Non-comic book scoop

So, the same day I get my first link from a cool comics blog (Heidi MacDonald's Beat), I find out that my scoop wasn't such a big scoop, after all.

I'm talking about the item below on the Marvel Comics Digests at Family Dollar. It seems that a version of these was announced last April, and those were offered to regular comics retailers first. This was covered by quite a few of the comic news sites at the time. They shipped in July. Googling seems to indicate that hardly anybody mentioned these after they were announced. That they were sold by Family Dollar was news. The versions on sale at Family Dollar have specially-printed covers, so they were probably just an extra printing done at the same time. Thanks to Brian Hibbs for setting me straight on that in the comments.

For the record, Marvel announced that there will be six digests, total, with the second batch of three including another Spider-man volume, one starring the Hulk, and one starring the X Men. I have no idea if the additional three volumes will also turn up at Family Dollar (or if they already have), but I plan to check regularly.

These are still a very good deal for classic comics. Might make great Halloween treats.

Brian, by the way, is a long-time comic book retailer who writes "Tilting At Windmills" for Newsarama, one of the best sources for comic book news on the web. Highly recommended.

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 20th: It's even less of a scoop than I thought. These are turning up at Wal Mart, for 97 cents. And they have all six of the titles. They're in the toy department. At least I discovered the rare Family Dollar variation.