Posted in: Comics, san diego comic con | Tagged: andrew hussie, boom, Comics, entertainment, homestuck, Midas Flesh

Speculation Corner: Variant Cover For Midas Flesh #8 About To Skyrocket (UPDATE)

Peter S. Svensson writes for Bleeding Cool. Midas Flesh #8 ships tomorrow from Boom!

No one has it available on eBay. Boom didn't talk it up in Previews, nor did any of the creators involved actually mention it was coming. But today, a variant cover is being released that went totally under the radar and is likely to be worth way more than anyone ever expected.

Midas Flesh #8 has a 1:20 variant by Andrew Hussie. Okay, now you're asking who is this Andrew Hussie guy, and what is this "Midas Flesh #8" anyways?

Midas Flesh is one of those rare comics that manages to balance being all-ages appropriate with being a fun comic that adults can thoroughly enjoy and love. It's a sci-fi story that follows three teenagers as they explore the mystery of a planet where everything turned into gold, because of one man's curse. The eight-issue miniseries concludes tomorrow, and every issue has had a variant by a popular webcomic artist. Ryan North, who is probably still better known for Dinosaur Comics, and his run as the writer of Boom's Adventure Time, writes it, and has gotten many of his webcomic community friends to contribute variants. (Thanks to webcomic enthusiast, editor Shannon Watters, who is now probably my favorite editor in the business in terms of publishing the quirky humor and fun comics that I eat with a spoon.)

Mini-series don't sell very well in this current environment, and while Midas Flesh is a fantastic book, and made it to second printings for a few issues, it's still flying under the radar for most stores. Ordering 20 copies of a book when a store only sells five copies is a hard thing to do, so the variants for the later issues aren't being as published. Okay, so you have half an explanation at

Let me tell you about Homestuck. (Sorry, I had to phrase it that way.) Homestuck is probably the most popular web-comic/music/video/fic/blog/thing on the internet. Have you been to a convention in the past few years and seen a bunch of kids in grey make-up with horns, or androgynous looking blonde kids with sunglasses and red/white t-shirts? That's Homestuck. The kickstarter that Andrew Hussie did for a videogame based on his webcomic made about $2.5 million dollars, with 24,356 contributors. That's insane numbers for this industry.

The numbers he gets on his webcomic, Homestuck, which is vaguely about a group of teenagers who get sucked into a video game world and also become kinda/sorta gods and get involved in tons of angsty romances over the fate of the cosmos, are ridiculous. This is by far the most popular English-language comic, and no one knows about it. See, that's the issue here. There's an entire community who make fan art, and compose music, and cosplay and spend a great deal of money on fan works based on this comic, who if they find out there's a rare comic with a cover drawn by their beloved creator, could drop tons of money into it. Putting this into perspective, 132 fans spent $1,000 on the Homestuck kickstarter, while two were devoted enough to spend $10,000. It is possible that this variant, if people realized it existed, could sell on eBay for hundreds.

But for now, there are no copies listed for sale. No Homestuck fans know that this horribly undermarketed print comic exists, and no comic retailers had any clue that this print comic had a cover by the most popular webcomic creator out there. Given the numbers that Midas Touch has, it doesn't even place in the top 300 comics Diamond sells. Which is a pity, it's a fantastic book with female leads! Sci-fi action! Spaceships and ancient Greece and one of the characters is a DINOSAUR!

But with sales that low, it's very likely that this variant is going to be one of the rarest of 2014.

And today, some retailer is going to read this, and hopefully discover that the quirky EC cover homage variant might be worth a lot to the right person. I expect to see this cover go for crazy numbers at Comic Con.

Peter S. Svensson will be reporting for Bleeding Cool throughout Comic Con, and will be competing in the Pro/Fan Trivia Contest on Sunday, at 4:00 PM. Man, he loves Gatorade.

Rich adds: $17 at Midtown Comics…

UPDATE (And now sold out)

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