Marvel to comics retailers: we'll give you limited edition singles if you destroy our competitors' products

Cory Doctorow 12:27 pm Thu Aug 11, 2011

Marvel Comics has offered comics retailers access to a limited-edition variant cover run of "Fear Itself #6," but only if the comic-shops destroy their No. 1 issue of DC Comics' Flashpoint and send 50 covers to Marvel:

Make no mistake, this is perfectly legal. The comic-shop proprietors would be destroying their own property, and it is their right so to do. However, this seems little different than someone buying books to burn them.

They would destroy a work of literature with the express intention of preventing another person from reading it. Anyone who does this is engaging in censorship, and Marvel Comics is agent provocateur.

This is not the first time Marvel Comics has tried this, and, according to them, previous efforts have netted tens of thousands of covers.

Marvel Bribes Retailers to Destroy DC Comics

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