On Variants, Subscriptions and Special Orders

Hello Rogues Gallery Comics & Games customers, we have a slightly long but really important message about reserving comics, especially variant covers, if that applies to you please give this a read.

We've been seeing an increase in special orders for comics, especially particular variant covers, and while we are of course delighted with the increased traffic, we are beginning to get a little overwhelmed with the amount of extra work and worry that more things might slip through the cracks.

We have three systems that we use to take orders:
1. Our in-store subscription service, which you can access and order online at the store website. This is the best method, you'll get an email each week telling you what comics are in your file, we can hold it for longer, only asking that you come in at least once a month and clear the file monthly. 

2. Our special orders, where you call/email/tell us in person to order something, we add it to a text file we have, and we manually check when we get orders in and text or email to let you know it is in, and we will generally hold it for up to a week, although there are exceptions for more limited items

3. Some folks call or email the week of or day before and ask us to hold specific comics for them, often wanting specific covers.

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#1 is the best option, and we really would prefer everyone use that option. We have a streamlined and fairly automated ordering process, and while mistakes still can (and do) happen, we are much more likely to get everyone what they need, and to order books and covers that everyone wants, if we know ahead of time. You just have to get your order in before Final Order Cutoff (FOC), which is usually about three weeks before the books come out.

#2 requires us to make sure we manually see every item on the list, connect it to a special order, pull it and contact the person. We have been doing this a long time, and we're pretty good at it, but it adds hours to our weekly workload, and it is much easier for human error to creep in and for us to miss something

#3 is a lot of extra work, usually in the middle of an already-busy process, and it also means that you may be requesting something that we missed the order window for about three weeks before, that we would have happily ordered for you if we knew in advance that you wanted it

We understand that not everyone wants to have a subscription file for whatever reason, but we are going to request that if you want specific variant covers, you try using the online system to order them, for the benefit of our increased workload but also for your benefit so you can be a lot more certain of getting the comics and covers you want