I didn’t mean to go on this long about the Cap #25 reprint.

§ March 28th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on I didn’t mean to go on this long about the Cap #25 reprint.

So let’s see what happens: our orders for the second printing of Captain America #25 come in today, and now that the general non-comic-reading public has pretty much forgotten about the “death,” I’m sort of interested to see how these reprints are going to sell to the regular funnybook-fan clientele.

There’s always that percentage of the customer base that’ll buy variant covers, since this second printing will feature a new image (or at least a differently-colored one…I don’t remember which, and don’t really feel like looking it up at the moment, since I’ll find out in a few hours anyway when I break down our shipment).

Then there’s the percentage who won’t be interested in the second printing, because it “won’t be worth as much.”

Then there’s the percentage who will be especially interested in buying the second printings, because they’re presumably “rarer” than the first printing…scarcer supply meaning higher potential price increase, supposedly. Though I wonder what the print run was on the reprint of #25…if folks ordered it while that brief period of panic buying was underway, it’s possible that the print run may be fairly close to that of the first print. I know that we ordered fairly large numbers on the reprint, at first…in comparison, when the Death of Superman issue went into second, third, and even fourth printings, we still had plenty of demand for any printing of the comic. However, when order adjustment time came for the Cap #25 reprint, it was obvious that the huge demand by the general pubic had dwindled to nothing, and we cut our orders down a bit to take that into account.

Oh, and then there’s the percentage of folks who just plain want to read the comic, and couldn’t give a rat’s tuckus what printing the comic is. I imagine there might be a few people like this out there somewhere.

Of course, the real trick is seeing what sales are going to be like on Captain America #26 and up, as well as the “Fallen Son” tie-ins. Given that the general public is no longer interested, and that even a large portion of them are now convinced that Captain America is no longer being published (as per the many requests we received for “the last Captain America”), any increase in sales is going to come from people who are already comic book readers. And that’s going to depend on them freeing up extra cash in their comic budgets, and just how much “big comic event fatigue” they’re experiencing, and so on.

I know this is all painfully obvious stuff, but sometimes I just need to get it out of my system. Oh, if only I had some kind of, I don’t know, “blog” that would allow me to write about such things.


In other news:

I’d better mention the interview with John Totleben about his Swamp Thing work or my Swamp Thing Fan Club card is going to get taken away.

LOOK UPON BOOKSTEVE’S KERRY DRAKE BOOP AND DESPAIR.

Nerd rockers Ookla the Mok have new versions of a couple old songs on their Myspace page (one new recording, one new remixing). Have I told you that I love this band? I love this band.

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