Talked to a younger guy at the shop who changed my mind on variant covers

I was at Midtown Comics last Saturday grabbing a few back issues and got to talking with the clerk, who must be half my age. He said he doesn't even look at variant covers anymore because he sees them as just marketing tricks to make you spend more without adding to the story. That comment hit different because I've got about 60 variants in my long boxes that I barely even flip through. It made me rethink why I buy them at all. Has anyone else stopped chasing variants after a conversation like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby_palmer1mo ago

That whole bit about artists disliking doing variants really hits home for me. In my experience, a lot of people in the industry see them as just another task on the list, not something they’re excited to create. If you’re sitting on a pile of variants like I was, my practical advice is to pull them out and see how many you actually feel a connection to. I flipped most of mine for store credit and used it to grab some key issues I’d been putting off, and that felt a lot better than keeping a stack of covers I never flipped through. Your mileage may vary, but decluttering that part of my collection made the hobby way less stressful for me.

lilychen1mo ago

A friend told me about how creators themselves feel about variant covers. They said most artists actually dislike doing them because its just the same character in a different pose with no real story behind it. That stuck with me because I always thought variants were special editions, but really theyre just cash grabs. The Batman Who Laughs variants from a few years back really showed me the pattern. Every store got like five different covers for the same issue and none of them added anything to the reading experience.