would they be distinguished in a way that would allow for separate entries in the Census and a theoretical title Registry (as none currently exists)? I presume that the 2nd printing would get the standard "2nd printing" treatment, and all the other variants of this issue are recorded correctly, so it's really just the A/B split that leaves me concerned. I know nothing can be done about the way this book was graded previously, but I have an eye to the future here. I know CGC doesn't get into the weeds on all variants (direct vs. newsstand, among others), but surely entirely different covers should be labeled separately?

...and, yes, for everyone else reading this, I know. I'm quibbling about the labels on slabs for books that might, on a good day, maybe be worth more raw than their original cover price. We all have our peccadilloes, do we not?

[Jennifer F.]

Hi, thanks for your message.  I checked with our graders on this and they advised that we are now breaking these out so they can be recognized separately on the registry.  If you are sending in a submission like you describe, you just need to attach a note on your submission asking for those to be broken out separately and our graders will take care of that.

Thanks!