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Column:
Variant Coverage #3
Variety is the Knell of Death
By Adam White
Published: 02 January 2006
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Back
during the 1990’s industry “boom,” Marvel, DC, and
every comic book publisher in America unleashed every type of cover
imaginable upon the speculating public. Every comic store was
littered with foil covers, Chromium covers, fold-out covers, and even
some as capricious as bullet hole covers (with a hole right through
the center of the entire book). Perhaps the most popular trend to
come out of that medieval time was the variant cover; publishers
printed two or more (can anyone guess how many variant covers Gen13
#1 had?) covers on the exact same book in an effort to increase
sales without increasing readership. And speculating sheep flocked to
it, which was a large part of the reason the “stories” and
“art” (though I hesitate to call them that) in books of
that era were so incredibly bad. Variant covers ushered in the
speculator boom and then conversely collapsed the market; they
didn’t do this single-handedly, but it was the money-mongering
ideals behind those covers that was largely responsible for the
collapse of both the quality and readership of comic books.
Eventually (somewhat) realizing their folly, publishers wised up
and stopped with the fancy covers altogether for a time, and got back
to letting creators tell stories again. However, the damage was done
and a large part of the readers had drifted away, unable to stomach
the deterioration of an art form with which they had grown up. The
stigma was firmly attached at that point, further alienating any
potential readers by confirming to anyone who picked up an issue that
comics were indeed bland and foolish, and the slow process of
returning to quality took too long to catch on.
Which brings us to the present day, a time when variant covers are
making a comeback, albeit in an overtly surreptitious form. Although
some publishers still use variants to maximize sales to speculators
(e.g. DC’s 50/50 split on Infinite Crisis), the most
popular use has been perpetrated by Marvel in the form of
“retailer incentive” variants (although Marvel is by no
means the only guilty party). Publishers seek to maximize sales on
the front end with retailers by offering them a 1/10, 1/20, etc.,
variant cover on certain issues to entice them to order more copies up
front. This practice has paid off for Marvel especially with series
like the dreadful House of M and Ultimate Hulk vs.
Wolverine, upping sales because the retailers can sell the rarer
variant covers for top dollar on the very day the issues come out,
often fetching $50 to $100 from some moron with more dollars than
sense. So Marvel achieves their sell-out, and the retailers have made
back the money they wasted on extra issues that will languish in
quarter bins; the only losers are the readers, as this practice means
that mindless drivel will continue making money and leave less room
for quality work.
Granted, there are plenty of people that buy this crap regardless,
but variant covers pander to the worst element of comics fandom and
prey off of their ignorance, leaving those of us that actually read
the comics we buy a distant last place in the decisions of what gets
published and what doesn’t.
I don’t know how many times in the last year I’ve
logged onto MidtownComics.com (a great place to get comics, especially
for those of us not blessed with a decent comic store within 200
miles) and seen literally one-and-a-half to two screens full of
variant covers for Brian Pulido’s Lady Death or some other
similarly worthless T&A book when I check out the week’s new
comics. I have to sift through pages of nonsense to search for books
actually worth reading, and sometimes miss something I wanted because
I get frustrated and skip too far ahead. The fact that books like
that are published at all is just silly, but printing thirty different
covers for salacious fans is outright insane.
The most recent abuse jointly conceived by Marvel and DC is
slapping new covers on second printings, which I might add were
sometimes reprinted only because the first issue sold out due to
variant incentives. So now we have everyone rushing to buy second and
third printings of books not worth a first print run, all because they
have a “neat” cover. The best example of this is the
current “The Other” storyline running through all the
Spider-Man titles; all of the current seven issues released have
“sold out” according to Marvel, and all have been
reprinted with variant covers that feature Spider-Man’s various
ill-conceived costumes from over the years (all in the same pose). My
main issue here is that the variant covers on the second printings
have overtaken the issues themselves, becoming the most important
reason to be collecting those series. If you’ve bothered to
read any of them, it’s not hard to see why — I read through a
few of them in a bookstore and absolutely nothing of value happened in
a single issue of that arc. Nothing. Which is why Marvel is issuing
the variant covers and hyping them over the story — that’s how
they make their money.
Afraid Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine won’t live up to the hype?
Retailer incentive. Infinite Crisis turns out to be a big mess? Make
two covers for each (by George Perez and Jim Lee, no less).
Spider-Man story bore you into a coma? Variant second printings.
Make your biggest announcement of the year and then have Stephen King
get gun-shy? Well, then you just delay it; but I bet you anything
they’ll have variants and retailer incentives of all kinds when
that series does come out, to “commemorate” the event.
What I’m getting at here is that a new trend of variant
covers can only lead to dark places; you’d think publishers
might have learned their lesson the last time, but I guess that some
people in corporate positions never hesitate to earn a dishonest
dollar. More focus on hype and variants will eventually lead to less
and less focus on substance, and that will result in another drop-off
of readership that the industry cannot sustain. My own interest in
comics has been tenuous at times, even if there are always a few
titles I will read no matter what, but gimmicks put a unavoidable
strain on content every time a publisher realizes that there are still
people who will waste their money on them.
So that puts the ball in our court; on the occasion that I get a
book with more than one cover, I just order it and take whatever cover
I get. I never buy multiple copies of anything, because I only need
one to read it. And only when other readers make the decision to stop
buying multiple copies just for the variant covers will the publishers
stop making them. If they didn’t make money, they
wouldn’t do it, so that’s where we have to step up as a
unified collective and say “No thank you. I’d rather have
a good story and art than six covers featuring the same
rubbish.”
Will it happen? It doesn’t look like it will anytime soon,
but I’m hoping that more people being vocal about it will help
to spread the word. Because I don’t know about you, but
I’m tired of seeing series like Quantum & Woody, Small Gods,
Resurrection Man, and too many other series to count get canned so
that companies can fit House of M or Infinite Crisis onto the
publishing schedule. And when you get as fed up with it as I have,
you’ll do what I’ve done. And then we can all be happy.
Adam White
12-09-05
—CCdC—
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