October 14, 2020
VeVe needed a first drop that would tell collectors what the platform was for. The answer was Batman Black & White, DC Direct's long-running statue line where a different artist reinterprets the character in monochrome for each entry. The line ran to 100 statues in physical form, and the digital series pulled four of them.
The pick for the headline slot was #100, Todd McFarlane's contribution, sculpted by Jonathan Matthews from McFarlane's cover for Batman #423. Using the last statue in a 100-piece run as the first digital collectible on a new platform is the kind of symmetry that only reads as deliberate afterward. Collectors just call it the Todd.
What makes the sculpt work in digital form is the cape. McFarlane draws capes as weather systems, and Matthews translated that into a silhouette that only resolves as you rotate the figure. A physical statue on a shelf shows you one angle. This one shows you all of them.
The four sculpts
The series shipped as four separate store items on the same day, each with its own artist, sculptor and edition count. VeVe lists pull odds on each page, and they track the population split almost exactly: the more editions a tier has, the shorter its odds.
Edition breakdown
Four tiers, 18,000 editions, and a spread that is tighter than what VeVe would run later. The Ultra Rare here holds roughly a quarter the population of the Common. On a modern five-tier drop that ratio is often ten to one or worse.
| Sculpt | Rarity | Editions | Share of drop | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #100 Todd McFarlane | Common | 7,500 | 41.7% | 1 in 2.40 |
| #97 Joe Madureira | Uncommon | 5,500 | 30.6% | 1 in 3.27 |
| #86 Becky Cloonan | Rare | 3,250 | 18.1% | 1 in 5.55 |
| #01 Eduardo Risso | Ultra Rare | 1,750 | 9.7% | 1 in 10.33 |
| Total | 18,000 | 100% |
Nothing has been burned and nothing was withheld, so all 18,000 remain in circulation. The first available edition across the series is #16, meaning editions 1 through 15 of each sculpt never entered general distribution.
The Risso sits at 1,750 editions and the Todd at 7,500. The scarcer piece in VeVe's opening drop is not the one the platform is remembered for.
Retail at launch ran $79.99 for the Todd, which made the Common the most expensive item in the series despite carrying the deepest supply. That inversion tells you what VeVe was actually selling: not rarity, but the #100 nameplate. Those were 2020 list prices and the market has had six years to reprice everything since.
First Appearance versus First Edition
Open all four collectible pages and check the Edition Type field. The Todd reads First Appearance. The Madureira, Cloonan and Risso sculpts all read First Edition.
That distinction is the whole reason the Todd carries the weight it does. VeVe uses First Appearance to mark a character's debut in premium digital format, and once it has been assigned it is not assigned again. The three sculpts that shipped alongside it in the same series are labelled First Edition instead, which marks a debut of that particular statue rather than of Batman.
It is a small line of metadata on a product page, and it is the single most useful filter a collector has when deciding what actually matters in a catalog this large.
What came next
The Black & White line kept feeding VeVe's early months. The first Joker arrived November 4, 2020 with Jim Lee art at 7,500 editions. On Christmas Eve the platform ran two at once, the first Harley Quinn in Bruce Timm's original Batman: The Animated Series design at 7,500 and the first Penguin at 3,250, sculpted by Ray Villafane from Brian Bolland art.
The pattern holds through the first half of 2021: Catwoman in May at 10,800 editions, Superman in June at 8,888, and Marvel's arrival that August. Six years on, the Todd is still the reference point that every one of those debuts gets measured against.
The Blue and Yellow repaint
On December 13, 2022 VeVe released a Blue & Yellow version of the same Matthews sculpt at 2,500 editions, Ultra Rare, under the Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products license rather than DC Direct. Its Edition Type field reads N/A.
So it is scarcer than the original by three to one, and it is not the first. It also carries an 8.50% market fee against the original's 2.50%, a Season 5 stamp against Season 1, and a different licensor on the page. If you want the colored suit and the McFarlane pose, it is a real option and a genuinely tighter population. If you want the piece that opened the platform, it is not that piece.
Which one should you own?
If you want the historical marker: the #100 Todd McFarlane in Black & White. First Appearance on the Edition Type field, October 14, 2020 on the drop date, Season 1 on the page. Those three lines cannot be assigned to anything else.
If you want the tightest population in the series: the #01 Eduardo Risso at 1,750 editions. It is the Ultra Rare, it is the statue that opened the physical line, and it sits at under a quarter of the Todd's supply.
If you want the art that stands apart: the #86 Becky Cloonan at 3,250. Her linework survives the translation to three dimensions better than most, and the sculpt looks like nothing else in VeVe's DC catalog.
If you want the colored version: the Blue & Yellow at 2,500. Same sculpt, different palette, scarcer run, no First Appearance label.
If you want serial numbers to matter: chase low mints on the Todd. Within a 7,500 run, single-digit and low double-digit serials trade well above mid-range numbers, and edition #16 is the floor of general distribution.
All four sculpts trade between collectors on the VeVe secondary market, sometimes below what they originally listed at. New to VeVe? Grab $10 off your first purchase.
Frequently Asked Questions
The #100 Todd McFarlane Batman, released October 14, 2020 as part of Batman Black & White S1. It is the Common tier of that series at 7,500 editions, sculpted by Jonathan Matthews from McFarlane's cover for Batman #423, and it is the tier whose Edition Type field reads First Appearance.
Four. #100 Todd McFarlane (Common, 7,500), #97 Joe Madureira (Uncommon, 5,500), #86 Becky Cloonan (Rare, 3,250) and #01 Eduardo Risso (Ultra Rare, 1,750), for 18,000 editions across the series. All four dropped the same day under the DC Direct license.
The #01 Eduardo Risso at 1,750 editions, the Ultra Rare tier. That is roughly a quarter of the #100 Todd McFarlane's 7,500, and its listed pull odds of 1 in 10.33 are the longest in the series.
No. It dropped December 13, 2022 at 2,500 editions under the Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products license, and its Edition Type field reads N/A. It uses the same Jonathan Matthews sculpt in a colored palette, so it is scarcer than the original but it is a repaint rather than a debut.
Editions 1 through 15 of each sculpt in the series were held back from general distribution, so #16 is the lowest serial a collector could have received at drop. VeVe lists Withheld Editions as 0 and Burned Editions as 0 for all four, meaning the full 18,000 remain in circulation.
Yes, from other collectors on the VeVe secondary market. What you pay depends on which of the four sculpts you want, the serial number, and what is listed that week. Low mints on the #100 Todd carry a clear premium over mid-range serials.
