Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: Comics, delays, image, printing, printwatch

PrintWatch: No More Second Printings From Image Comics

Published Fri, 22 Oct 2021 15:06:11 -0500

Last updated Wed, 27 Oct 2021 06:06:42 -0500

Image Comics has informed comic book retailers that they will no longer be publishing second, third, fourth printings of any title as a result of the printing and distribution issues of which Bleeding Cool has been running extensive coverage of late. When we first approached Image Comics about this issue, they stated that Image hadn't been affected. Of course, that was a whole month ago. The letter to retailers states;

FIRST THINGS FIRST. As many of you are now undoubtedly aware, the current shipping delays, supply chain crunch, and paper shortages are creating nationwide issues across many industries—and that impacts our industry too. I'm sure every publisher will have a different response to this crisis, but at Image we're proactively streamlining our releases to reflect these circumstances.
STARTING NOW, AND FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE, THERE WILL BE NO SECOND PRINTINGS OF ANY TITLE
Please keep this in mind as you order: there will be limited stock available for re-orders, and we will not be reprinting anything that sells through at the distributor level. We are also adjusting the schedule of upcoming titles over the next few weeks to reflect a more responsible usage of raw material availability. This week is a lighter offering than what you might have expected. And these printings will be the only printings. All that said
Let's get to work.

Image Comics has recently run many printing runs for a variety of comics, with Stray Dogs and Department Of Truth being recent recipients of multiple print runs. This, for some time at least, will now be a thing of the past. Will this lead to increased orders on their comics as they hope? Or will having not enough first issues out there in comic shops limit the ability of people to pick up the series a few issues in and catch up?