There are some very cool Marvel Comics hip hop variant covers coming out this fall / winter, and we’d love to get them all for all the folks who would like to get them….

…but in many, or rather, most cases, we won’t qualify.

To get the hip hop covers, a store has to order the regular cover in quantities ranging from 125% to more than TWICE what they ordered of a previous or related issue. If a store does that, they’re going to be stuck with a lot of extra copies that will be unsold, yet the store has to pay for them. This results in the variant covers having to be sold at a much higher price than they should be. A real shame as we think they would sell very well if we could order them for the shelf.

We’re doing our best to qualify but in all likelihood, we’re not going to get them. All of the press releases that Marvel has sent out regarding the hip hop variants neglect to mention the hoops that stores have to jump through to get them. Misleading to say the least. Ryan Penagos (@AgentM on twitter) posted a checklist showing some of the covers coming in October. We added some important information to it: