The latest edition of Previews has explained what the story is with the white spot that many people spotted on the Retailer Exclusive covers for the Combiner Wars comics from IDW. The white space is not hiding some huge spoiler – though that would have been a logical conclusion – but rather it is a space for your local comic store! Yes – your local comic store! What IDW is offering is a chance for comic stores to have their premises drawn into the cover, either being protected by Superion on Transformers #39 or destroyed by Devastator on Windblade (volume 2) #1!
stad
Why did you put "the joke" over his "head"? I don't get it…
LegendAntihero
The art looks very Dreamwavey
Autovolt 127
So that's what these variants are for, I don't why you would want Devastator to destroy your comic book shop though.
Underlord
Can anyone tell me what the f*uk WTF stands for!?!?!?!
Infosaur
Well that's cool,,, except my local shop is in a Mall, so they'd have to draw in the whole mall. Scale be damned. Nice concept though.
Oh and shout out to the Comic shop in Portsmouth OH. I stopped there once years ago when I was doing more OTR trucking. His shop is in the 1st floor store front of a downtown high rise. Pic wouldn't work for that either.
But support your local comic shop.
I dunno. The new combiners are supposed to be interchangeable. There will be repaints. They've already shown a Motormaster repainted as Optimus, it's not much of a stretch that there will be some sort of Prowl combiner. Lately he's been depicted as some sort of SUV instead of a Nissan sports car.
So maybe there's going to be an Autobot vehicle combiner with SUV Prowl as the core. (looking back into my history from a few years ago, Mudslinger, Leadfoot and Doubleclutch as inspiration)
Making Prowl a core would make him interchangeable with the Constructions under the new system. Or you could have Prowl be a limb on the Optimus combiner and you could swap him out on the Devastator combiner. (which would be inaccurate to what's shown in the comic, but no worse than Prowl replacing Scrapper but forming Dev's head.
Jalaguy
As far as I'm aware, there's no extra cost per issue to the customer or to the comic shop. It's viable for IDW because a comic shop has to order a relatively large number of issues to qualify for getting their own cover.
Macross7
Wonder how much it will cost. Figure you are paying for a one off drawing/photo. I can't see there being many per store. So you are paying the artist for their time and then a custom printing. Then factor in the store has to make some profit to cover their effort and time to take a photo of their store. $20+ for this issue. I'd expect payment upfront or the store risks wasting money on something nobody might want.
Maybe the largest comic stores in the country (Mile High/Midtown Comics) might sell the volume that they would order a few copies but not the majority.
My comic book store couldn't even do it. While they have a door to the street, they are in an old factory/warehouse and they have licensed comic book characters in the windows. Can IDW have issues showing War Machine, Spider-Man and Batman on their covers? If they didn't include them, it wouldn't be my store.
What IDW should do is just sell the covers in the store with the blank spots there, letting fans fill it in. Maybe Devestator is going to crush their car, house, school. Way more interesting to put your own stuff there then a store you might visit ever 3-4 months (at least for me).
Jalaguy
Yeah, if a store orders enough issues, they get specially-printed copies with their store drawn into the blank by the covers' artists (Travis Sengaus and Josh Burcham).
IDW recently did the same promotion with Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1, which wound up having over 80 variants, I believe.
omegafix
I believe you have to request this cover from your retailer then he or she send a picure of thier store to either get drawn in or photoshopped onto the cover
HairyDawg
Exactly. Could give a crap about some placeholder for a local comic store to put their logo on. Thought this was going to be a thread about some different version of the actual Combiner Wars toys.
HairyDawg
Was literally LOLing at that! (Laughing Out Loud)
Macross7
So they are expecting the comic shop to draw in/put a photo of their store there? LOL for thinking stores give enough craps about Transformers to put in the effort. Don't know the rankings of comics but i doubt TFs sells high that much compared to superhero books.
omegafix
if anyone wants to "collect them all" my comic store is Main Street Comics in Milltown NJ, im sure he will order one for you if you so desire
Kaijumaster
Gonna be hard for mine. It's the bottom of a three story building.
griffin-of-oz
More details about the blank spots on the covers were posted up in the March Solicitations topic by Jalaguy, here…
http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/trans…99-march-2015-solicitations-post11944724.html
Mizzinno
The joke
Your head
Girl Pants
Retcon would imply they are making it so that Prowlstator never happened. That's not what I'm seeing at all.
Even if they revive Scrapper in some form, replace him with Scoop, or otherwise kick out Prowl, they're not saying Prowl never happened. But there does seem to be a high possibility of the Prowlstator "situation" being shook up in the current comics arc.
DJW107PRIME
Aw that's freaking cool my Comic shop guy might bite on this like he did with the Spider-man cover.
Sockie
These covers give little indication of that, given that they're the G1 versions of the characters and not the CW versions. They aren't reflective of the toys.
Doc Wheeljack
IDK = I don't know