Double Prime

Remember those books that were polybagged with a random Ultraverse Series I card? One of those was Prime 4 (I am still trying to verify that the polybagged Prototype variant cover for that book actually exists … I’ve never actually seen one although I know someone who has).

I actually spent five bucks on this book since it had an extra card in the polybag. Why? I’m not sure.

Edit: Fixed the post to point out that the polybagged variant is the one I haven’t seen (it would have a UPC symbol on the front and come bagged with a random card).

Magic City Comic Con

So my kid wanted to go to a comic convention down in Miami, which is about five hours south from here. It wasn’t very hard to convince me! So off we went last weekend to Magic City Comic Convention, which is a smaller event (compared to, say, MegaCon in Orlando) at a convention center next to a hotel over by the airport.

I decided to go cheap on the hotel to leave us more money for the con by staying at a Motel 6. Next time, there will be less scrimping, I assure you.

Anyway, we got to the con pretty early. There were a lot of actors, wrestlers, voice actors, etc. And about 20 comic book creators,including Mantra writer Mike W. Barr. I stopped by his booth and got a couple of things signed. I’m not sure if he had ever seen one of the holographic covers before. Mainly people were bringing him Batman books to sign; I saw one dude give him a couple of Break-Thru books.

So that’s Ultraverse Note No. 1. It’s 20 years later but there are still signs!

Ultraverse Note No. 2: One of the comic book dealers (there were about 10 total) actually had several quarter bins. I love quarter bins! So I dove in and found he had a number of Ultraverse books that had the UPC codes on the cover (follow this link for that nerdiness). And when I say “a number,” I actually mean “80.” To me that was 20 bucks well spent.

The UPC codes

I think I have most of this figured out. For about the first year-and-a-half, all Ultraverse comics had a regular cover and a UPC cover, almost always identical except for the UPC box (there are some variant covers but I think we figured those out a long time ago).

In fall 1994 they changed the box at the top left of the cover from a big Malibu logo to a smaller logo with a head shot. Mantra 15 and 16 is an example.

I think that change marks the end of the UPC variants … a few months later all Ultraverse books had UPC boxes no matter where they were sold. I have visually verified this with almost all of the UPC books.

Anyway, here is what I came up with:

UPC list
Break-Thru: 1, 2
Elven: 0
Exiles: 1, 2, 3, 4
Firearm: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Freex: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 (14 unverified), Giant Size 1
Hardcase: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 (17 unverified)
Lord Pumpkin: 0 (maybe)
Mantra: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Giant Size 1
Night Man: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Prime: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 (16 unverified), Annual 1
Prototype: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Giant Size 1
Rune: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (6 unverified)
Sludge: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (11-12 unverified)
Solitaire: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Solution: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 (13-14 unverified)
Strangers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Ultraforce: 0, 1, 2
Ultraverse Origins: 1
Warstrike: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Wrath: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Giant Size 1

Those unverified ones, I’m not even certain they exist because another potential reason is that this might have been a timed change (around September-October 1994). If you have actually seen one of those, let me know!

Valentines Day cards

I never would have known this existed until I saw it on another web site, so at least one other person has a set of them. It took a couple of months searching on eBay to turn up (can’t remember the exact price, it was maybe a buck or two) although I have not seen any since, and that was more than a year ago.

The other guy’s cards say they were for discounts around Ohio; these are from California. There’s no real way to tell how rare they are, so let’s just say they are “pretty cool” and leave it there.