I was, once upon a time and not for very many semesters, a math major, so I am always intrigued when someone breaks out a calculator to crunch those numbers. I think GTM's take is interesting, but that argument - and here I'm simply using it as an example of and proxy for the widespread criticism of this promotion that I've read online, probably entirely unfairly - ignores several practical facts and relies on several assumptions:

• it assumes that there are shops with large overstocks of Blackest Night tie-ins
• it ignores that the tie-in books were released weeks ago, some months
• it assumes that there are lots of still-interested patrons who might want those tie-in books but haven't yet bought them so stores are keeping overstock on the shelves
• it ignores that there are only seven titles, total, eligible for this promotion.
• it ignores that books can often be ordered long after they're "gone"
• the assumption that Marvel plans to seriously move DC product off of shelves relies in turn on the assumption that most shops will charge extra for rare variants.

Are these Blackest Night books sitting around gathering dust on store shelves? Really? Are there huge piles of Blackest Night tie-in rings taking up space in comics shop back rooms all o'er the land? I doubt it. My local shop is pretty high-traffic and high-volume, from what I can tell, and they have at most half a dozen of a given issue of a given comic at any time. I would be shocked to find out they have fifty unsold Blackest Night tie-in books tucked away somewhere this long after the fact. The vast majority of the stock they bring in goes directly to patrons who have reservations/subscriptions in place for those books.

For the sake of argument, let's say someone told their local shop they want the tie-in issues but never showed up to buy them. To take my own local shop as the example again, my local shop requires subscribers to keep a credit card on file with them so that if they subscribe to a title but don't pick it up within a month it is automatically charged to their card and retained for them to receive whenever they get a chance. So, at my local shop there are no regular patrons who are explicitly interested in Blackest Night but don't at the very least have them available when they want them.

Taking it one step further, though, let's say most stores and buyers aren't like mine or me and instead rely on walk-in buyers with shopping lists. My shop has never had a problem getting me a book after it came out. I recommended the trade paperback of Incognito last year and mentioned that I read it as individual issues. Two of those issues were ones my shop ordered for me months after it was over. I simply forgot about it in my regular reading and when I remembered it again they were out of issues five and six. No problem, the friendly folks at my local shop ordered them for me and they were there the next week.

Just to stay on this, though, let's say that there is a comics shop somewhere with fifty copies of one or more of these comics, or even fifty copies of some or all of them put together, and they say to themselves, OK, sign me up! Does that really push a lot of DC merchandise off the shelves? It's seven titles. At my local shop - which has less wall space devoted to individual issues than its two main local competitors - the racks of comics on hand are roughly twenty feet long and probably seven feet high. They have what must be hundreds of books on display. Seven books are barely a drop in the bucket.

Finally, the point with which I most strongly agree is that it's crazy to think anyone is going to charge >$100 for a single issue with a rare variant cover. Of the three local stores, only one of them has ever put something out at more than sticker price due to rarity. The other two stores have an explicit philosophy that they are in it to sell comics to readers, not to collectors. Perhaps I live in an unusually enlightened place, or suffer from unusually naive thinking, but I would imagine that Marvel knows very well that few stores would seriously put something on their shelves at that price.

I don't see any of these as a prosecution of Marvel, though. I see these as a case for the view that Marvel isn't serious in the first place. Sure, they'd have to honor it if someone actually shipped them 50 Blackest Night tie-in covers, yes, but what store is actually going to do that? What store could do that? Precious few, and I'm sure Marvel is perfectly aware of that. As GeekToMe points out, this is Deadpool we're talking about. It's one part bravado, one part wiseacre, one part big talk and one part nose-thumbing, mixed together into a single press release. They're serious, sure, but they aren't serious. The fine folks of Marvel are much smarter than that.

In fact, I'd wager they're just smart enough to know what they can say to get people talking about them without spending a dime.

Marvel Comics plays 'Dirty Pool' with BLACKEST NIGHT Promotion [GeekToMe - Chicago NOW]