Steve Oto of Alternate Realities in Scarsdale, NY read the comments made by Kathy Bottarini’s (see “Kathy Bottarini of Comic Book Box on Amazing Spider-Man #583”) and Charlie Balicki (see “Charlie Balicki of Dreamland Comics on Amazing Spider-Man #583”) regarding the Amazing Spider-Man #583 Obama variant and applauds both of them:

I want to applaud Kathy Bottarini of Comic Book Box and Charlie Balicki of Dreamland Comics for their comments with regard to the Amazing Spider-Man #583 Obama variant circus.

Additionally, I would suggest that, if I had exceeded my orders of Amazing Spider-Man #575 (I had ordered 80) in order to be allowed to order the variant, I would be stuck with all the regular editions since people would only be buying the variant.  Since I now only sell about 60 or so copies of ASM, that means I would have had to throw away about $160 for 80+ un-sellable #583s just to buy a no-limit amount of Obama variants.  Also, nice of Marvel to raise the price on this book from $2.99 to $3.99; wouldn’t be Marvel if they didn’t manage to get another kick in there.

Last year, I happened to meet a fellow who was negotiating with Marvel to license some product and he mentioned that Marvel doesn’t hide the fact that they “hate the retailers.”  Word on the street is that they’ll be raising the price of all $2.99 comics to $3.99 (they’ve been sneaking in a lot of them throughout the past year).  Maybe I’m just Mr. Doom-&-Gloom but I think the writing is on the wall for the future of the comic book store.  Perhaps not for a few years or even a decade but it’s naïve to think that everything’s just fine.

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