All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Marvel Comics released their new Star Wars title on Wednesday January 14, 2015 and, by all indications, it is a successful launch for this new era of Star Wars comics.  Current projections place the print run of the new Star Wars #1 at over 1 million copies.  Diamond Distribution is out of first prints of this issue and Marvel is going back to print.  Does this sound familiar?  A similar situation occurred for Marvel back in 1977 when they published Star Wars #1 based on the original Star Wars movie.  If this 1 million number is true, Star Wars #1 will be the best selling U.S. comic in this century!

It is not common for a comic to reach a print run of over a million copies regardless of the era.  Modern era best sellers usually sell just over 100,000 copies.  To achieve this feat, Marvel had to employ several marketing tricks.

One marketing trick that is used frequently these days is variant covers.  Marvel published over a dozen variant covers for general release to comic stores.  Some of the variant covers were available for retailers to order like the regular cover, but to qualify for some of these covers, retailers had to purchase a large number of regular covers.  The hardest to get of these incentive cover was distributed at a ratio of 1 for every 500 copies of the regular cover.

Another trick Marvel used was to allow retailers to buy retailer exclusives copies with a unique cover.  Retailers were offered these comics if they ordered a minimum of 3000 copies.  A second "sketch" cover was available if they ordered 1500 more copies.

The final trick Marvel used is a recent marketing innovation; Marvel is allowing Loot Crate to deliver an exclusive copy with their January offering.  It is speculated this alone has contributed to the sale of 350,000 copies of Star Wars #1.

All these add up to the new Marvel Star Wars #1 having over 65 different covers!  Regardless of how it was done, I am happy to hear the new era of Star Wars comics is off to a strong start.  I am hopeful the title will retain readers and a new generation of Star Wars comic fans are being created.