Episode 58: Variant Covers
Please note: This podcast was recorded before the recent kerfuffle with Dynamite Comics, Jae Lee, Tom King, etc.
Je Les Deteste
I hate them. They’re a scourge on humanity. They’re short term solutions to larger problems that nobody is trying to solve.
For example, Dynamite runs on Variant Covers. It’s the gas in their tank that keeps their company afloat. Here’s a random recent week of releases:
There are five new comics in there. FIVE. I’m too tired to do the math again on this, but I think it’s something like FIFTY variant covers.
The scary thing isn’t that they’d try such a marketing scheme, but that it’s enough to keep them in business. It works. It’s madness. People buy this stuff.
But for how long?
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When it comes to gimmick covers, you and I are old enough to have lived through the 90s, so we are way past anger and bargaining and denial, what’s the next stage again ?
Interestingly, what Roberto Aguirre Sacasa has done to revive the Archie franchise is quite remarkable, so it’s not just bad comics that do this, some decent ones do it too, sadly, makes it all the more frustrating.
And they will keep doing it if people buy them, I mean, when your readership is shrinking, you have to milk it for everything they’ve got, that’s capitalism 101.
I used to read Red Sonja back when Frank Thorne was drawing it, the character had some degree of depth, providing some inspiration for a certain warrior princess that would come later; recently though, as you said, it’s mostly unreadable dreck for those stupid enough to not have figured out that actual porn is free… Sigh.