Tula Lotay art for variant cover for ‘Absolute Green Arrow’ #1
Everyone in the comics business has a general idea of how important variant covers are to total sales of new comics, but there’s been little data to quantify that impact. Now a major direct market retailer has shared the results of an analysis that quantifies the number of SKUs and the percentage of sales from variant covers for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and independent publishers for their operation. The data was based on sales over the past six months. The practices and sales of this retail operation may be different from the market as a whole, but their numbers are an indication of the scale of the phenomenon.
Our biggest takeaways are that variant covers run from over half to nearly 80% of SKUs, depending on the publisher, and for this retailer account for 34-43% of new comic revenue. Both of those are big numbers that display the importance of collectors focusing on cover art to the total business, and the work it takes, with this retailer handling an average of over 750 variant cover SKUs per month.
DC Comics
DC, which has now led Marvel in market share for the past two quarters (see “DC Increases Lead”), had the biggest impact on sales from its variant titles. Here’s the breakdown:
“A” covers: 270 SKUs at an average MSRP of $4.79, accounting for 62.8% of unit sales and 56.6% of dollar sales.
Variant covers: 947 SKUs (78% of total SKUs) at an average MSRP of $6.21, accounting for 37.2% of unit sales and 43.4% of dollar sales.
Marvel Comics
“A” covers: 369 SKUs at an average MSRP of $4.72, accounting for 66.5% of unit sales and 61.3% of dollar sales.
Variant covers: 1,373 SKUs (79% of SKUs) at an average MSRP of $5.90, accounting for 33.5% of unit sales and 38.7% of dollar sales.
All Other Publishers
“A” covers: 1,170 SKUs at an average MSRP of $4.65, accounting for 71.4% of unit sales and 66.3% of dollar sales.
Variant covers: 2,228 SKUs (56% of SKUs) at an average MSRP of $5.91, accounting for 28.6% of unit sales and 33.7% of dollar sales.
With revenue contributions at this scale, it’s clear that for many titles variant covers likely make the difference between profit and loss on a title, and that without them, the new comics business would be a much smaller one.
Comparing publishers, it’s clear that DC is doing better with its variants than Marvel, accounting for around 5% higher percentage of sales on around the same percentage of variant covers.
Source: ICV2
