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January's 32 Variant Covers For Star Wars – But Will Your Store Be Able To Get Them All?

STWARS2015001_CHRISTOPHER_PARTY_varTerry Hoknes of HoknesComics.com writes,

I was six years old in Grade 1 when Star Wars debuted in theaters in 1977. So Star Wars is possibly the most important franchise/concept in my life. So very excited to see Star Wars back at Marvel.

However their new slogan is "Welcome Home" which I think is a bit funny since it was Marvel's decision to stop publishing Star Wars comics completely back in 1986 as sales had dropped fairly low. The series lasted 107 issues. #107 is very valuable now as the last issue that also had the smallest print run. Those facts are true but note that #104-107 are almost the same small print run. The print run in 1986 was 65,000 copies for the final issue. Marvel's average comic sales must have been fairly impressive to cancel a title with 65,000 considered a failure. In 2014 a print run of 65,000 would now make a title about the #6 best selling ongoing Marvel title and would be considered a great success.

So in January 2015 Marvel brings the series back after Dark Horse had the license for 23 amazing years.

In usual Marvel fanfare they are really hyping up the new series with 13 covers for the new #1 issue. The print run is going to be very high for this book and will be interesting to see if this book ever goes up in value or not. But a sellout is likely as Amazing Spider-Man #1 sold out 550,000 copies in 2014. 

But Marvel is also releasing 19 more superhero titles in January that pay tribute to Star Wars including issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men. These are all 1:20 ratio variants meaning that comic stores have to order 20 copies of the regular cover just to qualify to order 1 copy of the Star Wars variant.

This is a great bonus for large comic stores or chains that will qualify for many of these. But the small comic store will have a time qualifying for any of these. Since the majority of the nineteen regular superhero comics are just average issues with nothing special about them, there is no reason for stores to up their orders. So if they can only sell ten copies of Daredevil a month its not likely they will bump up their order to twenty to qualify for just one of these comics.

So its going to be very interesting to see what happens with the secondary market of these I covers. Surely demand will be higher than the print runs but of course will depend on how great the cover art is.

Comic stores have to place their orders for these variants by November 29th and yet Marvel has not shown retailers the cover art for any of these comics guaranteeing some stores are not going to take chances on them.

So which nineteen comics get a Star Wars themed variant cover? And which is the rarest?

The following chart ranks the best selling ongoing Marvel comic books from October 1014 to give us a rough estimate of popularity and print runs.

I have placed a YES in front of the titles that will have a Star Wars variant. So its logical to believe that Thor and Amazing Spider-Man will both have possibly the largest print runs.

Daredevil and Amazing X-Men will likely have the smallest print runs.

There is also an unknown factor that seven new titles listed at the bottom will also have Star Wars variants so we have no idea what the print runs are likely to be but I would bet they are all higher than the 32,000 print run of Amazing X-Men. Wolverines #1 is likely to have the highest print run of all the Star Wars variants.

Out of Marvel's 60 ongoing titles its not clear why they chose the 19 titles that they did but they have one thing in common. They are all fairly popular – Marvel did not choose any of their really weak selling titles.

  • YES 3 Thor 1 $3.99 Marvel 150862
  • YES 7 Amazing Spider-Man 7 $3.99 Marvel 116051
  • 14 Captain America 25 $4.99 Marvel 74183
  • YES 20 Guardians of Galaxy 20 $3.99 Marvel 61072
  • YES 21 All New X-Men 33 $3.99 Marvel 60032
  • 22 Guardians 3000 1 $3.99 Marvel 58574
  • YES 23 Uncanny X-Men 27 $3.99 Marvel 57908
  • YES 24 Rocket Raccoon 4 $3.99 Marvel 57830
  • YES 26 Avengers 36 $3.99 Marvel 56771
  • 47 Hawkeye Vs Deadpool 1 $3.99 Marvel 47983
  • 48 Death of Wolverine Deadpool and Captain America 1 $4.99 Marvel 47956
  • 50 Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier 1 $3.99 Marvel 47471
  • 51 Death of Wolverine Logan Legacy 3 $3.99 Marvel 47265
  • YES 52 Deadpool 36 $3.99 Marvel 46600
  • 56 Deathlok 1 $3.99 Marvel 43991
  • YES 59 New Avengers 25 $3.99 Marvel 42979
  • 62 Spider-Man 2099 5 $3.99 Marvel 40880
  • YES 71 Legendary Star Lord 4 $3.99 Marvel 37123
  • 81 Hulk 7 $3.99 Marvel 35084
  • YES 85 Daredevil 9 $3.99 Marvel 33996
  • 88 Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man 6 $3.99 Marvel 33057
  • 89 X-Men 20 $3.99 Marvel 33004
  • YES 90 Amazing X-Men 12 $3.99 Marvel 32966
  • 91 Ms Marvel 9 $2.99 Marvel 32915
  • 93 Moon Knight 8 $3.99 Marvel 32434
  • 95 Magneto 11 $3.99 Marvel 31642
  • 99 Inhuman 7 $3.99 Marvel 29903
  • 101 Punisher 11 $3.99 Marvel 28710
  • 102 Wolverine and X-Men 11 $3.99 Marvel 28121
  • 104 Silver Surfer 6 $3.99 Marvel 28052
  • 107 Fantastic Four 11 $3.99 Marvel 26938
  • 114 Loki Agent of Asgard 7 $3.99 Marvel 25430
  • 120 Black Widow 11 $3.99 Marvel 23922
  • 123 Nightcrawler 7 $3.99 Marvel 23379
  • 127 Nova 22 $3.99 Marvel 22485
  • 128 All New X-Factor 15 $3.99 Marvel 22240
  • 132 She-Hulk 9 $2.99 Marvel 21418
  • 136 Avengers World 14 $3.99 Marvel 21095
  • 137 Men of Wrath By Jason Aaron 1 $3.50 Marvel 20927
  • 141 Captain Marvel 8 $3.99 Marvel 20692
  • 142 X-Force 10 $3.99 Marvel 20539
  • 143 Thunderbolts 32 $2.99 Marvel 20414
  • 147 Cyclops 6 $3.99 Marvel 20115
  • 148 Storm 4 $3.99 Marvel 19862
  • 151 Savage Hulk 5 $3.99 Marvel 19351
  • 153 Secret Avengers 9 $3.99 Marvel 18974
  • 156 All New Ghost Rider 8 $3.99 Marvel 17907
  • 168 All New Invaders 11 $3.99 Marvel 16711
  • 175 Superior Foes of Spider-Man 16 $3.99 Marvel 15304
  • 177 Elektra 7 $3.99 Marvel 15021
  • 179 All New Ultimates 9 $3.99 Marvel 14917
  • 181 Miracleman 11 $4.99 Marvel 14824
  • 189 New Warriors 11 $3.99 Marvel 14026
  • YES All New Captain America 3
  • YES Angela Asgards Assassin 2
  • YES Ant-Man 1
  • YES Shield 2
  • YES Superior Iron Man 4
  • YES Uncanny Avengers 1
  • YES Wolverines 1

So what is likely the print run of these variants?

Amazing X-Men having a 32,000 print run with a 1:20 ratio variant will likely be 1,600 copies – thats roughly 1 copy per comic store. Wolverines #1 which will likely hit over 100,000 copies could have up to 6,000 copies printed.

The regular ongoing Star Wars #1 will have a bunch of great variants even including a 1:500 ratio variant.

Its not likely that even 10% of stores will order one of those. So the print run could be as low as 200 copies for the world's rarest mainstream Star Wars comic ever printed.

January's 32 Variant Covers For Star Wars – But Will Your Store Be Able To Get Them All?Marvel asked retailers if they would like their own exclusive variant cover but demand a print run of at least 3,000 copies so only the biggest comic chains are going to touch this one…

Thanks to John Jackson Miller at www.comichron.com for the initial Diamond sales figures data, I am always happy to hear your comments and thoughts/criticisms on any of my posts.

Terry Hoknes (author) of Hoknes Comics loves analyzing statistics and watching the growth and fall of comic titles over a period of time. He sells all of the latest hot back issue secondary market new comics and all new Diamond products at www.HoknesComics.com and also self-publishes a series of books called "Investing In Comic Books" that focus on the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages of comics.


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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