On REBORN (update 2)

Happy birthday to me! (No, really, it is my birthday -- and yet I'm working. What's up with that?)

Just for a quick follow up: The New York Daily News has now run the story that REBORN #1 is, in fact, the return of Steve Rogers. (It also doesn't say anything about CAPTAIN AMERICA #600, out this week, ah well)

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That's me waiting for the phone to ring.

Yeah, not going to happen -- resurrections just don't pack the same punch that deaths do.

At the end of the day, Marvel decided to fuck with retailers in the hope that news would break big. That doesn't seem to have happened.

The shame of it is that if they had told us this at point of initial solicitation I could have played it up in store, I could have gathered subs and interest and preorders, and I would have had a stronger order placed because there would have been excitement about the "how" of it.

Now, not so much.

I'll sell plenty of copies, I'm sure -- but not "Civil War" plenty or "Secret Invasion" plenty, or, most certainly, not "Spider-Man and Obama big". Or even "Death of Captain America" big.

I feel bad for those retailers who bought/are buying the book at any of those kinds of "big" levels, BUT THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET A PUBLISHER "GAME" THE SYSTEM.

At the end of the day YOUR orders determine what publishers do. If you automagically buy 10% more copies of a book to get that 1:10 variant cover, you're guaranteed they will do more and more variant covers. If you order blindly on the HOPE that there's a story published in the news, AND that that story will have meaning and resonance with the general public, then they're going to continue to do that, as well.

Just something to think about.

-B

(Oooh, seconds before I was about to hit "post" I got a call asking for CAP #600. As near as I can tell, no one in town bit on the early shipping thing? Anyway, he didn't sound like a civ, though I didn't interrogate him or anything)