By now, you may have heard that the comic art for the Spider-Man #26 Dell'Otto exclusive in Bry's Comic mystery box had been re-used. Various comic book YouTubers including Bry, have covered this issue. Click here to see Bry's video on the situation.
Part of the controversy was that people chased this mystery box for its exclusivity (480 boxes will include the trade dress version, and 19 lucky winners will receive the virgin edition limited to 20 copies).
In my previous article, I made reference to Dell'Otto's variant for Spider-man #667 being one of the most expensive modern books and questioned how these books, especially the virgin edition, would do in the aftermarket. It seems they did very well, even causing Bry himself to question potential market manipulation.
This art was presented to Bry's Comics as new art that he could use for his store exclusive. However, quickly after the release of this book, it was realized by Josh Allen "International Comics", a member of the foreign comic collecting community, that this art was used on a foreign book in 2004 for Italy (pictured below - see Josh's post here).
These foreign comics could be had for their original cover price.
Bry also found that this art was even used in a 2007 French Marvel Illustration Book 2 Hardcover (left) and a 2004 German Amazing Spider-man # 49 - 50 Hardcover (right).
Through Bry's investigation of this matter, he found this had actually happened to another store exclusive using Dell'Otto's art. The 2023 Amazing Spider-Man #17 Dell'Otto Megacon Variant (trade limited to 600 and Virgin limited to 500) had been used on an Italian 2022 Spider-man 60th Anniversary sticker book.
Result of Controversy
Do the sayings "any publicity is good publicity" or "there's no such thing as bad publicity" apply here? The prices of the foreign comic and hardcovers shot up from cover price to sell for $80 to $100 USD. Bry's exclusive has been topping the CovrPrice and CBSI top 10 lists. Could this have an affect like Clayton Crain's Ultimate Fallout 4 "Acetategate" and how will this book do in the long term?
Foreign versus American Print
This incident is an interesting one in terms of price. As mentioned at the end of my previous article there are foreign editions that use the art of Spider-Man #667 (Mexican version by La Mole limited to 1000 copies, German virgin and trade dress limited to 200 copies, Italian UOMO RAGNO #582) that go for far less than the ten of thousands the American version goes for.
In these cases, the foreign editions came after the American whereas in this incident, the foreign came first. The American book is at least a key with the death of Ms. Marvel, and I don't believe the Italian book is rare. How do you think this will affect the price of the foreign book in the long term?
Conclusion
How do you feel about this incident? Customers of Bry's Comics mystery box have been sharing how disappointed they are. Even though it was out of Bry's hands, they're still upset because they wanted an exclusive piece of art from an amazing artist like Dell'Otto.
A further question is how many other times has this happened? One positive is that, like Bry's Comics, now retailers can be aware and double-check going forward.
