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We’ve been telling you that Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici’s new series Void Rivals from Skybound was going to generate a lot of interest.
We’ve been telling you since ComicsPRO in February that Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici’s new series Void Rivals from Skybound was going to generate a lot of interest, especially because it was introducing a new shared universe. And now we know how big that interest is, as Bleeding Cool understands comic shops ordered over a whopping 101,000 copies before the close of FOC on Monday night.
Kirkman’s latest hit entry into the 100k Club was buoyed by Kirkman himself introducing two new kinds of retailer incentives tied to Void Rivals #1in the form of experiences, not variant covers – a custom video message for stores that ordered 100 copies and a special one-hour virtual event with Kirkman for stores that ordered 1000 copies.
It’s also notable that Skybound announced those incentives through a retailer call on the 11th of May where Robert Kirkman, Sean Mackiewicz and Morgan Perry all shared the big secrets behind the book, even if I must have been mistakenly left off the invite list. Kirkman personally asked retailers to “#KeepTheSecret” and they have, with no one leaking it to me despite my best efforts. That includes the big spoiler variant cover that apparently reveals the secret of the shared universe and, at a 1:100 incentive level, will have less than 1000 copies available in comic shops.
Skybound continued to provide a recording of the call to any retailers who e-mailed them before FOC, with the company putting the kind of trust in retailers that other publishers don’t often do with their big surprises and driving some massive orders over the last week – sorry, Marvel, looks like there was a way to keep your big Amazing Spider-Man death a secret without angering retailers. Now the countdown begins as to when the big shared universe secret of Void Rivals #1 will be revealed – though no one has yet to tell me that I didn’t accurately guess it last month, so that means an “I told you so” is coming. And with Skybound demonstrating that retailers can be trusted to, well, #KeepTheSecret it’ll be interesting to see if other comic book publishers follow suit, or if Kirkman’s experiential incentives become more common in light of the Void Rivals success.
Void Rivals #1 is on-sale Wednesday, the 14th of June at your local comic shop…that is, if they ordered enough copies.
VOID RIVALS #1 CVR A DE FELICI
IMAGE COMICS
APR230038
(W) Robert Kirkman (A) Matheus Lopes (A/CA) Lorenzo De Felici
SERIES PREMIERE The blockbuster OBLIVION SONG team of ROBERT KIRKMAN & LORENZO DE FELICI debut the biggest new comic book series of 2023 with the launch of AN ALL-NEW SHARED UNIVERSE and a SURPRISE you won’t see coming! War rages around the Sacred Ring, where the last remnants of two worlds have collapsed around a black hole in a never-ending war. However, when pilot Darak and his rival Solila both crash on a desolate planet, these two enemies must find a way to escape together. But are they alone on this strange planet? And what dark forces await that threaten the entire universe? In Shops: Jun 14, 2023 SRP: $3.99
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