Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: coronavirus comics, marvel, Marvel Comics

Marvel Launch Back In Action Program For Comic Shops

With Marvel Comics returning to comic stores from the end of May with a one week for new comics, one week for collections schedule going forward, Marvel Comics are looking at their current prices. Bleeding Cool reported that Marvel had brought in massive discounts to retailers to help out in shutdown, which also impacted their chart standings when it came to revenue raised in March. They had previously said,

For Marvel titles scheduled to go on sale between March 18 and April 8, Marvel is offering extensive deep discounts (adjusted on top of the existing discounts you have in place) to help alleviate cash flow pressures and give you the flexibility to sell your product in response to customer demand as needed.

But that was before Diamond shut down distribution for April 1st and 8th titles. Those Marvel titles are now being spread out across the schedule to mid-July right now. So Marvel is bringing in some changes, as retailers are now able to amend the amounts ordered.

Marvel has now told retailers that they will be gradually releasing print comics and trade collections on an alternating weekly schedule starting May 27th. That this balanced short-term schedule will allow everyone — industry partners, comic shops, Marvel, and their fans — to work through an incredible amount of change at every level while providing new product to purchase and giving retailers a clear plan to adjust their weekly FOC orders. That Marvel comics going on sale May 27th will be Re-FOC'd by May 4th.

That starting on July 15th, Marvel will resume weekly releases for new comic titles and trade collections not previously FOC'd in what they call "the most thoughtful way we can, taking in all factors throughout the industry." Those titles will be FOC'd for the first time on June 15 and new trades will be FOC'd for the first time on June 1st (for on-sale July 22nd). Marvel's digital comic book releases will resume day-and-date to their respective print release dates on May 27th – a day after DC.

Marvel also states that they will be introducing their Back In Action program which will give retailers tools to bring fans back into comic shops. This program will include free promotional items and variants, deep discounts on backlist titles, and more

But as to those earlier bigger discounts on titles originally planned for April 1st and 8th, Marvel is rescinding those. The discounts for titles that shipped on March 18th and 25th will appear on stores' next invoices. However, as orders may be falling – or may be non-existent for some stores for some time, Marvel will lock in the retailer discount levels earned and established as of the beginning of March, as discount levels are tied to the amount of comcis a store orders. This will prevent a store slipping to a lower level simply because they were forced to order fewer comics this month or in months to come.

Hey, you get the heavy stuff with Bleeding Cool. Don't worry, we'll have something far more stupid and distracting to run shortly. But if you want to keep up with our coverage of the current global situation as well as the continuing New Distributor Wars of 2020, you can bookmark these links.

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