Second Print of non-existent Regular variants, probably should be /A-2

[Fred Slota]

Probably others, but found these...

 

Angel (Boom!) #1-2

Charismagic #0-2

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance #1-2

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #1-2

Fairlady #1-2

Farscape #1-2

Flash Gordon (Dynamite) #1-2

Gatchaman #1-2

Horizon Zero Dawn#1-2

Kirby Genesis: Silver Star #1-2

Lady Mechanika #1-2

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (5th Series) #0-2

New Gods (5th Series) #2-2

Project Superpowers: Blackcross #1-2

Red Sonja (Dynamite, Vol. 3) #1-2

The Spider (Dynamite) #1-2

The Spirit (11th Series) #1-2

Transformers: Unicron #1-2

True Blood #1-2

Wonder Woman (6th Series) #1-2

[Fred Slota]

Repeating my opinion that declaring an issue to be the second printing of a particular variant implies the existence of a first print of the same variant.  The above, and others, in my opinion should be reassigned as second printings of the /A variant.

[Randall J. Paske]

One problem is that many times (more often than not?), second and subsequent printings of an issue have new covers that don't correspond to any of the first-printing variants.

The first example from your list, Angel (Boom!) #1-2, has no corresponding cover art among the #1 first-printing variants. By that token, it's not really a second printing of any specific variant. Changing it to #1/A-2 would eliminate one problem--that #1-2 has no "regular" #1 to correspond to--but it would introduce another problem by implying that it's a new printing of #1/A, which it isn't.

There's precedent for different printings having different covers, of course--plenty of numbered "regular" issues (#1) have different covers for later printings (#1-2, etc.). So it should be OK to have #1/A and #1/A-2 with different covers, per your suggestion. The Item Description field could help with this, too. But I do think the insertion of the variant letter introduces some ambiguity because of how ComicBase item numbers are constructed.

As I see it, ComicBase lists variants and printings in its item numbers backwards. The ComicBase hierarchy goes Issue Number /Variant─Printing, implying that specific variants might go through multiple printings. In reality, the typical hierarchy is Issue Number─Printing/Variant. If ComicBase item numbers went 1-2/A, 1-2/B, etc., instead of 1/A-2, 1/B-2, etc., then they would line up more nicely in the grid, and we'd no longer have the implication that specific variants go through multiple printings.

That is, now we have this as the default order in the grids:

#1
#1-2
#1-3
#1/A
#1/A-2
#1/A-3
#1/B
#1/B-2

But this would make more sense to me:

#1
#1/A
#1/B
#1-2
#1-2/A
#1-2/B
#1-3
#1-3/A

It would be less of a jumble, the variants from each printing would be kept together, and it wouldn't imply that a specific variant is being reprinted.

But I don't know if this is changeable, and of course I may only be making sense to myself. I do that sometimes.