Jim Hanley of Jim Hanley's Universe (it's his universe, we only live in it) in New York City saw the comment by Dave Autzen of Reader's Choice suggesting that Marvel variant covers be automatically distributed to retailers based on their draws for the title (see 'Dave Autzen of Reader's Choice on Ordering Variants') and suggests a more flexible policy:
Regarding Dave Autzen's comments asking Marvel to automatically ship variants, it should be noted that Marvel switched to soliciting variants separately at the request of several retailers on the CBIA Forum. The argument was that stores that prefer not to deal in variants should be able to opt out. Since this does create some hardship for stores that want them, but don't have systems to assure they are ordered, though, I would suggest that Diamond set up an opt in/opt out system that would allow customers to decide whether they want variants once, then let the computers do the rest.
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