Imagine a comic company being worried that orders were too high today.*
So for you Progressive Ruin Early Morning Crew, who catch the latest entries as they’re posted, either before you go to bed or as you have your breakfast and cup of coffee, or I guess pretty much any time of day depending on what part of the world you live in, you may wish to revisit the previous post. Look for the “EDIT:” dropped in there and read the rest of the paragraph that follows, which will be New to You.
Basically what happened is, while I was present in comics retail at the time, I had clearly forgotten the details around the release of Legends of the Dark Knight #1 and its variety of cover colors. I made assumptions about DC trying to boost order numbers up with variants, which is almost exactly what they didn’t do. They were actually worried that too many copies of LODK1 were ordered, and added the covers after the fact to improve sales. Go back to that post and its comments and you’ll see links and the helpful folks who nudged Old Man Mike and said “uh, hey, you got your facts a little off.” To them, I am grateful.
Ultimately, the overall point still stands, I think, that publishers realize the power of variant covers to encourage multiple purchases of essentially the same product to individuals. Even if, in the case of LODK1, this wasn’t the plan from the get-go.
Anyway, instead of just tacking on an addendum to the post saying “duh, I was wrong, here’s what happened” as I was normally do, I tossed out the offending passage and replaced it with corrected info. I feel a little funny about that, like I’m cheating or hiding my shame or something, but I do plan on continuing my series on variant covers and I don’t want the first installment to have a big ol’ screw up in it. But again, thanks to everyone for jumping in and pulling my foot out of my mouth…everyone please go and check out the comments section for that post for the usual wonderful contributions from my readers.
In actual comic book news, there’s this thing:
…which, surprise, turned out to the big hit of the week so far, and it’s only Tuesday. And it sounds like a lot of stores out there were caught by surprise, given a story or two I’ve seen online about retailers being upset about not being told this might sell well. …To be fair, in this market, one should never take a publisher’s word that a comic is going to sell well. Order what you’re comfortable with, order more if you need more, and if you need to get second printings, get those. Frankly, if publishers want a retailer to order extra piles of their comics on their word, they can make them returnable.
There are plenty of times when I wished I ordered more copies of something, but just as many, if not more, times when I wished I’d ordered less. With Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point #1…well, as someone who still thinks the original Nintendo is one of those “newfangled gaming systems,” even I am aware that Fortnite is a Big Deal. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll translate to comic sales…there have been plenty of properties that were Big Deals in the real world, but didn’t exactly drag that audience into comic book stores once their tie-in funnybooks showed up. Sometimes they do, sure (Firefly is still doing okay, um, y’know, considering), but a lot of times these licensed books can sell worse that other comics on the shelves.
This time, though, I took a chance and ordered a…reasonable number of copies for my store, and it worked out pretty well so far! Getting lots of calls for the book, plenty of new faces walking in the door to get copies, and at least for Tuesday’s traffic, I had enough to go around! Now once I open Wednesday, my remaining copies will likely fly out the door right quick.
All things considered I wish I’d ordered double the number of copies, and maybe if you ask me by the weekend I might say I wish I ordered four times the number. What is nice about all this is the fact that the customers coming in for copies of the Fortnite comic all seem to be genuinely interested in the game, and not just dudes looking to flip the book on eBay. And boy, it seems to be selling for a pretty penny on said eBays. …Which is another clue that the comic was desperately underordered. Not being in initial solicitations and being offered just in the Final Order Cutoff listings may not have helped.
I’m going to enjoy this while I can, as it’s always good to have a comic that will get new faces in the shop. I know that perhaps a lot of them just want the digital codes for the game sealed inside that polybag, but look, comics retailers can’t be choosers.
But is the miniseries biweekly? This is DC’s big chance to be the ones to make Fortnite fortnightly…