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What Happens When You Get A Retailer Exclusive Cover For Babyteeth #1?

Published Thu, 29 Jun 2017 11:00:28 -0500

Rick Shea & Sam Smith of Famous Faces & Funnies write,

With his star on the rise after the giant success of God Country and Redneck, Donny Cates is on his way to becoming the next giant writer. Some comic writers work their whole career without ever having that buzzworthy series or run on a book, but Donny is already becoming a giant name in the industry with one hit book after another. Not only is he knocking it out of the park with incredible stories, fleshed out characters and clever dialogue but he's also between six and twelve months ahead of his deadlines on all his books, which is always the true mark of a professional who has a long term plan for all his comics. Garry Brown might be doing the best work of his career as the perfect artist to fit the tone of this series. Garry is doing an incredible job of letting the art reveal subtle little things that you might miss if you're not giving every panel your full attention.

Bottom line- we've sold hundreds of copies of Babyteeth #1 in the last few weeks, and I don't think it's for one specific reason. We certainly believe in the book, that's for sure. We were able to read a PDF advanced copy of the first two issues long before its release or FOC. We all said the same thing: "Wow!" Donny Cates is definitely the new writer to watch; at this point, most of us at FFF will read whatever book has his name on it much like we feel about longtime shop favorites, Brian K. Vaughan, Geoff Johns or Robert Kirkman. It was a book that grabbed all of us, and we felt like it was something that we could all recommend with the same ease as we recommend Walking Dead or Saga. We don't tout every comic as the next big thing. We carefully pick and choose what we really throw all our support into. It helps us build up reliability and trust with our customers; if we're THIS excited about something, they realize they probably should be too.

Having our very first store exclusive variant for Babyteeth #1 after 23 years in business certainly helped too. It's a great marketing tool and a piece of Famous Faces history that we can share with customers in our own backyard and comic fans around the globe. We pushed the book, and our cover hard in store and across our social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Every time we made a new post about it, the top comments were all people asking us to hold a copy, or inquiring what the buzz was and THEN asking us to hold a copy.

Aftershock Comics Publishing Operations Manager Stephan Nilson has gone above and beyond to help make our first ever store exclusive variant cover run so smoothly. Stephan was a customer at our his store during his college days and now he's working for Aftershock. What a small world. When he informed me that Aftershock does print runs as low as 300 copies on exclusive covers, we were happy to jump on board to put that extra level of support behind a book that we knew would be the next giant book. After all the variant covers and all the buzz around the book, Aftershock understandably printed a decent amount over what was ordered, but both of the main covers are almost sold out at Diamond, and when those last few copies get picked up by retailers, I expect the eBay frenzy for this book to really begin. I think this book has a real long tail and will be a great seller for me and any retailer who gave this comic a push. Almost everyone who read issue 1 added it to their list and Babyteeth is already my highest subscribed book right now, ahead of Saga, Walking Dead, Paper Girls and Batman!

I expect almost everyone who picked up issue one from us to return for issue 2. When the story is that good right from the beginning, it's easy to hook people. Half of my staff thinks issue 2 is stronger than issue 1. We're happy to tell people about the book, why we like it and the team behind it; yet, at the end of the day, the book really speaks for itself. In an industry often crowded with cheap "gotcha" comics, events, retcons and so on, sometimes all it takes to please an audience (and in turn, sell a whole lot of comics) is a really good story. This story just happens to be about a teenage girl and her devil baby. We hope you're enjoying Babyteeth as much as we are. If you have any interest in our store variant by series artist Garry Brown for only $9.99, you can check out the link below. If you haven't checked out the series yet, I highly recommend you pick it up at your local store for cover price while you still can. If they're sold out, let them know there's still a few copies in stock at Diamond for at least a little longer, so please ask them to reorder you a copy. You won't regret it.