Todd McFarlane Just Sold Out SDCC Before It Even Started. Fun?

Todd McFarlane doesn't need an introduction if you've been in this hobby more than a week. Spawn Spawner. Venom Visionary. Marvel Mutineer who left to join a little company called Image Comics, which he is now the current president of, and the guy behind McFarlane Toys. He's also spent the last year turning himself into one of the biggest names on Whatnot, running livestreams where sketches have reportedly sold for numbers that would make most retailers have to take a breather. However you know him, you know that his name rings like unto bullion, and his actions have enormous effects on the hobby as a whole. 

So, for SDCC, which comes up this week, McFarlane decided the show floor wasn't going to be the only place his exclusives dropped. On July 9, ahead of the con, he's running a Whatnot live sale built around two special covers made with artist Artgerm. One is Artgerm's fully painted version, the other is McFarlane's own inked take on the same artwork. Only 750 sets exist, and McFarlane is signing both books in every single one himself.

Here's the thing though. Retailers have already been doing some version of this, just without anybody writing an article about it. Printing costs are up, and booth space at a show like SDCC isn't cheap enough for a small shop to eat the cost and just hope foot traffic covers it. A lot of stores have moved to presale, online allocation, or direct-to-customer drops before the show even opens, for the same reason McFarlane just gave: the math doesn't math anymore if you leave money on the table waiting for the floor. McFarlane's not doing anything new here. He's just got enough clout that when he does it, it gets called visionary instead of what it actually is, a survival move shops have been making for years.

Ostensibly, this is about access. His reasoning is that not everybody can afford the plane ticket and the hotel to stand in a convention hall for four days, so why should the exclusives only belong to the people who can swing it. Put the drop on Whatnot and a fan in Ohio gets the exact same shot as a fan standing in the SDCC line at 6am. And if that fan happens to be at the show anyway, nothing stops them from tracking down Artgerm in person for a second signature on top of it.

But "ostensibly" is doing some work in this context, because access isn't the only thing this move accomplishes. It also happens to route 750 sets worth of sales, signed and verified, straight to McFarlane's own platform, no con floor markup, no booth split, no waiting to see how many actually sell. Good for the collector who wanted in and couldn't make the trip. Also very good for Todd McFarlane. Both things can be true at once, and we think they are.

Some other things are true, and not so good for the hobby as a whole. SDCC exclusives have always run on a certain kind of scarcity theater. You had to be there, or you had to know somebody who was there, or you had to pay whatever the aftermarket demanded a week later. It was messy and it screwed over a lot of honest collectors who got outbid by bots and scalpers standing in line since 3am. But it also gave the convention itself a reason to exist beyond panels and cosplay photos. Some things only happened on that floor, and that scarcity is a big part of why people justify the flight and the badge price every single year. 

So maybe the Toddfather isn't cutting the head off any snake. Maybe he's just running the same numbers every shop at that con has already run, and coming to the same conclusion. Either way, it hurts the convention. If more prominent names follow this example, SDCC and shows like it start losing the one thing that actually justifies their existence. A badge already costs real money, and the hotel and the flight cost more than that. What's kept people coming back year after year isn't the panels, it's the chance to walk the floor and find something that only exists because you showed up. Take that away, one Whatnot drop at a time, and you're left with a con that's mostly just an expensive place to watch livestreams that are also happening in your living room.

We love conventions. Our biggest fear is losing the special feeling of going to a con and not wanting to be anywhere else. Our goal should be to amplify that feeling, not trade it away for margins that make sense on paper. No matter how much we hate scalping or resellers who only see comics as dollar signs, baking resale value or exclusivity into the original drop isn't the fix. It just solves the money problem for whoever's selling and quietly guts the reason the convention exists in the first place.

So if there is a trail forward, it doesn't seem like McFarlane is the one to blaze it. What he's doing works for him and others before him, and it might even work for the collector who couldn't make the trip this year. But it's a shortcut, and shortcuts have a way of leaving the thing they cut through a little worse off.

The real trail forward probably looks less flashy. Shows figuring out how to keep booth costs from strangling the small guys. Publishers and creators finding ways to reward people for actually showing up instead of giving them a reason to stay home and watch a stream. Retailers getting a seat at that table instead of fighting for scraps. None of that makes headlines the way a 750-set sellout does, but it's the version of this hobby that still has a convention floor worth flying to in five years.