(CBR) Marvel Comics has offered retailers an extra incentive to boost orders for February’s “Wolverine” #1, and along the way revealed that September 2014’s “Wolverine” #12 will be a “landmark” and “game-changing” issue.
In an update released to retailers, Marvel announced an “exchangeability” program where unsold copies of the upcoming new “Wolverine” #1 could be exchanged for an exclusive “Mortal Variant” of “Wolverine” #12,” an issue scheduled to go on sale in September 2014. While that comic is still months down the road, Marvel described it as a “double-sized landmark issue” they expect to receive “national attention for its game-changing story.”
Given the use of “Mortal” — which was the one word used to tease this new “Wolverine” volume when it was announced in November — Marvel’s at least suggesting that Wolverine’s healing factor-less status quo won’t be going away anytime soon. Timing a significant Marvel release for September is notable, as the month has been a strong one for DC in the past three years; with the launch of The New 52 in 2011, Zero Month in 2012 and Villains Month in 2013 all pushing the publisher to the top of the sales charts.
The terms of Marvel’s retailer offer state that retailers whose “Wolverine” #1 orders exceed their “Infinity” #6 orders by 200 percent will qualify for the program. Starting July 1, two stripped “Wolverine” #1 covers will net a retailer one copy of the “Wolverine” #12 “Mortal Variant,” with no restriction in the number of variants retailers are eligible to receive.
“Wolverine” #1, from the creative team of writer Paul Cornell and artist Ryan Stegman, is scheduled to be released on Feb. 5, 2014. “In ‘Payback,’ the first four issues of the new run, we start with Logan working for a small time super villain as an enforcer, and keep flashing back to how, in the wake of ‘Killable,’ all his relationships crumbled,” Cornell told CBR.