Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, john cassaday, Marvel Comics, Mike Federali, pascal campion, Star Wars #1, Tidewater Comicon, variants

Star Wars: The Variant Strikes Back

Published Fri, 23 Jan 2015 21:00:00 -0600

by Hannah Means Shannon

Comments

By Mike Federali

On May 16-17 of this year, Tidewater Comicon will be holding it's first ever two day event at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. The space has expanded from 37,500 square feet to 100,000 square feet. It's a big leap and to make it all possible I thought we'd do a fundraiser with the hottest comic around, the new Star Wars #1.

I'm not a great artist, but I made a sketch and sent it into Marvel for consideration. To my utter SHOCK they said yes and after a whole lot of jumping through hoops (Marvel, Disney, Lucasfilm) the show had it's first convention exclusive. Star Wars #1 would really put our show on the map and give fans something special to take away from the show.

Weeks went by and the books arrived looking MAGNIFICENT thanks to the immensely talented Pascal Campion. We didn't want to go crazy with the price but we also wanted to have a good budget for the show so we settled on $20. Enough to get some great comic creators like Chad Hardin, Kevin Maguire, Ron Marz, and media guests like Sam Witwer, Sam Huntington, and Kelly Hu out to a town that LOVES comic book culture but had been missing it's own show for about 20 years.

We put aside some for VIPs of the show, some for purchase at the show, and some for the local area and other conventions where we would be promoting. We didn't want the headache of shipping so we released a handful to some local shops.

That's where things go Lady GaGa.

A few people started flipping their books online. Totally their right to do, but not really in the spirit of building up a fan created, fan run convention. In the morning there were some at $19 and $24, by the afternoon $34 and $50, and by the evening we started hearing rumors of $65-75. When I saw it for myself I was dumbstruck.

With over a million plus copies of Star Wars #1 out there and only 3,000 of our Tidewater Comicon covers that puts us somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1 in 3,000 (or higher) variant. Which makes it hard to get, but not impossible. Certainly not $75 rare. What made it worse was that a few of the people selling them didn't actually HAVE the comics in hand.

It's at that point I wanted to force choke people. But, I didn't. Instead I shut off the computer and did something that made me happy… I sat down and READ THE COMIC BOOK! It was a fun story and a great escape. I love how Cassaday got Han Solo's face exactly right. I love that Luke Skywalker was wearing the yellow jacket from the medal ceremony. I love that Jason Aaron wrote in Chewbacca trying to take out Darth Vader sniper style. I love that I got to be a part of the Star Wars universe in some small way.

So to sum up: If you'd like to support Tidewater Comicon please come check out our show and get our convention exclusive of Star Wars #1. If you get it elsewhere, please don't pay too much for it. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than on eBay. We must be cautious.

Mike Federali is the organizer for Tidewater Comicon and always let's the wookie win.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!