This Comic Retailer Ripped Off Collectors For Thousands

with how much the entire comic book industry is basically propped up on variant covers at this point and exclusive variants and all this stuff. It was a matter of time before people started getting super greedy. Now we're seeing people getting really pissed off because well a retailer is manipulating the part the market. It's very important to know who you're dealing with and that's why I personally partner with the 616 comics. They will never ever run any of these shenanigans and try to rip off their customers. Now, let's talk about the exact opposite of the 616 comics and this Dan Quintana absolute Batman number 19 exclusive cover. Heavy Mensel, who apparently is a retailer that does whatnot and has lots of Tik Tok videos and stuff like that, sold 25 copies at $25 on the initial drop before moving to what was described as dynamic pricing strategy where copies later were being sold on whatnot and eBay at much higher prices, basically creating FOMO and then upping the price as the demand and FOMO went up. They basically use the drug dealer model here of virtually giving away the product to a couple of people uh for really cheap, draw interest in it, and then just start making everyone else like go into the fucking gladiator arena of auctions and whatnot. I mean that both literally and figuratively to figure out what the actual pricing is. There is no idea of what the pricing is. You're trying to imply some major degree of scarcity and then you're like, "Oh, well, you know, we just so happened to find this 26th copy. We'll put it up for auction. " Oh, wait. Look, here's a 27th. Oh, and the 28th. What you're talking about is very, very important. People need to re realize when you're doing these retail exclusive covers with a company like Image or Dynamite or maybe even like a Boom Studios, you know, some of those smaller publishers, you can do a print run of like 500 on those programs. Once you're deal with Marvel and DC, the print run at minimum is 3,000. — They're not that scarce. I mean, it's not, you know, 150,000 like an absolute Batman normal cover. You know, Heavy Menel wasn't the only one kind of running this game. The artist was definitely a part of it, Dan Quintana, and I think the cover looks fine. It's not the best absolute Batman 19 cover that I saw with Scarecrow on it, but it was pretty darn cool. But he was out there driving up the interest and the FOMO. He was out there working with Comic Tom. uh some of the other speculator type of sites to drive interest in this book. And it feels like it was kind of a concerted effort not only between Heavy Menel and Dan Quintana, but several other entities within the speculator market to drive the FOMO and allow him to take advantage of the people. And we had even reports of the book going up to like $1,500 or something absolutely ridiculous. You're driving these prices through the roof artificially because you're not being straight with the audience. You are implying a degree of scarcity that it is not even close to achieving. — You could achieve it. — You only have, — but you have to buy the 3,000 and then you have to burn 2500 of them and document it, right? — Yes. Exactly. Cuz otherwise you end up looking like a liar and then they're like, "Well, we have this other 2,000 copies here after the backlash starts up. " They handled this so very poorly, relying on the audience's ignorance of the Marvel and DC variant partnership program and what the terms of it are in order to generate FOMO. There's a lot of sliminess going on because of these, you know, the rising interest in exclusive variant covers, you know, which we promote here on the channel with our partnership with 616 Comics. There are so many bad actors, just scam artists out there. You know, this one is obviously high-profile and got a lot of people pissed off, but there are out there that will say, "Oh, this one's exclusive 500 print run. " No, it's not. It was a 3,000 print run. You got 500 of them, and 2500 of the copies of the exact same book with the exact same trade rest are just going to other shops because they went in on it with you. But they're still claiming that there's only 500. No, you only have 500, but there's 2500 of them out there in the wild, and they're not being honest with people because it is a very lucrative market. I believe last I heard there are over a 100 variant covers for Absolute Batman 20. This problem is only getting worse. — They could play very, very fast and loose with what the scarcity is. Everybody that wants a copy can probably

get one. — Exactly. This Dan Quintana absolute Batman 19 cover or the covers that, you know, the 616 comics aren't for your normie comic reader that's just going into his shop every Wednesday and throwing $5 on his favorite book. These are for, you know, heavier collectors or specific artists and pieces of art and stuff like that. So, that is a section of art of the audience that isn't a h 100,000. It's much smaller, but they are willing to go out there and spend high-end money. I don't know why you would want to go out there and intentionally burn the shit out of them and make them feel stupid. Because I can tell you right now, if you spent $1,500 on a Dan Quintana absolute Batman number 19 cover, you should feel like the biggest fucking retard in comic books right now. They are absolutely relishing it and rubbing it in your face how badly they fucked you. Even in their apology, it's not really an apology. Well, let's get to that. Heavy Mental Comics responded to the backlash with a statement on social media. This weekend's drop didn't meet the standard we hold ourselves to, and we understand why a lot of you are frustrated. The statement said, "Heavy Mental said it's its goal has always been to bring fair, transparent, and exciting drops to the community, but admitted it clearly missed the mark. " And then, I think uh sold 500 copies at like 15 to $20, which is a good price for those things. But the damage had already been done and Heavy Mental had basically already exposed themselves of who they are. When someone shows you their real face, you have to believe them. He's a scam artist. — Maybe not a scam artist. I mean, he's still giving you a product, but at the same time, he's giving you a product because he is scammed, not called out, and people noticed it. This is him trying to do a make good. But the real guy is the one that did that when he didn't think anybody was noticing — because those other 500, those were books that he was just gonna conveniently keep finding at every show that he went to this entire summer. Oh, well, I got I still have that hot one. I have one copy I found. It's artificial inflation. This is 100% astrourfing a price and it's horribly fucking unethical in my opinion. And I don't think the artist Dan Quintana did himself any favors cuz people once they realized what was happening cuz he had been heavily promoting this cover and this drop. He was out there defending heavy metal comics like oh yeah but it's a Dan Quintana cover. He was acting like he was like Jim Lee or something like that. And I don't think he did himself or the people's perception of him any favors by not going out there and being like, "Yeah, this is kind of bullshit. It should be a single price. Dynamic pricing is not cool. I'm glad that you like the cover. I'm glad that it's popular, but I don't like what he's doing. " No, he had to go back the guy up and I understand that he likely made a good amount of money commission to do this cover and all that kind of stuff. But you do have to stand up for your customers and the people that are supporting you. Without them, you don't get a gig like that. — Exclusive variant covers, the actual commissioning of the artist, 1,500, 2,000 bucks. So, I mean, Dan Katanis, yeah, sure, he made he made pro he made his rent this month on that one cover. That's awesome. But unless he's getting a piece on the back end of the inflated dynamic priced numbers, him sticking with the store rather than sticking with the audience [snorts] seems like a it seems like a poor strategy here because that store might not have much of a future in that market if the audience if the readers ship if that segment of the audience turns on them and stops buying stuff from them because of shit like this. Whereas he could have built a had ended up with a built-in audience from a large dollar segment of the comic collecting, you know, world. I guarantee he's one of the folks out there like I am that whenever Walmart announced their dynamic pricing model where they could change the price digitally whenever they want, even while you're in the store and it's in your cart based on demand. I guarantee he's sitting there going, "That's fucking terrible. I hate that. " That's the exact same situation that he's letting go and approving of right now. you are or were the high-end collector. You wanted to complete runs and for a time you literally had to buy every single cover of every X-Men book release until one day when they released a cover Jim Lee reprint on X-Men Gold number one. It was a one in 10,000 variant. It was over $1,000 on day one and that killed it.

There was two of them actually cuz there was one on X-Men Gold and Blue. both of which were just old remixed remastered gym Lee interior arts or pin-ups that they turned into a variant and I'm just like no I'm out I'm done. — That is how you kill a customer not that day but for another 10 15 20 years. — Yeah. Exactly. And I'm never coming back to full hardcore collecting because I've now experienced the thing that I hadn't experienced up until then. Impossibility. If you're a completionist and you experience a situation where it is impossible to be a completist, you stop attempting to be. You can go on eBay right now and get that X-Men gold number one and thous one in 10,000 ratio variant cover for under $100. Now that Dan Quintana cover will never ever be worth that $1,500 ever again. That one moment in time only. The comics industry managed to stretch me out as that kind of a reader for almost 30 years before I tapped out. They got 30 years of work out of me. The way that they're just doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on this variant, exclusive variant, now dynamic pricing variant nonsense is like trying to speedrun an a collector's entire arc from basic collector to hardcore collector to whale as quickly as you possibly can, which is fucking retarded because now you can't get 30 years, you're getting 30 days of interest out of these people. You absolutely need to know who you're dealing with. You need to make sure that they're reputable and that they are not going to go out of their way to screw you over. Now, if you would like the entire conversation about this cuz Doc and I did go on for about 25 minutes. It is available right now on Think Critical Patreed channel memberships, the Doc Unfiltered podcast. Hope to see you there very soon. We could have done a whole 50 minutes on that one, dude. We really could because it is it does it gets me pissed off too.