So are you one of those people who has to have every version of everything? Well, Boom! Studios, the publishers of the new Peanuts comic book, are prepared to exploit that weakness! They’ve released two pieces of news about their series. The first is that it’s actually a mini-series… they’re announcing a four-issue run. This doesn’t mean that they won’t ever do more, but it does give them an excuse for creating a break after the fourth issue. (And it means that that book collection will likely have issues 0-4.)

The other news is that the cover I showed you last time? That’s the cover available to the everyman, the riffraff, to anyone willing to fork over $3.99 to their local retailer. But you, the completist? You’ll want a copy of that and a copy of the “variant cover”, reproducing the first appearance of Charlie Brown. Now, you’ll think that that’ll cost you another $3.99, and groan a little… but be prepared to groan more. This version is unpriced, and the retailer is in better position to charge you what he wants. But before you get mad at the retailer for setting a high price, realize what that retailer has to do to get a copy to sell you: if he wants one copy of the variant cover, he has to order 30 copies of the normal cover to be allowed to purchase it. Yipes.

The retailers have to order the book in the next few days. If you want the variant edition, you should contact your comics retailer today or Thursday (avoid trying to do extra business with a comic shop on Wednesday; that’s new book day and thus their busy day). If you have a retailer that takes preorders, ask him what it will take for you to get this edition. Likely answers include:

• You buy all 30 of the normal cover, then you get the variant edition as well. That’ll run you around $120, and you’ll have a big pile of copies to use as you see fit – give them out to the kids next halloween, treat the entire class to a comics day, keep them until they become rare and valuable (tip: that trick rarely works these days, as most comics land in the hands of those wanting to protect them forever), use them as a pillow.
• You pay the wholesale price of all those 30 copies (something in the neighborhood of $2 apiece – yes, comics have a high markup, but then the retailer is also stuck paying that for the huge piles of comics they order which don’t sell), you get the variant cover and the retailer makes his profit selling those 30 copies.
• The retailer was already planning to buy a lot of copies and will have his own price in mind for the rare one.

You may need to prepay, particularly if you’re not a regular customer at the shop.

And be prepared to do this for all four issues of the miniseries. Yes, each will have a variant cover featuring an image from the first strip appearance of a different character… and there’s no guarantee at this point that it will be just a 30-to-1 ratio needed to get those later covers. Once you get in on the “limited edition” game, you can get on an expensive ride. Anyway, I’m going to contact some friendly comics retailers and see if any of them wants to offer a fixed prepay mail-order package for this variants.

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