The Energon Pub

So I've done a bit of thinking lately with you know being a little angry at how idw handles the comic licence and the numerous changes in direction and I remembered something I had you know, forgotten.
And I came to a realisation, does idw cheat with their sales figures to artificially increase the numbers?

Most of us know that the -tion story arcs sold a lot of copies each issue around the 45K mark a number AHM can only dream about. Also the Spotlights never really sold as much as the main series as they where you know mostly just side stories.

But I remembered something just today that used to annoy me, and I mean really annoy me back when I first started reading the comics and that was- different comic covers.

Each issue has at least 2 different covers to choose from and back during the -tion run an issue would have at least 4 covers to choose from, not counting rare, exclusives or special covers you had to earn by spending a certain amount of money on comic titles.

Infiltration #0 had for retail covers, a BotCon, a retailer incentive and 2 super rare ones of which I had just recently heard, in fact every issue of Infiltration had 7 covers! And those where the ones they told you about on the last page of the comic.

I know that I tried collecting all the Infiltration #0 covers but stopped when I learned of the head shots of Prime and Megatron which go for silly money.

I'm pretty sure that if idw would only have one cover for each issue, the sales prices would be drastically different. I'm pretty sure that the comics don't actually have as many readers as idw might make us think or ever had, I'm pretty certain most sales have to do with people buying all covers after all we are collectors and a lot of collectors are completists.

What#s your opinion on this?

It's not the first time we've seen this in comics. Hell, Dreamwave did that as well with Autobot/Decepticon variants.

I believe that comic publishers bank on collector's to pick up all the variants. Though I'm sure in these economic days, comic readers would just pick their favorite cover.

Plus, it's ultimately the retailers to decide how many copies of books their ordering. If a store wants 10 copies of Transformers, they're going to order 5 of each covers hoping to satisfy their customers. If there were no variants available, they probably still order 10 copies.

Supreme Convoy wrote: Hell, Dreamwave did that as well with Autobot/Decepticon variants.

And look what happened to them.

Here's my two cents, garnered from my prior time working in Comic Shops.

The multiple cover trend started really in the mid nineties, when Marvel started throwing out 5+ covers for X-men #1 (the Jim Lee run prior to the IMAGE exodus) after watching people hunt for differnt printings of Mcfarland's run on Spider-man. This got worse when the guys after forming IMAGE (Independantly Minded Artists Generating Excitment = ) brought out all the extra covers/foil logo covers/retailer incentive covers/Ashcan editions and others, knowing that it costs less to put out 5 copies of the same book then to produce 5 different books. Which brought in more funds to help them with their start-up endeavor.

That's nice and thanks for the history lesson, Editor, but shall we fast-forward to now?

Does this inflate the numbers? Yes and No.
Yes - Because this action will move more units as reflected by the multiple copies of the same books that may exist in my/your/anyones collections.
No - Because this is nothing new, and if you found a way to figure what the retail numbers should be (eg one person buying one cover = 1, DM buying 7 covers for the same book = 1) then not only will that effect IDW, but almost every comic company out there and it would effect their numbers over the past 20 years.

Fine but answer the question. Are they Cheating?
What it comes down to, is that IDW and all the other companies know that people will buy multiple covers, and will continue to all long as the market exists for it.

Taking advantage of fans? Yes.
Can you feel cheated? Yes.
A potential waste of resources? Definitely.

However as this has been a common industry practice for a while, seeing the content contained within is the same, and the tracking is based on that, then as long as you buy it, then no, they aren't cheating.

Editor wrote:Here's my two cents, garnered from my prior time working in Comic Shops.

The multiple cover trend started really in the mid nineties, when Marvel started throwing out 5+ covers for X-men #1 (the Jim Lee run prior to the IMAGE exodus) after watching people hunt for differnt printings of Mcfarland's run on Spider-man. This got worse when the guys after forming IMAGE (Independantly Minded Artists Generating Excitment = ) brought out all the extra covers/foil logo covers/retailer incentive covers/Ashcan editions and others, knowing that it costs less to put out 5 copies of the same book then to produce 5 different books. Which brought in more funds to help them with their start-up endeavor.

That's nice and thanks for the history lesson, Editor, but shall we fast-forward to now?

Does this inflate the numbers? Yes and No.
Yes - Because this action will move more units as reflected by the multiple copies of the same books that may exist in my/your/anyones collections.
No - Because this is nothing new, and if you found a way to figure what the retail numbers should be (eg one person buying one cover = 1, DM buying 7 covers for the same book = 1) then not only will that effect IDW, but almost every comic company out there and it would effect their numbers over the past 20 years.

Fine but answer the question. Are they Cheating?
What it comes down to, is that IDW and all the other companies know that people will buy multiple covers, and will continue to all long as the market exists for it.

Taking advantage of fans? Yes.
Can you feel cheated? Yes.
A potential waste of resources? Definitely.

However as this has been a common industry practice for a while, seeing the content contained within is the same, and the tracking is based on that, then as long as you buy it, then no, they aren't cheating.

I never knew this was so old a trend, I was really just introduced to this whole multiple covers but same content with idw's Infiltration #0, I knew that there where special covers for a few titles but never that there would be so many. The only special covers I ever knew about where second printing covers and special covers for very special occasions.
but that must have to do with me living in Germany. Panini comics, who publish almost everything (Marvel, DC, Image, etc they also just keep buying other German publishers whenever they feel board) very rarely produces a secondary cover, like a comic store exclusive cover for comic stores when they introduced a Spider-Man series that added nothing to the main cannon and was actually also pretty bad, the only other instances are rare covers for comic conventions, that is when they decide that making that particular comic a convention exclusive limited to 999 copies (like Hous of M Iron Man, why did I buy this?, or Ghost Rider #5 & #6 ) would be too evil, and those are just really rare instances.
And as for comic cover collecting, I never tried with anything past Infiltration #0, the only double issues but different covers in my collection are a few TF comics due to my supplier getting confused and giving my those instead of another TF title, which is why I had to hunt down BW Ascending #4, Infiltration #5, Devastation #3, but I never bothered with getting HOS #1 and #3.

No worries DM, I did forget that being where you are that the system (Panini handling production/distribution) is a bit different, and I'm not quite sure how IDW (and the other companies) count those international editions against the original solicitations thru Diamond, The usual source for production/sales numbers for the industry.

But the basis does stay the same. I hope that the above does help thou.

Editor wrote:No worries DM, I did forget that being where you are that the system (Panini handling production/distribution) is a bit different, and I'm not quite sure how IDW (and the other companies) count those international editions against the original solicitations thru Diamond, The usual source for production/sales numbers for the industry.

But the basis does stay the same. I hope that the above does help thou.

Oh no the only idw titles I've ever seen in Germany are CSI and Terminator Salvation. All of my TF comics where ordered though a comic store in the UK (I know I had them imported to the UK and then to Germany ) well that was till my order was killed for reasons to stupid to believe (meaning that I said to cancel MArvel's dark Tower and just that, oh family) and then my usual German comic store managed to import them for me starting with AHM, which was a hard time getting rid off later.
All the stress I had to take due to idw's bad international service, receiving Max dinos #1 together with #2 a week before issue 3 should hit stores, #3 together with #4 a month late, and their "stores didn't order early enough bullsh+t doesn't work as I ordered the series 3 months in advance. But AHM they managed to deliver on time, they never had problems supplying me with my least favourite comic, even after I had cancelled it, but I'm still waiting on Ghostbusters The other side #3 & #4.

Oh and yes your above is very helpful and informative!

I think it's pretty much become a common tread for newly all comics these days.

The recently released Green Hornet from Dynamite had TEN different covers, even though half of them were just black and white varients.

Then you have some issues that "sell out" and have subsequent 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc printings so they take the chance to release additional covers then. Though frankly I suspect some of those that sell out are just talked up by the companies so they can churn out these additional covers.

I don't consider it cheating. It's a very viable way to increase sales from a marketing and sales perspective. I used to collect all of the covers but I stopped doing that long away and now just try to collect the same style of covers within a series or run of books.

If this is cheating, repaints are cheating also.

I think i would call it marketing instead, god i hate exclusive variant stuff that is not even rare unless it's like 1:100.

Depends how they want to look at the numbers:

How many issues sold versus how many individuals bought 1-20 of the same issue to get all the different covers.

Yes they would be different numbers but I think being a company they are worried about both kinds of numbers, but mostly just the 'how many sold in total' number.

IE, How much money did this comic make us? How can we use this to look at trends over a certain sales period? What could effect this trend?

I am sure they constantly ask themselves these questions. As long as it is still making them money, and shows that it should stay that way, I believe they will look at the numbers however they NEED to.