Masakari Prime

On 9/5/2023 at 6:30 AM, godzilla43 said:

This whole thing sounds normal to me. Image/McFarlane and NetherRealm Studios
/Warner Bros made a decision to put Spawn in a Mortal Kombat videogame. NetherReal Studios
hosted a gaming event and had a special comic book made by Image as a gift for the attendees. NetherReal Studios thought that would be a nice thing for the attendees.
Event is almost cancelled so NetherReal Studios thought that it would be nice to give
those comics to their employees who most probably are not even invited to event like
that or can not go because they are busy at work. 

-Image/Mcfarlane care and things about popularity of Spawn
-NetherRealms care and things about success of their videogame and their employees
-NetherRealms employee took a bunch of them from work because they were free

In this equation no one cares about some comic book collector who wants to possess the next hard to find variant.

That's fine, but that's not the story. The event was originally in March 2020 and afterwards they tell Image/Todd McFarlane Productions that the comic that was licensed / made under partnership with them was barely distributed and then disposed of. Fast forward 2+ years later, and they start to distribute them internally? And the original print run is much bigger? There are so many questions here:

1) Why did they tell Image/TMP the rest of the books had been destroyed?

2) Why does no one, from NR, Image, or TMP seem to know how many copies were printed (ie the exact production run)?

3) Suddenly hundreds of copies pop up out of nowhere, 2+ years later, and no one is asking questions?

4) TMP is aware of the market, at least their current Editor in Chief is. Even putting aside "caring" about the collectors and the market, how do you not track and control books made under partnership? It's your books and your valuable IP we're talking about here.

I make games and I've had to deal with licensing contracts with full support of a legal team, let me tell you the lawyers themselves keep bashing my head for even putting a dot out of place. There are stipulations in these contracts for everything, including conditions for disposal of licensed product and consequences for failing to adhere to said conditions.

My post makes all this sound more serious than it is, at the end of the day it's a comic book. But there are questions here that need answering, the whole situation is strange.

Haven't bought a Transformers comic since the Marvel run wrapped up in the 90s, but when I heard DWJ was doing the art, it was an insta-pull. Then I learned it was part of some Kirkman-Hasbro shared universe and got even more excited.

Void Rivals has been intriguing. I'm wondering how TF, VR, GI Joe, and other Hasbro stuff will fit together, it's rare that I get genuinely excited about new media these days, this Energon Universe thing has tons of potential. 

On 9/4/2023 at 9:20 PM, newshane said:

Is this even legal? 

Sounds very sketchy. 

Doesn't seem illegal, just unethical. They were free to grab, so he didn't steal anything.

The whole thing is strange. Blaquebox (Spawn's Editor in Chief) hangs around the subreddit and I even asked him directly about this last year, I remember that quote from above. Whatever went down he had no idea of the real print run, nor that they hadn't been destroyed.

Found the thread: 

For clarification, that guy didn't take three dozens, he took 20-something and sold 18 of them at the time.

I tried posting about this on the Spawn subreddit either late last year or early this year. Someone there was messaging users trying to sell lots of copies of this book. His story was that many of the books weren't destroyed and someone at the company still had them. One day they just put a tower of these on a coffee table at Netherrealm and told employees could grab them for free, this person apparently grabbed around 3 dozens of them from the table.

He tried selling me copies at $2000 each. Glad I didn't take him on that offer.

These types of shenanigans are why I'm now quitting the variants game and selling most of my Spawn collection.

Just submitting my Gunslinger Spawn #1 signed, I got linked to the "normal" submission form via email but I remember King Spawn was using a different Signature Series online form. Which one is it?

Specially since the regular one makes me insert my credit card information again and then rejects it for whatever reason, even though it's on file already and has been used twice. Dunno what that's about.

Love the cover, grabbed all 9 variants of Gunslinger #1. And once again my shop secured me the 1:250 incentive for the same price as before, 250€ 

They have also revealed the main cover by Greg Capullo for The Scorched #1. Capullo also posted the raw pencils on Instagram, which I'm sure will be the 1:50 Incentive.

On 9/13/2021 at 1:09 AM, Erndog said:

From what I can gather, final cut off orders are Sept 20th.  So could still be time.  This is assuming they are in fact doing a signed 1:250 variant again.

I'm going to have to ask my local shop this week

They are doing the same thing, including the 1:50 sketch and the 1:250 signed. Unknown if it has the same CGC 30-day certificate.

I expect The Scorched #1 to be the same.

On 9/9/2021 at 1:21 AM, Erndog said:

I just dont really know what's the difference between this "world" and what they did in the 90s with all those spin off titles....

Curse of the Spawn, Medieval Spawn, Spawn the Undead, Spawn Dark ages, etc.

I've seen that asked around. IMO this is a more cohesive, intertwined take akin to the DCU or Marvel 616. Most of the 90s titles didn't interact with each other, weren't set in the same time Era or were straight up not related to Al Simmons continuity, someone had a Spawn idea that sounded cool and ran with it.

Now he's trying to make a common world with multiple characters running around in multiple books, all spun from the main Spawn ongoing, where events in one book can affect the world and it's consequences are felt in another book. I expect (and hope!) they eventually do an X-Cutioner's Song or Siege of Darkness style big crossover between all books.

On 9/7/2021 at 4:48 AM, fastballspecial said:

I am not sure all these Spawn titles are sustainable. I would think he would have been
better to spread these out farther and introduce each new character in the previous title.

 

Probably not, I still respect he's trying to do it. And even if 10 years from now only Spawn and another one of the books remains, he will have doubled his ongoing titles.

They have been introducing the characters since #300, but it's been a bit all over the place lately, each book has to find it's voice and it remains to be seen how intertwined the entire line will be.

On 8/31/2021 at 6:49 PM, Crops068 said:

That sounds like a great deal from your shop.  Kudos to them for giving you a good deal.

Yeah, they are awesome. Been buying comics from them since 2018 and they've always treated me super well, they know I'm their "Spawn guy"!

On 8/29/2021 at 7:41 PM, Sensei Ryan said:

So when you say they sold it to you for what they normally would charge for it, out of curiosity what would that be ?  It sounds like you got a good deal but if you're talking cover price then you got an amazing deal!

PS - the email address to the SS team is located at the bottom of the COA (I missed that myself first time around) 

Oh, thank you for the info!

They sold it to me for €250. It's not cover price but it's not bad.

Got all the covers, my LCS is very cool and just sold me the 1:250 for what they would normally charge for it. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to do my first ever CGC Submission. The instructions say to email the SS Team but the only email I could find was for "Sam Peterson" in the SS Noob Thread, is that it?

As I've been going through my collection of comics, finally replacing polybags + regular boards and going completely Mylars + Fullbacks for all books both past and future, I was reading the How much does slabbing add to actual value of non keys? thread and I started thinking:

Isn't the logical conclusion of comics conservation to have everything in Slabs? Even just-released issues? Does anyone even do this, as it is such a costly endeavor? 

I've been looking at getting better versions of the McFarlane AMS run, but considering all the care I will have to put into conserving them so that degradation is minimal over the storage time (and Mylars go a long way but aren't the only factor), and also considering that the older the book the harder it will be to find good versions (ideally NM) that upgrade the ones I have, wouldn't getting the entire run in slabs be the ultimate way of having them in my collection and not worry about conservation over time while keeping value high?