I'm a little surprised that nothing has been said about Marvel's recent solicitation for several "unknown" or "mystery" variants for supposed Secret Invasion tie-ins (I say supposed since they include Amazing Spider-Girl).  Marvel is making variants for several titles, mostly poor sellers, without telling retailers what's on the cover, who's doing the art and, the kicker, what the ratio will be for these variants.

I guess I'm the only one who finds this frustrating and offensive.  I'm just supposed to blindly increase my orders on poor sellers to maybe get a variant that might be good that I can sell to one of my devoted variant purchasing customers?  What if I order 50 more copies of one of these books and the variants turn into 1-in-75?  I'm stuck with tons of books I never would have ordered, that's what.  And what else is sad is that my voiced concerns to both Diamond and Marvel went unacknowledged.

So yes, I am taking the simple way out; I'm not increasing my orders for any of the titles Marvel is doing this for.  In fact, we are boycotting all of those titles from shelf stock at all of our locations effective immediately and indefinitely (we will always fill customer orders). 

I will not be a part of, or endorse, any sort of ridiculous sales pitch that potentially leaves the retailer hanging and prevents us from providing any sort of service to the customers who are loyal purchasers of variants.  If Marvel doesn't want to help me sell their books, I don't want to sell their books.  I think one of our customers said it best when he described the order policy like this; "it's like playing pin-the-tail on the donkey and sending you into a football field to do so...where there may or may not even be a donkey to pin a tail to... and that donkey, if found, may turn out to be a hyena with a broken leg."

I've copied the Marvel solicitation below for reference:

There will be Secret Variants on several April and May titles, similar to the Captain Marvel #4 Secret Variant. These variants can not be ordered and will be shipped along with the regular cover. The ratios that the variants will be collated into the regular covers at will not be announced and the covers will not be shown before the on-sale date. The titles receiving these variants are:

 

NEW EXILES #4 (FEB082274, $2.99, On-Sale - 4/2/2008)

YOUNG X-MEN #1 (FEB082264, $2.99, On-Sale - 4/2/2008)

AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #19 (FEB082211, $2.99, On-Sale - 4/9/2008)

GHOST RIDER #22 (FEB082225, $2.99,On-Sale - 4/16/2008)

UNCANNY X-MEN #497 (FEB082261, $2.99, FOC - 4/3/2008)

BLACK PANTHER 36 (FEB082217, $2.99, FOC - 4/10/2008)

CABLE #3 (MAR082229, $2.99, FOC - 4/17/2008)

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