Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged:

12 Retailer Exclusive Cover Opportunities from Marvel for December 2018

Published Fri, 21 Sep 2018 10:00:01 -0500

Every month, Marvel offers retailers the chance to commission exclusive covers for certain titles — as long as they order thousands of copies. It's an effective, if expensive way for both parties to a) get some promotion and create collectables for the market, and b) up their orders. Begun by Dreamwave back in the day, it was popularised by IDW and now Marvel Comics does it more than anyone else with anywhere between five and 15 titles a month.

Marvel only offered 8 exclusive cover variants to retailers for November. A decrease from last November when they had twenty.

In December, they are bumping them up again, with the following twelve titles:

FANTASTIC FOUR #5 (Order by 11/2)
HULK: THE BEST DEFENSE #1 (Order by 10/19)
KILLMONGER #1 (Order by 10/19)
NAMOR: THE BEST DEFENSE #1 (Order by 10/19)
WINTER SOLDIER #1 (Order by 10/19)
DOCTOR STRANGE: THE BEST DEFENSE #1 (Order by 10/26)
FANTASTIC FOUR: THE WEDDING SPECIAL #1 (Order by 10/26)
SILVER SURFER: THE BEST DEFENSE #1 (Order by 10/26)
DEFENDERS: THE BEST DEFENSE #1 (Order by 11/2)
SEASON'S BEATINGS #1 (Order by 11/2)
SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #1 (Order by 11/2)
X-FORCE #1 (Order by 11/2)

However, what I am noticing now is fewer and fewer retailers taking advantage of the situation for Marvel. DC Comics who do one of these every several months get a lot of attention, but Marvel which has between a dozen and half a dozen every month find plenty not being taken up at all…

Time to rework this particular promotional activity?

Here's one of the rarer recently taken up covers…