Marvel has come to retailers with a deal: trade us your unsold copies of Blackest Night and we’ll send you some variants of our comics. It could definitely be viewed that Marvel is attempting to drive a little bit of a wedge between the retailers and DC, because the idea that the stores would begin making these trades (which, at 50 DC comics to 1 Marvel variant seems kind of like a terrible deal) would seemingly imply that there could be some sort of an issue.
To be honest, we don’t really know that there is any secret plot being thought up by Marvel, but this seems like a pretty crazy deal for the retailers. It’s hard to picture it being a good idea to trade all those issues, but on the other hand, if they aren’t being sold there’s a better chance that a variant of one of Marvel’s comics may sell better. I mean, all those back issues will just take up a lot of space, but it still seems like it would be a strange deal to make. After all, I’d imagine a variant issue of Siege #3 would sell better than the ring-accompanied issues that were put out under the Blackest Night banner. When you think about it, the primary reason those issues sold as well as they did was because they came with said rings.
Doesn’t this seem kind of crazy, though? I mean, it’s kind of a harsh business move, isn’t it? I mean, we haven’t seen what this could do to affect the relationships established between the companies and the retailers who buy from them, but I can’t imagine it will go well. Like all things, I now find I can count this under “I blame Disney” because, well, they’re responsible for most bad things. And yet, they gave us The Lion King. It’s a quandary. We’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out, and whether or not we’ll see any retaliation moves by DC.
I enjoy the various articles which have been written, and especially the comments posted! Really cool