More Captain America Fallout

Lots of reports coming out now about how comic store owners feel about the whole "Cap is dead" event last week, which they had no warning about. I'll admit that I'm torn, personally, between the annoyance of how limited the supplies were - I was lucky and had a copy reserved, but didn't end up being able to get the one cover, of the two that were printed, that I wanted (shown here) as beggars really couldn't be choosers last Wednesday! - and the enjoyment of being able to actually read the comic without prior knowledge of what was coming. Granted, that last bit took quite some work on my part, but if Marvel Comics had leaked the story months earlier, as so many retailers wanted in hindsight, then it would've been a lesser experience for me as a reader.

So what could Marvel have done differently? My first thought, and one echoed in some of the articles, was to follow the lead DC Comics had shown with the first dozen issues of 52 last year: they did everything they could to encourage retailers to order higher on 52 than they thought they'd need, up to and including offering a generous return policy for unsold copies. This was something that was standard practice up until about 25 years ago, when comics were mostly sold through newsstands and drug stores. With the rise of the specialty comic store, though, those return policies went away and proprietors became much more risk-averse in terms of what they'd order. In a case like this, however, Marvel would've been wise to tell their retailers, "Look, something big, related to Civil War, is going to happen in Captain America # 25. We think you should order 5 to 10 times your usual number of copies, and we'll let you return up to 90% of your order if you can't sell them." Marvel would know they're not taking much of a risk - since they know what's inside - and the store owners would have had lots and lots of copies for the huge volumes of walk-ins that they got when CNN started covering the story. And like I say, DC had some something similar about 8 months ago, when they anticipated that 52 was going to be a much bigger hit than most folks expected (and DC was praised for this, repeatedly, in the comic press).

And while all of that was going on, there was Wizard Magazine, king of the speculator push, putting hundreds of copies of Cap # 25 on eBay for many multiples of the cover price, on the day it arrived! How did they happen to have so many copies? And how did they get some of them slabbed so quickly so as to be able to sell CGC high-grade copies? Well, since some of the people at Wizard would've known about what was coming up, in order to get a special "Captain America memorial" issue of their magazine ready for this week, it seems highly likely that some insider trading must've occurred, in terms of placing orders. If I didn't already have no use for that rag, this would've been enough to turn me off.

Since a new shipment of first printing Cap # 25's are expected on Wednesday this week, it's not looking good for anyone who spent $20 - $50 on a copy last week. I expect the bottom will fall out of that market very quickly, although scummy operations like Wizard will already have made their huge profit. Too bad that this'll leave a sour taste in so many mouths, though.