Variants of comics from Joe Books

[hex]

Under are two pictures of Frozen #1 from Joe Books. The one to the left I found on @aaron_Sparrow, and apparently it’s taken inside a Barnes & Noble store. The one to the right is my own copy bought from a regular comic shop and distributed by Diamond.

As you can see, they are two different printings – one with the barcode on the front cover. Anyone know if all comics from Joe Books exists in two variants? And are the "newsstand" variants distributed to other places than Barnes & Noble?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Are you sure the barcode isn't glued on, though?

[hex]

Aug 30, 2016 22:07:36 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Are you sure the barcode isn't glued on, though?

I did some more seaching and found a picture of Disney Princess #5 with a barcode on the front cover too. Here you can see that the names are moved, so it's definitely a different print.

[squeakyboots]

This is interesting because all of the Joe Books comics I have so far have their barcodes on the back cover. (Except Darkwing Duck #2 which doesn't have a barcode at all) It's weird that they would make whole new editions of each issue just to move the barcode.

[Fritz]

It is a little unusual. Before the 1990's books aimed at the direct market didn't have the bar codes the newsstand copies did, instead having an artistic design, promo text, a blurb, or (if the spot on the cover was in the middle of a black or white field) nothing at all--but certainly nothing like moving the bar code area to or from the back cover. About 1995 or so the direct market copies started carrying bar codes, though they were usually different from the newsstand UPC.

Like Squeakyboots said, the direct market editions of Joe Books' comics have the UPC on the back cover (as does IDW, which as far as I know does not sell to newsstands). My only guess is that someone in marketing thought it'd confuse too many newsstand vendors since just about every magazine published has the bar code on front. (B&N is considered a newsstand vendor--the main difference is that unsold newsstand copies are returnable for credit; direct market copies are not).

Classically, the newsstand and direct market copies which other than the UPC are identical are usually considered the same printing by comic book collectors. There's a few exceptions (look up the 1977 Star Wars #1 for example). In other words, most of the time it doesn't make a difference on the collector market.