Dave Stevens Cover VEROTIK COMICS BLACK ANGEL TPB 1996 Print Run 0

[Oldtimer57]

Hi,  Greeting everyone.  My first post on the board in many years so Im a bit rusty with the site.  

Can anyone help me.  Recently purchased a 

Dave Stevens Cover VEROTIK BLACK ANGEL #nn TPB  09/1996.  My question is, Is there any way of finding out how many of this book were Printed.   I tried to look it up in Comichron but I may have looked it up wrong. Could not find it.  Wondering if anywhere else to look or if anyone knows the Print Run.  Thanks so much for any info.  Starting to get involved in the forum again. 

[Qalyar]

Notwithstanding the normal cautions about Comichron data not being exactly congruent with print runs, that's really true in 1996, where they have no data at all prior to September. This had a September release date, so the orders would have likely been the previous month, and thus eaten by the void. Even if that wasn't the case, graphic novels were reported separately at the time, and Diamond didn't index their GN sales reports; there are no reliable order quantities for graphic novels until quite a bit after 1996.

That's a long way of saying that, no, there's really no reliable way to get an estimated print run on these, unless someone who was involved in Verotik at the time wants to go public with that information.

[Oldtimer57]

Ughh, oh well.  Thank you for the information though. That was a pretty complete run down on dates for record keeping and lack of any records. Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the post and the information!  Looks like I will have to leave it up to not seeing many on ebay at all.  Maybe every once in a while. 

[Qalyar]

On 5/10/2024 at 7:25 AM, Oldtimer57 said:

Ughh, oh well.  Thank you for the information though. That was a pretty complete run down on dates for record keeping and lack of any records. Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the post and the information!  Looks like I will have to leave it up to not seeing many on ebay at all.  Maybe every once in a while. 

In an effort to make a slightly-educated guess here...

The October 1996 orders (for floppies) are recorded in Comichron. Verotik had two books that month -- Jaguar God #6 and Satanika #5 -- both of which had just over 15,000 orders placed. We also know that Verotik did decent business with its GN-format books. We know this because Diamond released a list of the top 10 graphic novels sold for the entire 1996 year (well, excluding Marvel entirely, since they were distributed via Heroes World at the time). Verotik's Death Dealer #2 (a prestige-bound series that Diamond considered to be GNs) placed #7. Diamond only ranked those graphic novel sales (and didn't index them) so we can't immediately turn them into order quantities.

But...

Just ahead of Death Dealer #2 are two Lady Death books. Most importantly, #5 on the list was Lady Death: the Crucible #1 Leather Limited Edition. Why does that matter? Because that book was advertised by Chaos as a limited run of 10,000 copies. The character was still pretty popular in 1996, and that leather edition is frankly pretty sweet, so I'm willing to bet that Diamond orders were fairly close to the full print run. In turn, that suggests that Death Dealer #2 probably had orders not all-that-much lower. If I had to guess, I'd say in the 8,500-9,000 range. Black Angel didn't make the top 10 list, so we know orders for it were weaker. It's really impossible to say how much so, but there's no reason to think that Verotik would have made this a particularly limited title or that orders for it would have been dramatically lower than other, similar titles from the same publisher.

So I'm going to go with a broad range here to hedge my bets, and suggest that orders for this book were somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 copies, and likely closer to the high end of that range. Actual print runs for non-limited books (and, often, for limited books...) are always higher than Comichron order numbers, owing to alternative distribution channels, reorders, etc. Comparing that to September 1996 floppy orders, that gives us a book that's likely rarer than, say, Image's Distant Soil #16 but more common than DC's Static #41, which feels believable to me (and Milestone collectors will tell you those last few issues of Static don't grow on trees). The rest of market value is owed to Dave Stevens.

[Oldtimer57]

Qalyar, Thanks very much for your thoughts and inroads into your educated theory regarding the print range of Verotik Black Angel.  I came of interest in pondering it simply because I had ebay list all of Dave Stevens covers and found maybe 1 or 2 Verotik Black Angel listed. Sometimes over a weeks time, none were found listed.   The closest book I could compare it too within the least listed of a Dave Stevens Covers seemed to be Verotik Venus Domina #1 , also from 1996.  While Black Angel seems to show rarely, Venus Domina seems to be almost as scarce but not quite.   The 3rd book in scarcity seems to be Bad Planet #6 yet there always seems to be triple in proportion of this book listed as compared to Black Angel and Domina.   Comichron, if Im reading it correctly, lists Bad Planet 6 as 4289 produced??  My pondering as to rarity is hardly scientific as its strictly based upon watching the amount of those books submitted each week over a period of 3 months.  Whats interesting is that Bad Planet #6 at 4289 produced (Im Not sure) seems be listed more commonly than both Verotik books.  Its such ashame that we dont have more complete printing numbers.  Black Angel if an 8000 print run would be almost double the print of Bad Planet #6 yet seems 3 times rarer in listing on ebay.  Perhaps this is because its a TPB like you mentioned!

What is also interesting is that in their day compared to print runs like Valiant Turok #1 , these Verotik books would be considered such low print runs.  Yet, today at 4000 to 8000 copies, not so much.  Thank you for your imput and theories as this is what makes the comics so interesting.