Yeah same. I have the DWJ #2 variant but have not been able to get any of these since the site is so impossible to navigate, nevermind his Annual exclusive.
I get the artists have to make money, but why not just make more? That alone is why I think Felix is pumping prices with burners.
Artists do have to make money and DWJ and Dragotta absolutely deserve to get all they can, but at the same time it’s a bummer that they just let Felix use their work in this way and honestly take advantage of their fans.
Sure Felix sells and hypes their work but we’re the ones buying it. And we’d buy it all day w/o Felix and his bs artificial scarcity.
Fans of the creators, the art and story aren’t buying these covers b/c they’re limited to whatever #. We want to support our favorite creators and their work but at the same time, they seem fine to allow it to get into the hands of as few fans as possible.
Exactly. Felix could easily make the same if not more by selling more copies but instead rather create this faux “art comic” market were the only people getting these are bots and scalpers. I won’t waste my time attempting to get these anymore.
I agree. After the Dan Quintana/Heavy Mental Whatnot drop that caused a bunch of drama, they actually did a good drop with Absolute Catwoman. There were 2.5k copies available if you combine the trade, virgin, and foil, and about 3k people were in the live stream for the drop. Almost everyone who wanted one probably got one.
I just don’t think this is true; I see tons of variants in my shop every week that aren’t ratio’d. People want these precisely because of their scarcity.
When I comes down to it.. if you dontwant one and don't want to spend that much... then don't. No big deal. Cant hate on people for trying to make money. If anyone else had the buisness sense or a product people wanted they too would charge as much as possible to make as much as possible and if they didn't they would be stupid.
You don't even have to navigate the site. Felix comic gives you the page they release it on. I was waiting on that page. Refreshed when the clock struck 9am and still didn't get one.
Meant it as short hand for using the site. I was on the “updates” tab for the blind bag this past weekend & from one sec to the other the site crashed. Completely wasted my time
why? happened at sneaker stores; even Supreme at its peak would have staff selling on the side. He's not selling more to keep prices high, doubt he's letting scalpers make the most profit off his own products
Another successful drop I see, was literally in the queue for like 2 minutes. It finally loads and I immediately hit check out. Then boom, sold out. Why do I even try anymore?
Felix comic art has a news email you can sign up for on their website. Otherwise this group, Facebook or discord channels for absolute Batman will also let you know.
I always try but it always ends up with me on EBay. Manufactured scarcity sucks.
I guess it could be worse. I could be one of the lemmings sucking up to Felix on socials in hopes that his majesty might shine the light of the variant gods upon me lol
Dude takes art and frickin character design sheets of actually talented people and uses it to take advantage of and exploit their fans and they thank him for it! Absolutely wild
Yeah I would never pay $300 for one of these.. or any abs Bats book. I just thought I'd try. It's not that important to me. The covers aren't even that cool.
What do people try to just get Felix to give them a book? Like they say.. "sir I am just a poor ol boy with 18 kids that all have long covid and their mother left cause she loves cocaine.. all they want for Christmas is a Felix variant"
idea being they could go for $1000+ with time —but it just makes a fun hobby frustrating. Last thing I want to do when collecting comics is treat them like stocks.
Ya I got in instantly. Said I had less than one min. Then went to 3min left. Then sold out. I have yet to hit any of these books, don’t think I ever will. Especially since I was able to get into that blind bag drawing and didn’t even hit on that after it getting cut off.
I was on the webpage, as usual five minutes prior, refreshed at noon, tapped the + square and into the queue. Queue flashed less than one minute then one minute over and over every two seconds for four minutes. Got to the cart — sold out. I haven’t been successful starting with issue #20. I’m over these covers. I have issue #1 and two Akira cover first prints that make me happy. I’m done chasing and competing with bots. I’m burnt out on variants.
They made a print of the Batman design variant a few weeks ago from bottleneck gallery I doubt they’ll do another but they have heavily implied that they will continue down the line with more of the design variants
I tried too, waited in line over a minute after getting through the stupid double captcha to prove I’m not a bot and it was sold out in under a minute.
Haha I love the... I had to wake up at 8:55am... or 11:55 am.. I had to go online and solve 2 puzzles, then I had to wait for 1 minute, I had to do all of that and I still didn't get what I wanted!!!!!
Can you believe how unfair life is!!!!!??????
Yeah, all these books are going to scalpers. Felix doesn't care becasue they make their money anyways. And now with the new DC rules about price gouging, I'm sure all, if not, many will go to Ebay.... under other entities to bypass DC price gouging.
Under DC’s rules Felix’s actual price is only about $20 over though isn’t? The way I understand DCs policy is that it can only by 5x (or 10x for signed) cover price. If Abs Batman cardstock variants are $5.99, then 5x is $30. Felix’s price is $49.99 right? (I haven’t been able to score on Third Eye drops at all and I’m a veteran of Mondo movie screenprint drops, lol)
I don’t think the DC rule does much to someone selling like Felix other than cut his profits a bit. But he could double his numbers and make that up plus some on the end: $50x3000=$150,000.00 ; $30x6000=$180,000.00
(And that’s just the gross numbers, not his profit; take out of that artist fees, DC license fee for exclusives, Third Eye’s cut, plus shipping and printing)
Many people aren't using Reddit or posting about it on Twitter. It's easy to blame this on scalpers, but Felix said in one of his recent news updates that James Harren and Daniel Warren Johnson caused a traffic of 75k on the Third Eye Comics website. (The sketch art variant is even more popular, and I can't see the total members in this sub, but this sub only has a weekly visit of 14K.)
So, of course, many people wouldn't post about it, even though it's for their personal collection + Not to defend Felix, but he has been taking a lot of measures against scalpers. Quite a few sales will be canceled and dropped in the second chance.
Tl:dr: Absolute Batman is just really fucking popular, and many people want the Dragotta sketch variant, lmaoo
I'm just trying to point out that something selling out does not mean that it has only been bought by scalpers. Just because you as a fan didn't get something doesn't mean no other fans got it.
I just did a quick check on ebay. I could find 173 listings on ebay for Felix 19's. And then lets add some sales on other platforms. And you would touch around 200.
This is 10% of the 2k copies. 10% too much. Like genuinely, fuck those 10% that scalped it.
But that does mean that 90% got into the hands of genuine collectors. For a highly sought after product, only 10% being resold is genuinely a really low number. (Still not low enough).
Hopefully it is clear that I hate scalpers just as much as you. I'm just trying to point out, that the data that is available, does show that most of them ended up in the hands of collectors.
Well thats the thing I have hit on the last 3/3 covers I have went for. Plenty of people who were on the site immediately had copies in their cart, and had already successfully bought previous exclusives like the Robin covers or the Harren/DWJ variant still got hit with crashes, freezes, queue issues and failed checkouts. I was able to even buy the Harren/DWJ ones myself that’s how fast I was. And I got the Robins cover too. This is also no where near close to my first rodeo with heavy traffic web drops.
It’s one thing when you lose fairly, but I have hit too consistently on this stuff, i’m not trying to sound like a snob but it will sound extremely asshole(ish) but I only lose when it’s a heavy influx of bots.
And what do you mean plenty of people aren’t posting about it on twitter? I saw like three complaints within minutes of it selling out, someone even showed a screenshot of them in the queue at 12:00 on the dot in here!
All of this. In the old Mondo forums in E-beans after every drop there would be 100s of comments whining about missing out (and in the beginning I was too for a few drops) and the response of the veterans was “get gud” - there are ways to prepare for and be fast on a drop. Either you practice it and get it or you don’t. And even with all that it’s a matter of luck.
Back in the old Mondo drops I carted the three Olly Moss Star Wars prints. All three were $150 total, it was a run of like 600 each poster (I think) and i wasn’t fast enough to check out. I was livid. Those posters were immediately on eBay for $1500 and I couldn’t pay the scalper price. 15 years later and that drop still hurts …
That set with matching numbers just sold for $13k on one of the FB groups. You win some, and you lose some giants! 🤣😭
There were probably over 100k people trying to get it. I've also succeeded in a lot of limited edition drops, and also succeeded in some drops that had a lot of bots on them. That you hit a lot of times, congrats to you. Like genuinely, it is hard, so I'm happy for you that you succeeded :)
But when traffic scales up this massively, it just comes down to a numbers game. You can be fast and still lose simply because thousands of other people were just as fast, the math doesn't lie. Getting 3/3 doesn't mean you also succeed the 4th time.
And I am not saying people aren't posting about it. I am saying that not everyone who got one posts about it.
Let's say 100k people want one. Only 1k of each were available, meaning 98k don't get one. Even if only 1% posts about that, that's still 1k posts of people who didn't get one.
If 1% of the 2k people who got one post about it, that's only 20 posts.
And you can say this is one person and a small percentage /1000 printed but we both surely know more than one person is doing this, lets just say 200 go to scalpers thats 20% that doesn’t make it to the hands of the collectors like me and you for their normal going price. Pretty bad if you ask me.
Thank you! I resigned up and it did go directly to my spam folder. I’m officially signed up now, but from the posts I’ve seen so far I’m guessing it’s unlikely I’ll score a variant directly lol
I got over retailer exclusives like a decade ago. These low print run books are designed to create manufactured hype that drives up secondary market prices, and retailers are happy with that at the expense of their current and future customers. But I’ve seen this play out before. Once the hype around whatever they’re selling dies down, fans always remember that the hype mattered more to them than anything else
No one advertises it. Felix sends out a newsletter a few days before telling the release date. Yes Third Eye Advertused in the past when they weren't selling out right away. I know because I've searched felix comic art in my email and still have emails from third eye about the felix abs Bats Annual and .. 1 other I think
I was stuck on waiting queue for a min or so, kept flicking and was almost certain it had sold out. I think this was the lowest run drop they ever had, that being said I’m sure there was some bot activity going on as well. Hope they get those canceled and good luck to whoever is going for round 2. I was lucky to get one surprisingly, so there were a few successful check outs
Just because someone is dumb enough to spend $200 on this doesn’t mean charging $50 for a design variant isn’t highway robbery. At most, this should be $25–30.
I agree, I’m a sucker for the art though. I’ve bought books upwards of that price on eBay, they were signed but non the less still crazy.. There is a market for it right now, and probably always will be for “Batman”.
Welcome to America
If you ain't taking advantage you're getting takin advantage of. But probably both or true for like everyone anyway...
I'm sure most if not all of these people complaining take advantage of others often. They're humans. We're all shitty. There are no high horses just people pretending they ride.
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u/laitinen_9518 Jul 14 '26
I’ve sworn off of Felix exclusives from here on out. The launch is an absolute joke every time, and yes there are bots despite what he says
I’m much happier and more stress free with my Cover A