The Eternals – Web Wreckage

So Marvel Entertainment's next Cosmic blockbuster, The Eternals, which was originally scheduled for a November 2020 release will instead now be released in February of 2021 for obvious Covid-related reasons. Regardless of the pushed back release date, Marvel is moving ahead with the release of several new and reissued Eternals graphic novels. I am going to take a guess here that it is more difficult for Marvel financially to reschedule the release of book inventory to have it coincide with the release of the movie when commitments have already been made to go to print. It makes more sense for Marvel to go ahead and release the new books to market instead of sitting on them after paying for them to be printed after all. This means we will be seeing new collected editions of some currently out of print books, such as the Eternals by Neil Gaiman hardcover and The Eternals by Jack Kirby Collected Edition paperback (which will be collecting material previously released in two separate volumes) as well as a new deluxe hardcover edition of the older Eternals material, The Eternals: The Complete Saga Omnibus, which looks to be a replacement for the currently out of print Eternals Omnibus. Oh, and then there is also a new collection of the currently out of print Eternals trades, To Slay A God and Manifest Destiny which will apparently be collected into one book, Eternals: To Defy The Apocalypse. So what I am seeing here is instead of the potential for a new movie to lead to increased reader interest in and demand for a character or property, and said increase in demand being supported by a publisher, we are going to get a possible mini-glut of material on the market which will effectively kill off the OOP opportunities that currently exist on the secondary market. Note to self: check my inventory for anything that might need to be discounted, also, next time I see an OOP Eternals book on the shelf, just keep on walking... Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining. This is the way of the market: with so much material going out of print on a regular basis, its only natural that some of it will get reprinted at some point - especially when said material ties into a major motion picture release. I suppose that all of the above is really just another example of why I never really get my hopes up that the next big super hero movie will help my sales in any meaningful way. I almost never notice any kind of bump in sales of OOP material following on the heels of a new movie. If anything it is often the opposite: a new movie or TV series comes out and the next thing you know some of the material that was maybe an earner for me whenever I had it in stock has now acquired a previously non-existent expiry date because a publisher has decided to go back to print and cash in. I have seen it with things like Batman related books after something new comes to the screens. I have seen it with Aquaman books after the Aquaman movie came out. I have even seen it with Godzilla books after the last movie was released. It happens and whenever a new movie is coming down the pipeline and about to be released, I try and make a mental note to check and see if any of my inventory just acquired an expiry date. A weird exception to the above that maybe actually helps to prove the rule is something that happened before they started production on the last Christian Bale Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Before the movie had started filming, there was arumor that made the rounds that the main villain of the film was going to be an obscure character from the comics named Dr. Hugo Strange and that the film would be adapting the Batman: Prey storyline from the Legends of the Dark Knight comic series. This led to a brief period where the out of print Batman: Prey paperback that collected those issues of the comic saw amarked spike in demand on the secondary market and sellers were able to recognize some very nice prices for even used copies of that book. The funny thing however, is that even though that rumor turned out to be wrong it didn't stop DC from going back to print on that book to cash in on the increased demand for that material. So see? Publishers will almost always effort to supply the demand that might grow from the release of that new movie or television series that sparks peoples interest. Heck, even George R. Martin's Hedge Knight books went back to print once people started climbing aboard the Game Of Thrones train. Woo! Woo! With all of that being said, I do believe that there might be an opportunity down the road to cash in on an Eternals book; I have the funny feeling that the print run on the new Eternals: Complete Saga Omnibus will not be that high and that because it appears to include more material than was in the previous version of the Omnibus, demand for it might be higher than expected leading to a rather quick sell out of the print run. But really, who knows? I guess we will just have to wait and see - and be ready to run out and snag a copy from a local store if my prediction proves to be right!