[a fool in paradise]

Bill Clinton's pal almost bankrupted the entire comic book industry in the 1990s when he (A)bought the leading distributor for all publishers, and (B)flooded the channel with "variant" covers and required stores to buy the full Marvel line of titles in order to be eligible to order to limited speculator variant covers, etc.

Stores were stuck with a glut of "high priced" but worthless shiny books that no one was reading ("these are for resaale later!"). Quite a few doors closed up in the wake of that monopoly.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Stores were stuck with a glut of “high priced” but worthless shiny books that no one was reading (”these are for resale later!”).

Back in the olden days an unsold book had it’s cover torn off and sent back to the company. The book was then destroyed.

If you knew where to look, you could find stores with lots of books with mutilated covers, and torn off titles on comic books for a few cents. They weren’t destroyed.