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February 26, 2015


Bundled Extra: Marvel Plans Run Of NYC-Themed Variant Covers

imageI usually don't do article about variant covers. A variant cover is a cover to a comic book that is intentionally made available in addition to a primary cover. They are usually used to boost circulation on titles so designated. In the 1990s they were used almost solely to boost sales in aggregate fashion: if you wanted to collect all of a run of Amazing Spider-Man, for example, you had to maybe buy a couple copies of an issue if it had more than one cover. If there was one variant given to a store for every 25 copies they purchased, you might buy that copy for enough extra scratch to make your store's investment worthwhile. They're also a natural hook on which to hang some PR. Today they're used in additionally ways that are slightly different in emphasis. Many of the variants one can imagine simply wanting for the art being offered more than you could in the old days -- you just might want a certain cover, like on by Skottie Young. That might be something you collect in and of itself. Some of the variants themselves became tied not just into a specific issue of a book but into an element of its selling -- a variant for a specific store to sell, an inducement for stores to carry more copies than ever, a variant that celebrates a movie release, a variant tied into a convention. They're not as openly abused as they were at one point as a constant presence in the market, but they have still have that aura of exploitative opportunism. They are comics' primary "if you want us to stop quit buying them" moment, even today.

imageOkay, I mention all of that because I noticed that NYT's noted soft-features-about-comics writer George Gene Gustines wrote one of those kinds of articles about Marvel doing NYC-themed variants. It covers the basics, but it leaves out one thing: DC Comics is moving to California. Marvel isn't. If that's not part of Marvel's thinking, then it should have been. It's at least hilarious. There's not a whole lot of things to do with your industry competitor going to the other coast but doubling-down on your love for the city left behind -- itself a location for the majority of your stories, as the article notes. For me, the article brings up the potentially interesting question of how much comics are a New York thing at all. Even Marvel might be argued to be less New York-centric than they used to be. A sampling of their big-hit movies haven taken place in locations like California and New Mexico and Washington, DC without missing a beat. I'm not close enough to that kind of material to be able to suss out an answer, but I'd read an article from someone who is. For a month, though, Marvel's all about the Big Apple. And for a traditionalist like me, that seems right.
 
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