Amazing Spider-Man #1000 Outruns Its Own Delay for Local Comic Shop Day

Marvel's mega-sized Amazing Spider-Man #1000 was supposed to hit shelves August 16, but a printer jam at one of the company's plants pushed the whole 32-version release — two main covers plus 30 variants — back two weeks to September 30. Marvel didn't name the facility, only that the fix would take about two weeks, delaying even the digital edition despite it having nothing to do with printing at all.

Then the milestone issue found a loophole. Local Comic Shop Day, the annual ComicsPRO-organized event built to spotlight independent retailers, landed on September 26 this year, and participating shops got an exclusive Skan variant cover of #1000 four full days ahead of the September 30 wide release. ComicsPRO members also received a separate spot-color variant distributed directly to them rather than through the standard Penguin Random House pipeline — a different supply chain that apparently sidestepped whatever jammed up the main print run.

Once it's fully out, #1000 is stacked as an anniversary special marking 63 years since Spider-Man's 1962 debut, with stories from Joe Kelly and Pepe Larraz, Dan Slott and Marcos Martin, Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen, Frank Miller and Peach Momoko, Noah Hawley and Patrick Gleason, J.M. DeMatteis and Humberto Ramos, and Larry Lieber and Giuseppe Camuncoli. For retailers and collectors, it means the LCSD exclusive briefly became the only way to get the issue at all — a nice bit of leverage for the shops the event was designed to help.

Original reporting: Bleeding Cool and Popverse.