Every week, The Long Box runs spec intelligence before books ship. FOC Drop on Tuesday. Spec Watch on Sunday. Then the books actually come out, and the secondary market does what it does. The Verdict is where we come back and grade our own calls. Did the rumors hold up? Did the books move? Did we get anything wrong? We run this every Thursday, on the books that released the day before. Nobody else publicly scorecards their own predictions. We figured somebody should.
Strong week overall with five confirmed hits, two partials, and just one clean miss. The hits came from solid content intelligence across publishers: Todd McFarlane delivered exactly what we predicted in Scorched #50, the Tigress Island momentum carried into issue #2 as expected, and our Marvel sourcing nailed both the Imperial Guardians limited series downgrade and Flash Thompson's return in Venom #257. The miss on Absolute Wonder Woman Annual shows the danger of running unverified alliance rumors without stronger source confirmation.
Most instructive was Nottingham, where our conservative $25 price target proved too low when copies started moving at $30+. Secondary market timing remains tricky with books releasing Wednesday and having just 48 hours to gather data, but the pattern recognition is holding up across different market conditions.
Absolute Wonder Woman 2026 Annual #1 (DC Comics) Our call: unverified rumors suggested potential alliance between Wonder Woman and Medusa. What happened: the actual story centers on Diana seeking to end Medusa's suffering and transform her curse through Athena, essentially a rescue mission rather than partnership formation. The book did see strong market response with a second printing announcement, but our core narrative prediction missed the mark.
Absolute Batman #15 (DC Comics) Our call: standard covers would see consistent secondary market pre-sales around $15 despite 300k print run. What happened: second printing was announced confirming the sellout, and CovrPrice noted rapid secondary market movement. However, no specific post-release price data was found to confirm the exact $15 target. The sellout prediction hit but the price target remains unverified.
Miss class: verification false positive on the Wonder Woman Annual. We labeled an unverified rumor as worth watching when the evidence shows the story went in the opposite direction. Tightening verification standards for alliance/partnership rumors to require stronger source confirmation before flagging. Miss class: variant only movement on Ultimate Wolverine. The lead-in rumor was confirmed but the Magik variant cover speculation generated no market activity or collector interest. Accepting as uncatchable since variant cover hype is inherently unpredictable and market-dependent.
This week: 8 reviewed, 5 hits, 1 miss, 2 partial. 2026 to date: 8 graded, 62.5% hit rate, 25.0% partial, 12.5% miss. Strong start to the year with the hit rate holding above 60% and clean misses kept to a minimum. The verification standards adjustment should help reduce false positive rumors moving forward, while the variant cover prediction challenges remain part of the territory. See you next Thursday.
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