variant covers

I’ve touched upon this topic before (not long after opening my own store, in fact), where putting a cover on a book that does not reflect the contents is misleading, and frustrating, to potential buyers.

The regular comic fans have mostly caught on to the whole “don’t judge a comic book by its variant cover” thing, but I still get some consumer confusion when it comes to more casual buyers scanning the racks. “Oh look, Deadpool is teaming up with Miles Morales!” “Um, sorry, hate to tell you this….”

Most of the time it feels like it should be fairly apparent that the cover isn’t what’s inside, especially with gag covers like the MAD or Robot Chicken variants. But even those had more than one puzzled person perusing the rack, cracking the covers and wondering why the funny stuff on the outside wasn’t going on in the insides.

The LEGO covers were particularly egregious in this respect. Created as a crosspromotion with the then-releasing LEGO Batman 3 videogame, each cover featured actual models of playable characters from that game. It was as much a way to get players interested in the game to pick up the comics for the previews. Or, if they’re a big LEGO franchise fan (whether of the games or not), to grab all the covers for their collections.

But the ultimate result was lots of kids coming into the shop, seeing the LEGO covers, and grabbing the books thinking they were going to be LEGO-style comics inside. I had a lot of disappointed faces when I told them that wasn’t the case.

To date DC hasn’t released a straight-up DC Super Hero LEGO-style comic book, and neither has Marvel (which has their own extensive LEGO game history). There have certainly been several LEGO superhero squarebound books — activity books, guide books, very young reader books — and some of them even include comics in their content. I’ve had a little success selling some of those, but they’re often accepted as an “okay” second choice, when what the buyer really wanted was a traditional comic book in that style.

Given the seeming popularity of the LEGO super hero videogames and non-comic book published narratives, it seems like maybe actual comic books would be an unnecessary afterthought, a not as lucrative revenue stream as those other ventures. However, it would be nice to have them on the shelves, another vector via which new young readers can try out the medium. Not that the other formats aren’t fine, and it’s good that kids are reading anything, but I am still biased toward the plain ol’ comic book and encourage anything that would get people to continue reading them. Especially kids.

Nicholas inquired

“…Can you shed any light on the mid-90’s Marvel newsstand issues? I’m doing a deep dive on the JRJR run of Spider-Man (which had been renamed to “Peter Parker Spider-Man” at that point) and have come across two versions of many of them (they seem to be during the Clone Saga and the run of issues immediately following the end of that storyline). From what I can see, the newsstand versions were printed on newsprint, and cost $1.50, and the direct market versions were on glossy paper, but priced at $1.95? The weird thing is that at a certain point, it looks like the direct market versions stay at $1.95, and the newsstand versions jump to $1.99 BUT were still printed on newsprint? Then eventually, they all go to $1.99 and are printed on newsprint. I’m very confused, and can kind of remember this happening with some other series (specifically Generation X). It seems ridiculous, and I can’t find anything on the internet about it.”

So here’s what I recall about this particular publishing plan of Marvel’s, mostly in relation to their X-Men line at the time:

In the mid-’90s (in the example, I’m using here, cover date November 1994, so actually probably sometime in September), the adjeectiveless X-Men split into two (well, three) distinct versions. For comic shops, you had your choice of the “Deluxe Edition” on nicer paper, with a convenient “DELUXE” tag on the cover, for $1.95:

For readers who didn’t want to dish out an extra 45 cents, a $1.50 version printed on not-glossy paper was also offered to the direct market (note: no “DELUXE” tag on the cover):

And then for newsstands, the Deluxe Edition was offered, but with a standard UPC code (not sure about the paper stock):

Now here’s where we’re going to depend on my memories of these events, because I’m going to point out something and I don’t have a way of backing it up just yet. However, I recall having written about this in a comic forum I ran on a local BBS at the time, which is why it sticks with me.

My recollection is that Marvel sold this new Deluxe format to fans as a more upscale edition of the comic, for folks who wanted a, I don’t know, classier reading experience or something. If, like I said above, they didn’t want to dole out the extra dosh for smooth silky paper they could rub gently on their skin, fans could buy that $1.50 version, and Marvel would look at sales and see which the fans preferred.

ENTER: MY MEMORY I’M WONDERING ABOUT — the catch was, the $1.50 version would be released a couple of weeks later. I distinctly remember writing at the time on a local BBS “of course the $1.95 version is going to sell better, fans don’t want to wait an extra two weeks when they can get the story now.”

Again, I have no way to back that up. I have no solicitation material from the time (at least, that’s easily accessible), no access to any of my long-ago posts on that BBS…the web archive I once pulled from for this site is gone, and while I backed up a lot of material from the site, I inexplicably didn’t save my own section. Didn’t I know I’d need that for a blog post someday? I’m trying to track it down (I have friends who may still have an archive of all that stuff), and I have a bunch of invoices from the previous place of employment that may shed some light, so if any new information magically appears, I’ll add an update.

EDIT: Folks in the comments section are also recalling this shipping schedule for the Deluxe/Not Deluxe editions.

Anyway,whatever time frame in which those were released, the differently-priced editions seemed to go away after the Age of Apocalypse event (in which all the regular X-books were put on hiatus for a few months and replaced with mini-series all priced at $1.95). Issue #42 of X-Men, just prior to the event, was the last of that series to carry those specific $1.95/$1.50 price points.

Now, Nicholas, you mentioned the weird thing where the direct market edition of some of these titles retained a $1.95 price point, whilst the newsstand editions went up to $1.99. I honestly didn’t remember that, but checking on this X-Men run…yep, sure enough. Starting with issue #57 and running through issue #65 (even including the “-1” special), direct issues were $1.95:

And newsstands were $1.99:

After that everything went up to $1.99 and comic prices never rose ever again.

As to the “why” of all this…well, like I said, initially it was offered as an “option” to fans as to whether or not they wanted to pay more for a fancier product or pay less for something a little more “no frills.” Regardless of the timing of releases of these competing editions, it seemed clearly designed to ease readers into a higher price point, possibly framing it as “it was the readers what wanted the higher cost version!”

Once everything moved to the $1.95/$1.99 price point, I think a possible explanation is this. Comics were at too low a price point for newsstands and bookstores and such to really want to bother with. Raising the price on the newsstand edition (even if only by a few cents) may have been just enough to keep newsstand sellers and distributors from cutting the product line entirely. Perhaps more a psychological move than anything else.

As for being printed on cheaper paper: that’s just Marvel keeping the expenses down. Newsstand distribution numbers weren’t nearly as high as they were in the direct market, and newsstands could return unsold product, so the lower the initial production cost, the more money could potentially be made, or at least the lower the losses would be.

It also could just be the competition versus other comic companies were stronger in the direct market, necessitating a higher quality product, believed unnecessary for the newsstands.

And when it comes to both direct and newsstand editions going to the cheaper paper: just line-wide cost cutting is all. Fancy paper costs too much, so it was either that or raise the price, which, as I said, they would never do ever again.

I don’t know the whole financial end of publisher vis-à-vis distributors, or any of the actual reasons behind some of these decisions, so if anyone wants to clear up the above assumptions, be my guest. But I honestly do believe the initial price differences was sold as a “let the reader decide” thing when, in fact, the decision was already made.

A personal memory from the old shop was when it came to restocking the issues of the various series that had the deluxe/regular price split. I honestly could never remember which comics marked “DELUXE” had an accompanying non-deluxe edition. I’d have to make intricate notes as to which versions I had to go looking for in the back room. Yes, I had to do all this restocking manually, this was before robots took over everything.

Nicholas, I hope this answers your questions, or at least gives you some options to consider in regards to these quarter-century old publishing puzzles. If I get new information, I’ll let you know right here on this very site!

[REMINDER: yesterday was this site’s 18th anniversary post, in which I included an index to all the variant cover-age posts so far]

The cover above wasn’t part of DC’s first wave of lenticular covers in 2013, but rather the second in 2014. It does give you an idea of what the lenticular covers looked like (though the second wave looked better than the first). And it wasn’t just lenticular images on these covers (making them strictly a “gimmick” cover and not a variant cover) as regular editions were issued as well with static fronts.

I’ve gone on about DC’s lenticular covers in the past…in real time, in fact, As It Was Happening and YOU Were There! As you may recall, DC announced this great month-long gimmick of producing a bunch of villain-centric one shots for most of their titles, all of which would feature fancy lenticular motion with advanced technology that I seem to remember from children’s books I had in the early ’70s. Long story short, even with extra advanced solicitation times, orders were such that the printers could not produce enough of the covers in time, resulting in allocations.

Interestingly, what I’d forgotten was that there were only lenticular covers initially planned for all these comics. It wasn’t until DC announced “Oops, Not Enough Lenticulars” that the “regular” static-imaged covers were offered to “fill out” any orders on the fancy covers that may have been cut short by the allocations. As I recall, you could just order however many you wanted of those.

Here’s a sample of a lenticular cover from this initial 2013 wave (non-animated, sorry):

And here’s the standard edition:

If you want more detail on what was happening at the time, here are my original posts on the matter: 1 2. As I recall, I had enough of the fancy covers to fill pulls, and some people preferred the standard buck-cheaper perhaps-not-as-gimmicky-and-distracting standard ones. I just hoped they wouldn’t pull something like this again.

Then suddenly out of nowhere DC did it again the next year, with the printing kinks worked out, apparently, and with standard cover editions offered from the get-go. You can refer back to my posts on the 2014 wave (1 2) for a more in-depth look, or perhaps “look at it from different angles.” I don’t know, there’s a joke there somewhere. But again, in short…sold fine, no panicked rush on the covers because they were in short supply like that first time.

Now, years later…well, when I ordered those, I was working for my previous place of employment. In fact, that second wave of lenticulars was one of the last Big Things I ordered for that store before opening up my own shop. As such, I don’t have any leftovers from those initial orders in my backstock, and I never ordered them for my own place. I’ve been dependent on acquiring them in collections, and, yes, sure, I have picked up a few over the years.

Oddly enough, I seem to see more from the first “limited in supply” wave than I do from the second “order as many as you want, we’ve got plenty!” wave. My recollection was that both waves sold well…we did have some leftovers on the second wave, but it’s not like we didn’t sell plenty of copies of those, too.

And speaking of the aftermarket…some of those initial lenticular releases, unsurprisingly, got targeted by eBay flippers and were quickly thrown online. In particular, the “Joker’s Daughter” issue (remember her?) of Batman: The Dark Knight (#23.4) was The Hot One, though a quick look at eBay shows you can buy ’em for around $10. That Joker one I pictured above was is another one that acquired a premium price for a bit, though I think that was one of the higher-ordered (and not-as-allocated) issues. On eBay now, about $10 – $15, which is still pretty good.

Most other issues, of both waves, at least in my experience, sell about about $4 to $5. It’s one of those deals, like with many of the ’90s gimmick covers, where people fish ’em out of the back issue bins, say “ooh neat!” and buy it. Not fast sellers, not “in demand” items (no one comes in asking for them) but more often than not they’ll buy ’em when they see ’em.

In 2017, Marvel gave lenticular covers the ol’ college try as part of one of their ongoing series of relaunches of various titles, and, um, well

In my opinion they were biting off a little more than they could chew, there, by trying to switch between two entirely different complicated cover images which 1) weren’t kept distinct enough from each other, making a blurry mess, and 2) would confused customers as to what comic they were actually looking at. “Is that…Giant-Size X-Men? What’s going on?”

They weren’t all that bad, but good gravy, they weren’t all that good, either. These I did end up ordering at my own store, and I’m pretty sure I rid myself of any excess in the dollar bins. Ah well. Oh, and keeping with the variant theme…it’s Marvel, of course there were variants. Here’s the main cover:

…and if you go to this page, you can see the rest of the variants this issue had. I recommend the “How to Draw Ghost Rider” one, which is pretty good.

The only company regularly flying the lenticular banner nowadays is Absolute Comics, and you can see a sample of one here. Looking back through Diamond Comics’ database, I see other publishers tried out lenticulars in recently years, on such titles as Zombie Tramp and Ninjas and Robots.

But DC and Marvel haven’t repeated the line-wide fancy movin’ cover thing since those initial attempts (though DC did spring for one on Doomsday Clock #1 in the true spirit of Watchmen). I wouldn’t mind seeing more in the future…I like them, they look neat on the rack, and the customers seem to like them too. Just…make sure they work, and maybe don’t unload dozens of them on us simultaneously.

So I remembered the just the one action figure cover variant from when DC did ’em a while back, the Batman and Robin #29 from 2014:

…which I kept because of the Swamp Thing appearance, natch. And while I knew there were more, as part of DC’s attempts to boost orders on their New 52 line, I could not for the life of me remember any of the others. I mean, I know I ordered them and carried them at the previous place of employment, but this was during the lead-up to me opening my own shop, so, you know, maybe I had my mind occupied with other things.

Looking at the cover again reminded me this was a tie-in to the Robot Chicken TV show, which animated action figures in humorously irreverent sketches. (Worth noting that the show itself was inspired by similar “photo-funnies” content featuring action figures in Wizard magazine publications…in fact, writers on the feature went on to create the TV show.)

Specifically, the 2014 covers (of which there were 22(!)) were created to tie into a DC Comics-centric Robot Chicken TV special. And in all this Googling about, I discovered this was the second TV special, with the first in 2012 being advertised by DC then on, far as I can tell, one sole variant cover:

Why just Aquaman? Well, he’s apparently the most hilarious of superheroes, an easy punchline for hack writers.

Anyway, like the MAD variants discussed last time, they got a second run with the aforementioned 22(exclamation mark!) variants in 2014, featuring gags like this:

Hm. Well, your mileage may vary I guess, depending on how funny you find the show itself. I’ve never seen it, beyond, I think, some Star Wars gag years ago, and maybe some incidental advertising…but I looked at a few clips on YouTube and it’s fine. And looking at the Wiki entry there’s certainly some impressive voice talent puttin’ in some time there.

But back to the covers: honestly, looking at that gallery I linked above (and will link here again so you don’t have to go searching) I have no recollection of any of these save that Batman and Robin I mentioned. I don’t even remember this Justice League Dark variant:

…even though I surely must have kept one for myself. No way that would have slipped past me.

The 2014 books were 1 in 25 ratio variants…again, a silly thing to do, as making these freely orderable may have resulted in fewer inflated orders for comics that may not sell just to get the special cover, and more copies moved to customers who were amused by the variants. But that does explain the low estimated print runs you saw on that gallery page I’m not going to link to for a third time. Some random eBay checking revealed prices in the $10 range, mostly, but some optimistic chap has the Wonder Woman variant at $85.

I think, though, my favorite gag on all these covers was the one used for Aquaman #29:

Okay, I admit it, Aquaman is hilarious!

So I think I said at the time, in 2013 when DC Comics was producing MAD Magazine variants for their New 52 line in celebration of April Fool’s Day, that this cover bothered me. I mean, it should have delighted me…it is technically a great drawing, as one would expect from the legendary (and then in his 90s!) Al Jaffee. It’s nicely colored, it certainly stands out on the shelf….

…But what really bugged me is that this wonderful opportunity is marred by burdening Mr. Jaffee with that awful, awful design for Superman’s costume. I know, I know, I’ve gone on about it before, but it baffled man and God as to who actually thought this was a good idea. (As a wise man, me, once said, “if even George Perez can’t make it work….”)

Anyway, Mr. Jaffee did his best, but the costume still looks awkward, unless of course Jaffee himself thought “this costume’s terrible” and played up how terrible the costume was. Though, I have to admit, when I first saw it, I wondered if he’d been given the instruction “draw a funny Superman cover” and drew Classic Superman, only adding the New 52 outfit’s details later an editor got a look and returned it for regrooving. I mean, I have no idea…the fact that Superman was drawn with obvious trunks, or that the collar seemed a little…off, like it was added after the fact. Or that the body of the costume and even the boots look more like the traditional togs versus the inexplicable armor Supes was saddled with:

That cover just above, by the way, is the “standard” cover for this issue. However, not satisfied with a MAD variant, DC was running gimmick covers as the “non-variant” edition. In this case, it was the thing DC had branded as their “WTF Certified” covers, a gatefold cover where the front would pose some situation, and then you’d fold out the cover and presumably shout “WHAT THE F–” as you saw the amazing surprise that was revealed. Anyway, more on that when I start my “Gimmick Cover” series, after I’m done (if ever) with Variant Cover-age.

Similarly, poor Sergio Aragones had to do his best with that costume for the Justice League variant:

This actually turned out to be the MAD variant for which we had the most requests, and it’s a good thing this was the MAD variant for which we were able to get the most copies, if I recall correctly. A spot check on a number of the MAD variants released that month showed that the majority of them were offered as ratio variants…for every ten copies of the regular cover ordered, a retailer could order one of the special covers.

This always seemed so short-sighted to me. Given that the Justice League variant was offered to retailers…hmm, lemme see how to put this. Retailers were able to order as many copies of that Justice League variant up to their numbers on the lowest ordered New 52 comic for that week. As such, shops ordered as many of that Aragones variant as they did of Sword of Sorcery #7, maybe even raised their orders on the latter to get more of the former, and got a variant that, at least in our case, sold great, even despite that Superman costume. If they’d made the same deal with all the MAD variants, we could have had lots of these to sell:

…and believe me, we would have sold plenty.

Now, these MAD variants must have done well, as DC Comics did it again the following year. Alas, not so much since, though when I was tracking down some images on the eBays I noticed that several of these variants have been going for premium prices. Whether that’s a usual thing or just another example of the current collectible-inventing market boosting prices, I don’t know. I did see someone call that Justice League variant a “1 in 10” cover, which is of course wrong. What, on eBay, what a shock.

I do wish something like this was attempted earlier, with some of the MAD artists that I remember from my early days of reading the mag. Not that there was anything wrong with what we got, but imagine a Don Martin Swamp Thing cover, or a Dave Berg Harley Quinn. I tear up just a little thinking of those wonderful possibilities.

(Here’s a gallery of the 2013 MAD variants, and here are 2014’s offerings.)

So this week’s installment of variant cover-age is going to be just a little different. I know I said I was going to take a look at the various New 52 variant covers DC started using to shore up sales once the initial excitement for the new publishing strategy ebbed away.

But more on that later. What I want to touch upon here is the recent report that direct market comic sales in the U.S. are on their way up. A friend (who now has a suspended account there due to stupid reasons involving Twitter’s algorithms) responded on the Twitter thread there asking about the impact of variant covers on that increase, and the response was that the inflated prices on variant covers were not considered, only cover prices on all releases.

Which is fine, of course, those shouldn’t be considered. But there is something to be said about variant covers boosting the amount of money retailers spend on new comic product. I tried to argue the point in that thread, but Twitter’s not a platform for nuance, and things kept getting off track, so let me try again here.

As I’ve mentioned many a time in this ongoing series of variant cover posts (running three-quarters of the year now!), variants exist to improve sales. On the retail end, they offer varying images to appeal to a wider range of customers…if they don’t like one cover, maybe they’ll find the other appealling. Or, more cynically, it’s a way to get a customer to double/triple/quattuorvigintuple-dip and buy more than one cover of the same comic. Or, of course, if it’s a “rare”-ish variant, you can charge a premium price.

What the main focus here, though, is what retailers are buying, and how variant covers can affect those purchasing decisions.

As you may have noticed, or at least noticed me taking about, the collector/speculator demand increasing over the last couple of years. I won’t try to go into the reasons why here (aside from noting that it’s seemingly connected to everyone being stuck at home during peak pandemic times). Demand for anything that even smells of eBay flipability just shot through the roof (which I don’t need as frankly my shop’s had enough roof problems lately). Mostly it’s focused on ’60s Marvel, which is red hot, and the mercurial demand for comics that have even the slightest, and occasionally even spurious, tie-ins to events in the many Marvel TV shows and movies. And don’t even get me started about everyone looking for this comic featuring a character named “Corona.”

Anyway, increased demand from consumers will trigger increased ordering from retailers…and when a portion of that demand is coming from speculators, the temptation is there to go after the manufactured rarity of the ratio variants. You know, where for every 25, or 50, or 200 of something you order, you can order one copy of a special cover.

The argument I was making in the Twitter thread was solely this: an increased incidence of retailers bumping up orders to get ratio variants is a contributor to the overall increase in the direct market. How many times have I been near one of the ratio plateaus when ordering a book, and decided “ah, I’ll get the [x] number of extra copies to get that variant.” And I’m sure I’m not the only one. And with the increase in speculation, the temptation to bump those orders up only increases. Instead of only bumping up, say, three or four copies to get that variant, maybe you’re getting an extra ten since you’re sure whatever you charge on it and sell it for will more than make up for the additional copies.

The specific example I used in that thread was King Spawn #1. Now, I’m just a little ol’ rinky-dink shop. I don’t sell a lot of Spawn normally. I did order a larger-than-normal amount of King Spawn #1 (and the other new Spawn books) because interest seemed to be high in them. But there’s no way, under normal circumstances, I would sell anywhere close to 250 copies, which is what you had to order to get the 1/250 variant cover signed by Todd McFarlane his own self.

As it turned out, I had a customer who really wanted that signed King Spawn, so the amount he prepaid for it essentially covered the the extra expenditure I had to make ordering additional copies of that #1 to get that comic for him. The end result is that I have a boatload of regular King Spawn #1s that I can afford to sell at a special discounted price of a whole 99 cents, to the delight and occasional alarm of my customers.

But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that I ordered waaaay above and beyond what I normally would have ordered of King Spawn #1, for the sake of a variant. That is absolutely, 100% a case of a variant impacting the direct market’s increase in money spent on product. And certainly more retailers ordered 250, or multiples of 250, of that comic in order to get the autograph, even if expected rack sales where nowhere close to what they received.

And yes, that King Spawn stuff all happened this year, and thus not part of the market report, but it simply writ large the sort of impact variants can have on overall sales. It’s easier to see the effect with King Spawn, versus trying to determine how many retailers added a couple of copies here and there to reach much lower ratio variant order plateaus.

On top of that, there are of course the “free-to-order” variants, where you’re second guessing demand on specific covers. Which is hard to do, as Artist [A]’s variant may have been the Hot One on a book last month, but may no longer be the in thing when Artist [A]’s cover for the next book shows up. Plus when there are a lot of variants, you don’t want to miss out on the one people are looking for, so sometimes you perhaps order more than you would have if there was just the one cover. There were cases in the last year or two where Marvel put out comics with literally more variant covers than copies I expected to sell at the shop (cough Eternals #1 cough). For titles like that I certainly didn’t order every cover…but I probably ordered more than I ordinarily would have anyway.

Also there’s ordering extra copies of each variant to accommodate the customers who want more than one cover for the same comic. Another case of the variant boosting sales…especially in the current marketplace, where some customers want every version of each new hot book that comes along.

And really, that’s the only point I was trying to make. The increase in the comics market was contributed to by the presence of variant covers. As I admit in that Twitter thread, I don’t know how much of an impact variants had, but it definitely wasn’t “none.” Again, not talking premium pricing or what have you, just literally sheer numbers of units shipped from distributors to retailers. Seems self evident, but didn’t stop me from going on about it for over 1100 words, did it?

Okay, next time, back to just plain ol’ “lookit dese variant covers.” Thanks for reading, pals.