The retailer’s fault?  The retailer’s fault?  Ed Sherman, you need to stop taking whatever it is you are taking.  There is no way this is the retailer’s fault, in any way or on any level.  And who the heck are you to dump all retailers in the “rip-off” category.  Many of us use the variant covers as rewards for our best customers, letting them buy the books at cover price.  In my store, when I charge more than cover for a variant, it only occurs when there is huge pre-release demand for the variant or a high ratio of copies needed to order to receive the variant.  Instead of limiting the first print Obama Amazing Spider-Man’s, Marvel should have made them available in unlimited quantities.  Retailers would have had a nice extra bit of change in their coffers and Marvel would have made a ton of extra money as well.  That would have been the way to go.

If you read my last op-ed, you know I don’t think there’s much of a life expectancy left for the industry anyway. Marvel is leading the way to our demise.  I’ll only repeat one thing here that I said last time -- it is only because of the retailers and our customers that there are any stores left at all.  When a company opts to sell as few books as possible instead of as many books as possible, what else can you expect.

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