The Tick #2 No Die-Cut

New England Comics, September 1988.

For the first print of The Tick #2, a square hole was die-cut out of the cover to reveal The Tick on the page underneath (see below). However, the printer seems to have made a batch of maybe 200 comics without going through the die-cutting process and these were sent to NEC, along with the rest of the print run.

The uncut variants were apparently given out to NEC employees, so were never officially distributed, but a number have now made it out into the public domain.

Only 9 uncut variants were CGC graded, as of May 2014; CGC categorise the uncut variants as an "Error Version" although it is worth noting that their label text/layout has not been consistent for these:

With so few being produced and available these are very rare but there are usually one or two for sale on auction sites such as ebay.

Note that subsequent printings were not die cut at all hence the "no die cut" error is specific to the first print only (which was meant to be die cut).