Last year I took a look at the number of exclusives on sale at NYCC 2025, as reported by CovrPrice. There were 1,360 different exclusives – mostly variant covers – on sale last year.
Although I was confused by what CovrPrice was a year ago, now I am much more educated: it is a site that tracks exclusives, comics sales and more. As they put it “We’re helping collectors, retailers, and creators better understand market trends and make informed collecting decisions.” Indeed, for the purpose of this article I forked over $8 for a premium account there is a lot of data, pricing and charting on the site.
I have also learned that the 1360 for 2025 number was UNDER counted: it was closer to 1500.
CovrPrice has exclusive lists for all the major shows, and their raw data on NYCC is up, counting 1,092 separate exclusives.
However, the exclusives ALSO have variants – virgin, foil, metal, cream cheese, what have you – bringing the number up to 1,553 separate exclusives.
CovrPrice also did some analysis of the numbers, by Steve Hungsberg, and it contains my favorite thing in the world: charts and graphs! As always you should check out the original piece which has lots of data and lists of the top exclusives, value wise, which collector types will be interested in. In a press release they write, “CovrPrice invested over 250 hours of research and thousands of dollars annually to gather all of this information.”
I don’t want that hard work to go to waste but for the Beat’s audience, here are a few of the eye opening numbers.
NYCC 2026 set a record for the number of exclusives, but increase is the real stunner here, with a staggering 264% rise in just three years.
A chart showing the top ten exclusive publishers also has some surprises:
Some might be surprised that Image edged out DC for the number of exclusives as of the fdate of the chart making – DC has since taken the lead. Last year Tidalwave took the crown with 118 exclusives – in 2026 they had only 24, I guess having learned less is more. I thought Tidalwave’s number in 2025 was excessive, but Image and DC left it in the dust.
Exclusives by cover artist is also an eye-opener:
I confess to being unfamiliar with most of these artists, but checking out their exclusives, I can see why they are popular: all produce strong, striking images. In fact, if the profession of illustrator is now mostly dead for editorial, it is still alive in the variant cover market! Some examples:
Dungeon Crawler Carl Special Edition #0 by Godtail
Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees Halloween Special #1 by Lloyd Bailey
Ghost Pepper #15 by Ito
Perhaps the most important stat of all is what CovrPrice deemed the “Top 5 New York Comic Con Exclusive Comic Book Properties ” and they are: Absolute Batman (57 exclusives), Exquisite Corpses, Something Is Killing the Children, Dungeon Crawler Carl and Midnight Spider-Man. My own observation is that these are all pretty healthy franchises from a creative and readership standpoint, so all the exclusives are just adding on to a strong IP.
In looking at all this, I feel like I turned over a rock and discovered a whole very busy city in a bottle. The whole world of exclusives and variants is a huge part of the current comics boom, but one that doesn’t intersect much with the stuff I’m interested in – there is only so much time in the day. But you cannot ignore its importance to the current comics economy.
According to ICv2 at one retailer, variant covers make up “over half to nearly 80% of SKUs, depending on the publisher, and for this retailer account for 34-43% of new comic revenue.” They also make up roughly 43% of DC’s sales and 38% of Marvel’s, as of ICv2’s June report.
This is only one retailer, but I would expect similar numbers from other shops.
While those of us in the comics content business might roll our eyes at the world of variants and exclusives, if they were to go away the current comics balloon would deflate very quickly. The sheer amount of websites, YouTube videos and message boards that are engaged in tracking all this – and creating mini dramas and scandals along the way – is also staggering. The rise of certain artists – whether long term or fads – from Stanley “Artgerm” Lau and Peach Momoko to Dan Quintana and Mark Spears is also fraught with drama and even fistfights. Look what we did with that $2 billion!
David Harper took a look at the variant market all the way back in 2022 when it was in its infancy, and before Absolute Batman turned everything on its head. It turns out most of retailers he quoted didn’t like variants. But some saw the value and of course, nobody stopped ordering them.
The only shop that didn’t end up on the “too many variants” side was Third Eye Comics’ Steve Anderson. Third Eye does well with variants, and while Anderson has always heard that there are too many from his peers, he’s also heard there aren’t enough. That’s why he believes the answer to that question is a little more complex than any simple binary.
“I think the answer to your question is this: is the book a book that you can sell variants on? If yes, then there’s never too many variants,” Anderson said. “Is the book a book that you can’t sell variants on? The answer is there’s always too many.”
Surfing around the CovrPrice website there are so many eye-popping numbers – a copy of Night Nurse #1 in 9.8 condition sold for $14,000! A slabbed 9.9 copy of AbBat #1 sold for $15,000! The hottest variant is the Ito edition of Ghost Pepper #1 from Top Shelf, of all places, which sold for $325! (Most current comics market information is only available to subscribers.)
The variant cover speculator market is part of the general addiction to gambling rampant in society right now, but at least you get a cool comic book out of it. Everyone knows that we’re in the midst of a comics industry speculator bubble, everyone knows the bubble will burst. But when and how? Every time I ask someone knowledgable about that, they think it might be six months away, but the six months pass and we’re still six months out.
Several people have whispered to me that the AbBat variant market – the source of the current explosion – is cooling off a bit. I’m not expert enough to know whether that is true or not, or even see the signs.
I do know that for now, people seem to be enjoying this fad, and everyone is making money off it. Whether it’s a harmless hobby or a nefarious plot to kill comics…well, more to come on that.
do you think if they stopped printing pages on the inside, would anyone notice?