Today’s TBU Merch Review is a little bit different than our typical unboxing and review. Today we are looking at four different mystery packs from DC Comics offered at Walmart in November 2021.
Walmart has been offering comics in its stores for well over two years. It began with the edition of Giants that featured reprinted content alongside an original tale created specifically for the release. One of the original stories was Brian Michael Bendis’ Batman story after joining the company back in 2018, coincidently called Batman: Universe. There is no hard evidence on whether or not these giants did well in stores, but they eventually ran past the original promised twelve issues and quietly halted.
The new offering seemed to be mystery comic packs. Rather than figuring out a way to create unique content exclusive to retailers outside of comic shops, DC put together a new offering. For a reduced price (off of the standard cover price), DC combined four different comics in a single pack and offered them together at Walmart. In some cases, the new mystery pack displays took the same spot on store shelves. Now for the price of $8.98, you get four comics that typically average at least $4 per comic.
The offerings found at Walmart in November 2021 from DC Comics include a variety of comics from earlier this year, but mostly the Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point miniseries that, due to poor marketing, has an abundance of extra issues. Out of the four packs of comics we picked up, all four had at least one of the issues from the miniseries. It gets worse when you look at out of the total number of sixteen comics, half of them were one of three issues from the miniseries.
On the plus side, the packs for the month included masks featuring Catwoman and Joker, which were previously used as promotional items in June 2021. It is an added bonus for the price, but one to consider was given away for free back in June at local comic shops. Let’s take a look at what else we got in this mystery group.
The takeaway from these packs is that this is not a replacement for collecting comics. You will likely end up with duplicates and be struggling to plug in the missing pieces. One interesting thing that would make the need to get rid of the extra Fortnite comics, is if they packaged all six issues together and sold them as a set. Instead, we are left with three of the six issues and they are taking slots away from the normal comics that are ongoing. So if you want to buy a pack of comics as a small gift, this works out well. It is unlikely that there will be duplicates of the same issue in a single pack and there is a mix of what they are offering. If you are looking at collecting comics, do yourself a favor and preorder your comics from our partner, Things from Another World.
