Be sure to check out the Invisible Woman appreciation thread!
Retailers know how to order, it is sort of their job. 50% drop-off is expected, high number of variant covers inflates the #1 numbers above what they would normally order so the drop-off is worse. That is, without all the crazy incentive covers retailers may have only ordered 130K, so issue number 2 orders reflect the demand they expect.
Rember theses numbers do not include anything ordered outside of dimond and digital numbers. So these are technically low baling the actual amount ordered. Nor is this the number that costumers bought.
Impirtant to rember many of these had numerous varent covers inflating numbers.Return had 30 varent covers that required meeting or exceeding a number of normal versions ordered to qualify for varents(I'm pretty sure one varent needed 50+ regular to get). Red is the closest to actual ordered du to lack of varent covers.
Red had plenty of variant covers, this wiki entry lists 12 of them. Might be more. Don't know about the requirements the retailers had to meet in order to qualify.
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/X-Men:_Red_Vol_1_1
You're right that it most likely did not have as many variants as most of these other #1 issues, Uncanny as well had over 30 variants.
The requirement thing is smomting marves been doing for a while now. Certain covers require you to meet or exceed a ser number of normal to be able to order variants. Ex for retuen the virgin varent or the normal cover required 100 copys of normal to be ordered to qualify to buy it. And a while back a venom cover required 1500 copys ordered to qualify. It pisses retailers off because it leaves them with a stack of comics that just occupy space. I dont think red covers needed any qualify numbers. DC handles it bether half the comics retailers order from them are varents half are original.(also you get all covers when you buy digital unlike marvel)
LMAO at retailers having about as much faith in a UXM relaunch than they did for X-Men Gold.
Avengers showed up & still X men red had only 32k sales?
ALL HAIL THE HADARI YAO, THE OMEGA'S OMEGA, BEYOND OMEGA, THE VOICE OF SOL!!!! NOW AGAIN THE ONE TRUE AND ONLY GODDESS OF THE X-MEN AS CLAREMONT INTENDED!!!!!