Subscription Service FAQ

•WHAT IS A “SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE”?

A subscription service is a way for you to make sure that the comics and graphic novels you’re most excited about are waiting for you at Challengers. You can preorder single comics and books, or even getting a standing order for every installment of your favorite ongoing stories. Simply put, it means we order the books you want to read, and we keep them aside until you’ve got time to pick them up.

•DO I NEED TO PAY IN ADVANCE?

Nope! Your books aren’t paid for until you come to pick them up, or until you request an invoice.

•HOW OFTEN DO I NEED TO COME IN FOR MY STANDING ORDERS?

We ask that subscribers come by at least once a month for their books. If you ever have problems making it in, we are happy to send out an invoice for your reserved items that can be paid online. Once everything’s paid for, you can come by whenever you’d like!

•WHAT IF I DON’T LIVE NEARBY? CAN I GET MY BOOKS SHIPPED OUT

Absolutely! We offer $6 shipping for most orders, with a slight increase if we need to pack everything in a bigger box. (The most we’ve ever charged someone to ship out their subscriptions was maybe $10, and that was for almost 50 comics.) You can choose a recurring frequency of shipments – weekly, every two weeks, monthly – or just ask us to ship out your books whenever you’d like.

•WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T PICK UP MY BOOKS?

That would be sad for both of us! If your books aren’t paid for after a month, we’ll try to get in contact with you (emails, phone calls if we have your number on file) so you know that your subscription account is in danger of being closed. A week after that, if we still haven’t been able to get ahold of you, we’ll end up having to reshelve any currently held items and close your account.

•OKAY! NOW, HOW DO I START RESERVING UPCOMING COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS?

First thing you’ll want to do is make an account through our Manage Comics portal. Manage Comics is the service we use to let people manage their subscription account 24/7, and it’s free for you to use. The Manage Comics portal on our website is where you can subscribe to series, preorder items, see everything that’s currently waiting for you, make changes to your standing orders, and adjust the shipping frequency for your account. The first step is making sure you’ve got an account, though!

If you’ve placed an order with us before through our website, you probably already have an account, and you just need to activate it. After clicking on SUBSCRIPTIONS in the menu to get to the Manage Comics portal, you’ll then click “Please sign in to Manage Subscriptions”. From the next screen, you’ll click “Forgot password?” At the next screen, you’ll enter the Email address associated with your account (the one you’ve used to place orders in the past) and click “Submit”. After that, you’ll get an email prompting you to create a new password for that account. And then you’re done! You’ve got a Manage Comics account!

If you’ve never placed an order with us before, the process is pretty straightforward. From the Manage Comics portal (found via the SUBSCRIPTIONS menu link) you’ll still click “Please sign in to Manage Subscriptions”; after that, you’ll choose “Create account”. At the next screen, you’ll enter your first name, last name, email address, and create a password for your account. Then you’re all set and ready to add subscriptions and preorders to your account!

•WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY “SUBSCRIPTIONS AND PREORDERS”? AREN’T THOSE THE SAME THING?

They’re not, no. For the purposes of the Manage Comics service, they mean two different things.

A subscription is a recurring order for each new issue of a sequential series as they release; for example, a subscription to Batman would get you #151, then #152, then #153, and so on until you end your subscription. With a subscription, you don’t need to request each individual issue of the books you’re enjoying – we’ll have them waiting for you whenever a new issue comes out.

A preorder is an order for one specific item, and it doesn’t recur. Using the previous paragraph’s example, a preorder for Batman #151 would only get you that one comic, and nothing else afterwards.

Any comic or graphic novel series (meaning it has more than one scheduled installment planned for release) can be subscribed to on their Manage Comics page. Any item can be preordered instead. There are some items – non-recurring comics or graphic novels, any non-comics items – that can ONLY be preordered.

•WHERE CAN I FIND ITEMS TO ADD TO MY SUBSCRIPTIONS OR PREORDERS?

There are a few different ways to start browsing the Manage Comics catalog:

• If you know which items you want, just plug them into the “Search subscriptions” box and they should come up right away.
• You can browse by Publisher – either from the landing page on the Manage Comics portal, or by clicking the Publisher link – and click the individual publisher icon to see everything that publisher has available for preorder or subscription.
• The “Product Types” tab allows you to see what’s available just within certain types of products: Comics, Toys, Clothing, Graphic Novels, etc.
• The “Release Dates” tab allows you to see which items are coming on future release dates – you can adjust the calendar on the left-hand side. All upcoming items release on Wednesdays, so use future Wednesdays when you’re searching!
• One of the best tools available to lock in your orders is the “Last Call (FOC)” tab. That’s a list of every item where we’re closing orders soon. After the orders close on an item, you can no longer add it through Manage Comics, so we recommend that subscription service members check the “Last Call (FOC)” page on a weekly basis so you don’t miss out on anything.
  
  

We always want to make things as easy as possible for our subscribers, but this is the one thing we can’t do. While it’s fairly easy for us to sign you up on Day 1 for, say, all Star Wars comics or all Absolute comics, we can’t automatically add series in the future that haven’t even been created yet. We do everything we can to notify you when new catalogs are up, and Manage Comics is available 24/7 for you to search through, but we can’t add books that don’t exist yet.

•CAN I PREORDER OR SUBSCRIBE TO VARIANT COVERS FOR COMICS?

First, let’s define a few terms when it comes to variant covers for comics at Challengers!

A variant cover is any additional cover produced for a comic beyond the main cover. Publishers frequently produce variant covers alongside the main covers for their comics; sometimes as many as a couple dozen.

For variant covers, there are two kinds: open-order variant covers and incentive variant covers.

Open-order variant covers are produced without any restrictions for stores like Challengers to carry, so we accept preorders for them from customers. You can preorder any open-order variant that you see in the Manage Comics catalog. Subscriptions for open-order variants are… a little tricky. Beyond the fact that the artist and concept may change every month for open-order variants, there’s also the problem that the number of covers also fluctuates wildly. A series may have two open-order variants one month, six the next, and zero the following month. As a result, we usually suggest that customers subscribe to only the main cover for a series, and leave open-order variants to preorder only.

Incentive variant covers are produced at a much lower quantity, have multiple restrictions for stores to carry. A traditional incentive variant cover is a “1 for 25” incentive variant cover: For every 25 copies of the main or open-order covers a store orders, that store can order one of the incentive variant cover. Due to the uncertainty behind which incentive variants we might qualify for, Challengers doesn’t allow preorders (or subscriptions) for incentive variant covers. Any incentive variant covers that we carry end up on the shelves in a first come/first served basis.

•HOW DO I SUBSCRIBE TO A SERIES OR ADD A PREORDER?

Once you’ve found something you want to add to your subscription account, just click “Subscribe to series” to create an ongoing subscription to that series with the next issue that we order.

You can also choose “Pre Order Cover” if you’d prefer to place a non-recurring order for just that single issue or variant cover.

•WHEN DOES MY SUBSCRIPTION START?

Your subscription will start with the next issue that we order from the publisher. You can find out when orders close for individual issues with the “Final Order Cutoff” notation on each item. If you place your order before that date, your subscription starts with that issue. If you place your order after that date, you’ll get the next issue that ships.

For example, let’s say you start a subscription to Batman on August 1st. Batman #151 is the next issue to be released on August 7th. Unfortunately, the “Final Order Cutoff” notation says that orders for Batman #151 closed back on July 15th. That means that your subscription would start with Batman #152, since the orders for that issue don’t close until August 12th.

•WHY DO I SEE A GRAY BUTTON THAT SAYS “NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR PRE ORDER”?

That means that the orders have already closed for that item at the distribution level, and we are no longer taking preorders for it.

•HOW CAN I MANAGE MY SUBSCRIPTIONS AND PREORDERS?

Head over to the “My Subscriptions” tab!

• The first thing you’ll see will be “My Subscriptions”, a list of all of your active subscriptions and unfilled preorders. You can delete any Subscription, which will end after any ordered but unfilled issues arrive. Preorders can’t be deleted on the customer-facing Manage Comics portal; if you need to delete a preorder, please reach out to us and we’ll see what we can do. Preorder changes before orders close are generally easy to remove, but requests to cancel preorders after orders have closed may be refused.
• ”Pulled Orders” contains a list of any arrived items that have yet to be purchased. We populate this list throughout the week as different shipments arrive, so not everything on this list will be immediately available for purchase. New releases for all publishers are available for purchase Wednesdays at 11am.
• ”Billed Orders” will have any invoices that you might have requested or scheduled for your pulled items. We only automatically bill mail-order subscribers; in-store pickup subscribers can request an invoice if they’d like.
• In the “Shipping Preferences” tab, you can set the frequency of your mail-order subscriptions, if applicable. By default, all subscribers are set for Local Pickup, meaning you’ll stop by Challengers in person to buy your books. If you’d rather we ship out your comics, you can set your shipping frequency to Weekly, Bi-Weekly (every two weeks), or Monthly. Mail-order customers can also opt to get their books shipped out whenever they want by contacting us and letting us know they’d like to have their pulled orders shipped to them.

•HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN SOMETHING I ORDER HAS ARRIVED?

Every Tuesday night after we close, once all publisher shipments for the week have arrived, we send out an email listing everything we’ve received for you over the last week. (If you don’t get an email on a Tuesday night, it just means nothing came in for you over the last week.) Everything in that email will be available for purchase or shipping on Wednesday at 11:00am when we reopen.

•WHAT ABOUT WHEN NEW ITEMS AND SERIES GET OFFERED? HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN IT’S TIME TO CHECK FOR THOSE?

We’ll send you an email for that, as well! Every month, when all the catalogs for our suppliers are ready for preorders and subscriptions, we’ll send you an email letting you know you can start ordering. We usually pick a dozen or so different comics to highlight, but we’ll also include a link right at the top of the email to send you directly to the Manage Comics landing page.

•WHAT IF A SERIES I’M SUBSCRIBED TO GETS RESTARTED? WILL MY SUBSCRIPTION CARRY OVER AUTOMATICALLY?

Generally, yes, but not always. In the monthly New Catalogs email that we send out, we’ll also have a section near the top called Automatically-Added Subscriptions. This section will list any previous subscriptions that are either being converted to a new subscription (“VENGEANCE OF MOON KNIGHT subscribers are now down for MOON KNIGHT: FIST OF KHONSHU”), or having an additional comic or series added to their list of subscriptions and preorders (“GREEN LANTERN subscribers are now down for the GREEN LANTERN CIVIL CORPS one-shot”).

While we add these subscriptions and preorders automatically to make sure you don’t miss crucial parts of ongoing stories, these additions are completely optional – subscriptions can be deleted before Last Call/FOC to avoid getting any unwanted issues, and you can email us to have preorders removed.

•A FREE SERVICE WHERE I CAN RESERVE ITEMS IN ADVANCE, GET NOTIFIED WHEN THEY ARRIVE, AND COME PICK THEM UP AT MY LEISURE? IT CAN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT!

Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong! (Also, that's not a question, but we'll let it slide.) Any active subscriber – meaning anyone who gets at least an item each week – qualifies for our Subscriber Discount! You’ll save 5% on all in-store and online orders – we automatically deduct the discount at checkout in-store, and you can plug in the discount code SUBSCRIBER to save 5% on our website. It’s our way of making sure you can Keep Reading Comics!