Oh lawdy, variant covers.
First off, sorry it's been a couple weeks since my previous entry but life's tough and shizz.
Second off, let me reiterate: FUCK. VARIANT. COVERS.*
*Sometimes they're okay.
Earlier yesterday I was bopping along the internet searching about comic news as I will when I came across something in The Escapist about the new Marvel Star Wars comic having 20 variant covers. It attributes these covers to the fact this issue will outsell any other single comic book in a long long long time. I clicked the link to Bleeding Cool (The Escapist's source) only to find out over 60 covers are planned for this series and they're only up to issue 1. Wait... Yeah, that's right. ISSUE FUCKING 1. The first blitzing issue has over 60 planned variant covers. Granted you can't hop on down to your LCS and find all sixty plus covers. No. Some of these will be far rarer than others, and your LCS has to shell out for X amount of copies to get access to some of them at all. This is a direct appeal to collectors and investors in comic books and this is fucking disgusting.
FUCK THIS PRACTICE.
Let me tell you why I hate variant covers. Do you remember the 90's for comic books? I sure do, it's when I actually started getting into them, and I used to love comics a lot from that era since I didn't know better. Comics during the 90's (early 90's) was the biggest time for all comic books and comics sold like hotcakes, pressing people into literally investing into comics by buying all the editions they could. Marvel in their infinite glory and wisdom began to make variant covers by the truckload to directly appeal to speculators and collectors and the like. This meant that many issues of comics would be sold with several versions of a cover to have people who were looking to cash in on the future but the same issue multiple times. The same story over and over and over again just in the idea that if you were to sell this issue it would be worth so much as a collection.
This tied in directly with the feel of excess the 90's carried. America was doing great, economy was on the rise, do what feels good was the fun, the whole investment thing was bigger than ever. Comics reflected this in the worst way. We were growing out of the 80's into a more extreme decade which meant everything had to be turned up "TO THE XTREME!!" No time for that first "E" that shit just gets in the way of how XTREME comics were becoming. Variant covers were the ultimate expression. Only an XTREME fan would have all the issues because the future looks so bright with dollar signs from collecting the four X-Men covers with the chromium sheen and gold/silver/regular covers to Avengers stories. XTREME covers to match the XTREME stories.
Then the crash.
See, the problem with this sort of blaring overabundance is that eventually the entire medium suffers and it drives the fans away. It was a model unsustainable because you can only go so far with comic books. The market crashed on comic books and now books from that decade are straight up worthless. Some hold some value, yes, but on the general curve you can't barely give them away. I was in my LCS some years ago when a guy walked in with three boxes of comics (long boxes, not the short kind) and the owner gave the man a pained and sad look and told him he couldn't buy them because nobody wants them. Comic books designed only to BE collected just wouldn't sell because of the missing covers, the lackluster stories, and overall poor quality. The entire crappiness of an industry destroying trinkets people held on to for a decade and a half just for the former collectors to be told their fake loyalty was a waste of potentially thousands of dollars.
Okay, I'll back up a bit. I do not hate variant covers. At least I do not hate the idea of variant covers. The very first time I came across a variant covers was during Marvel's "Heroes Return" bit when heroes who previously were jettisoned into a Counter Earth dimension ("Heroes Reborn") were coming back to regular Earth and to celebrate were relaunching these lines with alternate "Sunburst covers." So each new first issue would have a regular cover and one with the hero coming over some clouds with a symbol resembling their power (or something) like a sun shining with the character over this. It was special, because this was a special event. This makes sense for variant covers. I also sort of give a pass for variant covers in the "flavor of the week" style. These will have variant covers for an entire week (sometimes far longer which is inexcusable) and feature a theme such as "Deadpooling" or having the DC titles look like child cartoons. I guess these can be okay so long as they don't get out of control. However, they tend to and that's crap. There is also a subtype of variant cover I also do not mind which is the Chase Cover. A chase cover is when a print of an issue is reprinted with a new cover to be sold at stores after the first printing has run out. Basically there is a "First Print" cover and a "Reprint" cover. This gives an air of specialness (which I also somewhat dislike) for owners of an original issue. THAT is special. THAT is okay. What's not okay is when specialness is artificially given to an issue by having multiple covers printed at the same time without any expiration of supplies. That is just industry crap forcing the idea onto you that these issues are so special you need to buy them all. "But Mak," you retort, "I don't have to. Nobody has to. If you don't want three covers of the same issue, then you don't buy them. Comic companies aren't twisting your arm on this one." But you're wrong. They are. This implied specialness is real. Especially when variant covers are reduced in number compared to their more plentiful "non variant" cover. This makes the variant cover seem actually more special than the already implied special issue. It makes collectors feel their collection is incomplete without these potentially more expensive covers. And don't be fooled, these covers CAN be more expensive than their "regular" siblings. And this practice is crap because it's like the industry is acting like getting this cover is some sort of special cover not available to other issues, but when you buy this cover and the other one and walk away, you realize the original cover already WAS individual to the cover. In this way you're being deceived into thinking the issue is groundbreaking, great, acclaimed, or otherwise something more than just another issue of your favorite character. It is banking on your feeling of being left out or incomplete when there is a variant issue presented.
"Comics make money this way. There is nothing wrong with that. Comics should ride this boom."
Alright, I understand this mentality. Comics are riding a boom since the early to mid 2000's. And it's welcome since the huge crash of the early to mid 90's. I get it. Comics are a bigger business than pretty much ever with all the tie in entertainment. And variant covers figure into more sales since it encourages readers to buy more than one copy. While the speculator boom is nowhere near as bad as the 90's, a similar feeling is pervading this boom. There is much reporting on certain comics going sky high at auctions, lots of media coverage such as this Star Wars one, and the tie in comics (which is a topic for another time) shows us that comics are again very popular and sales show a growth. Variant covers are a symptom of growth, but the perverse amount coming out is nothing short of disgusting and will fuel another pop when collector glut reaches another nauseating level when comics again decline after the public moves on to the next big entertainment fad and production costs can't keep up with the shedding of collectors who will begin to realize all these covers are a waste of their money. If you really think that beloved Valkyrie variant of Secret Avengers #6 or vampire, Adventure Time, Lego, Hollywood, retro, and Tron (to name a few) variants are going to be worth anything in the next twenty years, you are fooling yourself. None of those issues were worth of note, none of them had any demand to be recollected, and when you go back to look at these issues you'll more or less wish you had the hundreds of dollars back to respend on something else. Probably another waste of time and money, but at least a different waste rather than the same thing.
"But it's only a few bucks. That's not bad, Mak."
A few bucks here and there becomes hundreds of dollars. If you're a semi-"serious" collector, you probably buy a few issues every week, and we'll say 10 issues a week total. Otherwise known as 30 bucks because Marvel and DC charge anywhere between three to five dollars per issue. Let's say 2 issues every week come out with a variant cover and you being the semi serious completionist feel the need to buy them. Another six to ten dollars a week. This comes out to be around 520 dollars per year in variants alone. And that's IF the variants are the same price as the regular covers, which they aren't always.
"We don't have to buy them."
I already talked about this, but I'm repeating myself anyway. This is technically true. In the same way we don't have to do pretty much anything like living in increasingly nice places, eating well, going to the doctor, buying new electronics, buying trendy clothes, or really anything.
"Mak, don't be such a stupid drama queen. That's not the same thing. You're comparing apples to oranges and reaching hard for this one."
Wrong. It IS the same thing. If it seems exclusive, special, trendy, or otherwise "cool," we as people want them. We want them MORE than the things we currently have and others might not even if we already own them. It lends us this air of exclusivity we don't normally have. Like buying a fancy hat which you know will look "cool" or buying a new phone because it's flashy, variant covers do a very similar thing to us. We can easily justify and compartmentalize this because it's significantly cheaper, but as we do this we end up allowing ourselves to spend more and more on these things. It's why people own a hardcover Absolute Edition of the Watchmen while already owning the issues and soft cover TPB of it already. It's why people own several colors of the same pair of shoes or jackets or hats. Even makeup does this. And the fact comic books do this is terrible.
Then the crash.
See, the problem with this sort of blaring overabundance is that eventually the entire medium suffers and it drives the fans away. It was a model unsustainable because you can only go so far with comic books. The market crashed on comic books and now books from that decade are straight up worthless. Some hold some value, yes, but on the general curve you can't barely give them away. I was in my LCS some years ago when a guy walked in with three boxes of comics (long boxes, not the short kind) and the owner gave the man a pained and sad look and told him he couldn't buy them because nobody wants them. Comic books designed only to BE collected just wouldn't sell because of the missing covers, the lackluster stories, and overall poor quality. The entire crappiness of an industry destroying trinkets people held on to for a decade and a half just for the former collectors to be told their fake loyalty was a waste of potentially thousands of dollars.
Okay, I'll back up a bit. I do not hate variant covers. At least I do not hate the idea of variant covers. The very first time I came across a variant covers was during Marvel's "Heroes Return" bit when heroes who previously were jettisoned into a Counter Earth dimension ("Heroes Reborn") were coming back to regular Earth and to celebrate were relaunching these lines with alternate "Sunburst covers." So each new first issue would have a regular cover and one with the hero coming over some clouds with a symbol resembling their power (or something) like a sun shining with the character over this. It was special, because this was a special event. This makes sense for variant covers. I also sort of give a pass for variant covers in the "flavor of the week" style. These will have variant covers for an entire week (sometimes far longer which is inexcusable) and feature a theme such as "Deadpooling" or having the DC titles look like child cartoons. I guess these can be okay so long as they don't get out of control. However, they tend to and that's crap. There is also a subtype of variant cover I also do not mind which is the Chase Cover. A chase cover is when a print of an issue is reprinted with a new cover to be sold at stores after the first printing has run out. Basically there is a "First Print" cover and a "Reprint" cover. This gives an air of specialness (which I also somewhat dislike) for owners of an original issue. THAT is special. THAT is okay. What's not okay is when specialness is artificially given to an issue by having multiple covers printed at the same time without any expiration of supplies. That is just industry crap forcing the idea onto you that these issues are so special you need to buy them all. "But Mak," you retort, "I don't have to. Nobody has to. If you don't want three covers of the same issue, then you don't buy them. Comic companies aren't twisting your arm on this one." But you're wrong. They are. This implied specialness is real. Especially when variant covers are reduced in number compared to their more plentiful "non variant" cover. This makes the variant cover seem actually more special than the already implied special issue. It makes collectors feel their collection is incomplete without these potentially more expensive covers. And don't be fooled, these covers CAN be more expensive than their "regular" siblings. And this practice is crap because it's like the industry is acting like getting this cover is some sort of special cover not available to other issues, but when you buy this cover and the other one and walk away, you realize the original cover already WAS individual to the cover. In this way you're being deceived into thinking the issue is groundbreaking, great, acclaimed, or otherwise something more than just another issue of your favorite character. It is banking on your feeling of being left out or incomplete when there is a variant issue presented.
"Comics make money this way. There is nothing wrong with that. Comics should ride this boom."
Alright, I understand this mentality. Comics are riding a boom since the early to mid 2000's. And it's welcome since the huge crash of the early to mid 90's. I get it. Comics are a bigger business than pretty much ever with all the tie in entertainment. And variant covers figure into more sales since it encourages readers to buy more than one copy. While the speculator boom is nowhere near as bad as the 90's, a similar feeling is pervading this boom. There is much reporting on certain comics going sky high at auctions, lots of media coverage such as this Star Wars one, and the tie in comics (which is a topic for another time) shows us that comics are again very popular and sales show a growth. Variant covers are a symptom of growth, but the perverse amount coming out is nothing short of disgusting and will fuel another pop when collector glut reaches another nauseating level when comics again decline after the public moves on to the next big entertainment fad and production costs can't keep up with the shedding of collectors who will begin to realize all these covers are a waste of their money. If you really think that beloved Valkyrie variant of Secret Avengers #6 or vampire, Adventure Time, Lego, Hollywood, retro, and Tron (to name a few) variants are going to be worth anything in the next twenty years, you are fooling yourself. None of those issues were worth of note, none of them had any demand to be recollected, and when you go back to look at these issues you'll more or less wish you had the hundreds of dollars back to respend on something else. Probably another waste of time and money, but at least a different waste rather than the same thing.
"But it's only a few bucks. That's not bad, Mak."
A few bucks here and there becomes hundreds of dollars. If you're a semi-"serious" collector, you probably buy a few issues every week, and we'll say 10 issues a week total. Otherwise known as 30 bucks because Marvel and DC charge anywhere between three to five dollars per issue. Let's say 2 issues every week come out with a variant cover and you being the semi serious completionist feel the need to buy them. Another six to ten dollars a week. This comes out to be around 520 dollars per year in variants alone. And that's IF the variants are the same price as the regular covers, which they aren't always.
"We don't have to buy them."
I already talked about this, but I'm repeating myself anyway. This is technically true. In the same way we don't have to do pretty much anything like living in increasingly nice places, eating well, going to the doctor, buying new electronics, buying trendy clothes, or really anything.
"Mak, don't be such a stupid drama queen. That's not the same thing. You're comparing apples to oranges and reaching hard for this one."
Wrong. It IS the same thing. If it seems exclusive, special, trendy, or otherwise "cool," we as people want them. We want them MORE than the things we currently have and others might not even if we already own them. It lends us this air of exclusivity we don't normally have. Like buying a fancy hat which you know will look "cool" or buying a new phone because it's flashy, variant covers do a very similar thing to us. We can easily justify and compartmentalize this because it's significantly cheaper, but as we do this we end up allowing ourselves to spend more and more on these things. It's why people own a hardcover Absolute Edition of the Watchmen while already owning the issues and soft cover TPB of it already. It's why people own several colors of the same pair of shoes or jackets or hats. Even makeup does this. And the fact comic books do this is terrible.
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