With these reviews, we find out how right or how wrong we were, what we missed and what you can likely still find at cover price, likely at the local comic shop or at online retailers.
June 2019 has come and gone. Let’s dive into the top ten to start this review to cover from June.
- Black Cat #1 – 255,709
- Dceased #2 (of 6) – 152,407
- Silver Surfer Black #1 (of 5) – 129,490
- Batman Damned #3 (of 3) – 115,414
- Batman Who Laughs #6 – 98,535
- Amazing Spider-Man #24 – 89,641
- Immortal Hulk #19 – 88,100
- Walking Dead #192 – 85,700
- Batman #73 – 81,919
- Batman #72 – 80,585
Walking Dead ended and it’s final issues cracked the top ten once again. We’ll likely see the final issue #193 crack the top ten next month as well.
Here’s my final farewell to the Walking Dead. You are the reason I’m writing this right now and the primary reason that got back into comics back in early 2013. While searching for other things besides Walking Dead to read, I stumbled upon CHU a few months after it was launched to seek out what to pick up and read. The rest is history, been bugging Anthony ever since..
Black Cat #1 saw huge numbers, thanks to the Wal-Mart bundles apparently and the bazillion variant covers across multiple outlets.
Now onto the highlights from June. These will mostly include books we spec’d on and or books that are likely sold out (not necessarily sold out at Diamond but at retailers).
June 5th
Category Zero #1 had a reported print run of 2,661 and was out from Scout Comics. Selling out online originally within about a week, it is now showing online at some online retailers.
This one heated up very briefly, hitting peaks at around $12 for the regular cover. There’s a limited 300 print variant that was seeing sales around the $25 range and an Ashcan variant reaching around the same range.
Over a month has passed and it’s now a cover price book, since Midtown shows in stock. The most recent sold as an auction went for a whopping $0.99 cents with 1 bid. Maybe skip Midtown and find it cheap on the secondary.
Deadpool #13 Adi Granov Marvel 25th Anniversary Variant was the Marvel book from this week. Not a whole lot else was popping (As Anthony describes books that heat up).
Beautiful cover, but it would have likely been a whole lot more successful on an Avengers titled book.
On a good day this one might fetch $8 to $10. Most listings are ending up around the cover price range. There is also a exclusive virgin variant that seems to be selling around the $25 dollar range. If you can find those, might be the one to own if you really want this for the personal collection.
This book had an overall print run of 39, 798 so knowing the exact number of this variant is an unknown.
The Walking Dead #192 is the book that ended it all. The death of Rick Grimes.
Sales are all over the place as this one had a blank variant as well, with sales still hovering around the $10 mark on a good day. I think most readers were thinking the series was going to continue but then came the bombshell that issue 193 was the last, all other pre-orders were just solicits to throw everyone off.
You can still find Walking Dead #192 at Midtown slightly above cover. You may find these at your local shop as well. But I wouldn’t go heavy on these if you do find them. It’s the end of a long run and with that, some will move on so expect declining interest from this point on.
June 12th
Excellence #1 2nd Print likely wouldn’t have made this list but since the news from SDCC, this book has seen some heat now.
Not a lot of data yet for this one but in the past few days the first print has been a solid $15 to $20 book on a good day. Now the 2nd print variant is seeing on average of $10 for most sold listings.
Grab’em if you can find them. They’re still out there. I hit up a local shop here in Austin and they had plenty available in their stack of #1, regular and B cover with a few second prints.
Silver Surfer Black #1 had a huge print run. Most of the covers are still available but it seems the winners so far were the Parel Variant and then the Adi Granov Comicspro variant.
The Parel Variant is sold out at most retailers but it’s just a slight winner as it’s selling for around the retailers listed price of $10 to $15 on average. Unless you got this one for cover, that’s the only way this one is a real winner.
The Comicspro Variant variant was available at Midtown for cover and is seeing sales from $6 to $10 on a good day. Now sold out, I think long term this is the winner as I think it’s the best cover art.
That covers the fist part of June 2019. Not a whole lot to report on as it was some smaller spec weeks. Hopefully we see a bit more action in Part II that’s coming soon.
I’m dumbfounded that shops ordered so heavy on Black Cat. Did anyone read it? And of those who did, which ones are sticking around for issue #2?
Part of that huge print run was due to some Walmart bundle with the Comic from what I read.
You know what I saw the other day? Some of the Walmart 100 pg giants bundled with other rebirth reprints.
Haven’t seen any of the black cats…must be bundled up so you can’t see it from the outside…?
Black Cat’s numbers aren’t that high for a Marvel #1 issue with a lot of variants, significant store discounts and a lot of variant covers to chase that require buying a bunch to qualify. Return of Wolverine 260,000, FF1 368,000, ASM 1 289,000,ASM 800 411,000, Venom 1 225,000,ASM 798 233,000 and ASM799 192,000 just in the last two years. It looks in the ball park for what other key Spider-Man family books have done and that Art Germ Virgin Variant was worth chasing a couple hundred extra to bring in for those who really wanted it which has happened a few times with the Black Cat variants for ASM in the last year or so. Maybe they’ll leak how many Walmart got if they did but most of the bulk standard covers purchased to chase the variants are destined for cheap box fodder eventually anyway unless something big happened in the issue I haven’t heard about.
DCeased 2 is still in stock at Diamond right now and has been shipping comics all month so that total number should increase closer to what #1 had once Diamond sells out. I think I’ve bought about 70 or so that invoiced this month which will not show until next months chart.
Silver Surfer Black’s number’s include the Second Printing that invoiced the same month. I don’t know how many that one was but I cancelled most of my 1st Printings to wait a week for the Spoiler cover Second so it would have worked out about the same with only one printing I image. Second Printing is still getting 3 to 5 times cover price sales this weekend.
Deadpool 13 Adi Granov I bought a nice stack of but they’ve remained unsellable here at cover price. Maybe the tv show will eventually get them moving. I loved the cover myself.
Black Cat’s huge print likely normal for bigger name Marvel characters but I don’t think Black Cat is up there yet with Wolverine, FF, Spider-man and such.. She’s mostly a support player in the Spider-Man world so I’m guessing if Wally World ordered variants for their bundles, that’s the reason this one went over the 200k mark. We’ll never know how many Wal-Mart ordered but considering a quick google search found there’s likely around 4729 total Walmarts in U.S. Let’s just say for fun each Walmart ordered 10 copies of Black Cat for each store, we’re looking at close to 47k just for Walmart and that’s being very conservative I think.
As for if it’s any good (Black Cat), I haven’t read it but one shop worker told me it was pretty good.
Silver Surfer’s second print came out later in June so I’ll cover it then in Part II.
The problem with the Deadpool 13 Granov variant is, the cover has nothing to do with Deadpool. So you likely had Deadpool fans/readers skip over it for the regular and then you had the likely small amount of Vision/Witch fans go after the Granov variant. It likely would have done better if it was on an Avengers cover. Sticking it on a Deadpool book is just pretty damn silly if you ask me.
DCeased will be a dollar bin book when the entire series ends (even if it is a good read), just like most DC big event books. Anyone remember Convergence with their ratio variants? I was able to snag most of them at cover price and I couldn’t even give them away… I think I even did penny auctions and they got no bids.. it was quite pathetic.
To quote comichron: “Dozens of variants exist, including one that was sold to Marvel’s Walmart bundler.”