Shoutout to that guy at the comic shop who changed my mind about variant covers

I used to roll my eyes at variant covers. Thought they were just cash grabs for collectors who never read the books. Then last month at Dave's Comics on 3rd Street, this older guy showed me his 1992 Spider-Man #1 variant with the gold foil. He explained how that cover got him into reading the actual stories because he wanted to know who the gold spider was. Now I buy a variant maybe once a month if the art really grabs me. Anybody else had a collector change their view on something?

2 comments

2 Comments

emmaclark1mo ago

That's a fair take margareto26, but let me ask you this - when you see a variant cover that really nails the mood of a story, like that Ryan Ottley cover for Invincible #100 that had the black and white with just a splash of red, does it ever make you pick up a book you would have skipped otherwise? Or are you saying it's purely a marketing gimmick and the art itself has zero pull on whether you decide to give a new series a shot?

margareto261mo ago

Gotta disagree honestly. Variant covers are still just a way to sell you the same comic twice, and the stories inside are what actually matter.