JLA Avengers Crossover by Perez Reprinted

[Megotastrophe]

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/george-perez-and-the-7000-copies-of-jla-avengers-from-marvel-dc/

Limited print run so it can be put out quickly enough for George to see it and as a charity piece.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Also limited because it's all the greedy corporate lawyers at Disney and WB would agree to. Mark Waid posted on social media about it. Heroes Initative did the best they could, which is great. But it sucks that the big corporations couldn't agree to a much larger print run. The demand is there both for the product, and to support George.

[MRP]

^Also limited because it's all the greedy corporate lawyers at Disney and WB would agree to. Mark Waid posted on social media about it. Heroes Initative did the best they could, which is great. But it sucks that the big corporations couldn't agree to a much larger print run. The demand is there both for the product, and to support George.

If you look at Direct Market sales alone and not mass market book trades, most collected editions have sales of under 4Kthe month of their release. There are exceptions, but through the 2-3 years pre-pandemic, only a handful of books reached a sales reached the 7K plateau. Since this is a charity project, and a very expensive high cost production, it is not one that can afford to have unsold copies if it is actually going to make money for the charity and not lose money for Hero Initiative, so the print run, regardless of ceilings imposed by Marvel/Dc, was going to have to be in line with what can sell through immediately in the direct market, and 7K is just about right with that in mind and the actual sales threshold of collected editions in the direct market. Maybe, they could have pushed for 10K but that would increase the risk of lost revenue with unsold copies in that market. This isn't a package Heroes Initiative could afford to keep in print or keep copies on hand to sell at their booths over the next few years and still be able to make a significant contribution to their cause because of the high production costs and how much capital they would have tied up in unsold copies.

A couple of our local cons do a lot of charity auctions for HI, and I know a group of guys who do a lot of volunteer work for them, and a handful of people who work for them, and they do a lot of good, but they are always skating the edge on a lot of projects that could generate a lot of revenue if successful but cripple them in the short term if they don't sell through quickly enough. There's no doubt the print run was limited by Marvel and DC (who I applaud for even getting their sh*t together and burying the hatchet long enough to allow this to happen at all since they cannot do so under any other circumstances), but I doubt it would have been much higher without those limitations since it is limited to direct market only and would not have gone into the book trade regardless, and the direct market's track record doesn't bear out being able to handle moving many more units than that in the time window needed for this project.

-M

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Interesting, and that makes a lot of sense. I talked to my LCS owner yesterday, and I told him to put me down for a copy, if he gets enough. He said he and his wife kept bumping up their orders in the hopes the allocations may come based on order percentage. So for this retailer anyway, the demand is there, and to him, the print run seemed rather low. The thing is, comic shops will get stuck with these if they don't sell, but they still want them. As many as they can get, it seems. They could double the print run and sell through to the shops, I believe. Yes, the "heat" may cool off, but Perez and HI would get their money. If comic shops are willing to have a few extra copies on the shelf to sell over time...why not let them?

Chris

[Bruce Banner]

Love that crossover. I have the individual issues and also the original collected edition.
George Perez is a legend and one of the all time greats.
(I'll have to check whether any of the 7000 copies will be allocated to overseas comic stores, as I'd like to support the cause.)

[Random Axe]

The way it was explained to me was 7000 was all they could commit to be cause of paper shortages. A second print run will happen but to get these out ASAP they agreed on the 7K limit for now. I've got the original but will likely get this as well for the bonus content.