Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics, X-Men | Tagged: from the ashes, nyx, phoenix

NYX #1 Overship To Arrive Before The Actual Comic Is Due, In Error

Marvel Comics are sending retailers extra copies of NYX #1 and Phoenix #1, but it seems that the overship for NYX will arrive a week early.

Once upon a time, Marvel Comics regularly overshipped certain titles. The idea was that comic book retailers were a 'small-c' conservative lot and ordered what they thought they could sell. Overshipping was intended to give retaikers to opportunity to discover that maybe they could sell a few more and so they would up their orders for subsequent issues. Or maybe engage in passing free samples on to customers, and get some more orders for future issues as a result.

It also had the side-benefit of upping Marvel's numbers in Diamond Comic Distributor's monthly statistics. For unit ranking and market share at least, if not for dollar ranking and market share. This, of course no longer happens.

Bleeding Cool first reported on Marvel doing this back in 2012 and it came and went sporadically since. When it happened, again and again, we ran articles about it. Then…a chunk in 2015 and lots in 2016 for a bit. Then… a blip in 2019 for a few titles. And then nothing again, until this year when Blood Hunt #1 got a small bump.

For a time some agenda-driven folk decided that Marvel's overshipping was being used just to get revamped versions of characters, especially if they now starring female, non-white or gay characters, into stores that couldn't sell them, just to make their sales figures look better than they were. Rather than the actual intent of encouraging sampling – and ignoring that the biggest recipients of Marvel's overshipping were the biggest-selling titles.

And now that's happening to certain X-Men: From The Ashes titles. Both Phoenix #1 and NYX #1 launches will see retailers get a bunch of free copies, with every store getting at least five or six copies of each in a bundle, with some getting more. This may be an attempt to get number of copies in stores higher, for any spillover orders that the main X-Men books generate, that stores haven't anticipated. Which may lead to future increased orders of these titles. That is, at least, the plan.

Except there's a problem. It seems that the five-copy bundles of NYX #1 went out too early through Diamond Comic Distributors. And comic book stores that order through Diamond will be getting NYX #1 a week early. Diamond asks retailers to "please do not place the overship copies out for sale before the issue's official on-sale date of July 24."

Do you think that will work? Now that Diamond no longer does Mystery Shopper on-sale date enforcement, and Diamond retailers often get product later than PRH. Will this be seen as a chance to take advantage for once?

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