Comic Book Variants, A Consumer and Retail Perspective

Avengers #25 Art Appreciation Variant

There a lot of people out there that criticizes the existence of variant covers, the people who buy them and the companies who put them out. The purpose of this article will be to introduce information, which I find is severely lacking, and also give a perspective from a consumer and retailer.

I personally love to collect variants, for a few reasons. Variants are also known as incentive variants because there is a production ratio assigned to most. This means that if a particular variant is let’s say for example, 1:25, a store must order at least 25 to receive 1 copy of this variant, and 1 more for each additional 25. So if a store were order 75 copies of the example mentioned above, they would receive 3 copies of this particular variant. From a collector perspective what this means is that this particular version of a book will be a lot more scarce than the normal cover. A lot of people out there, I have found, assume that the prices associated with these variants are speculator driven; this is just not true; well at least at the retailer level. These covers are an opportunity for a retailer to make up any loses that occur over unsold books. Let’s say that a retailer orders 75 copies of an issue that has a variant with a 1:25 ratio and only 40 or so copies of the regular cover are sold. This would mean that the store would be left with around 35 unsold copies, however the shop can sell the 3 variants that came with the order of 75 copies for a higher price which would help make up the for the unsold books. A lot, and in some areas all, of shops have a very tight budget and cannot afford to lose money on  unsold inventory, without aids such as variant covers they would unlikely buy many copies outside of their subscribers, making it very hard for walk in costumers to have an opportunity to even find copies.

And then of course there is the argument of, well I just care about the stories and why should I have to pay more for these covers; who cares? Collectors do, and have for as long as there have been people with enough money to collect rare items. There is a large amount of self entitlement among comic readers and collectors and I truly think this is just a manifestation of this self entitlement issue because in all mediums, rarer items are just worth more. Have you ever wondered just why exactly is Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman, worth so much? It’s not just because it’s old, try selling a copy of Ace Comics #22 from 1938 and see how much you get for that compared to Action Comics #1. The reason is, that over all these years, very few copies of Action Comics #1 have survived.

Although, I must admit there is an elitist aspect to my collecting as well. There is a certain, for the lack of a better term, joy found in having that book that you just know others can’t find even if they wanted to spend the money or can find but is worth an inordinate amount of money. It’s like being a part of a very exclusive club, which is very hard to describe to comic readers out there who just don’t share this feeling. For most collectors though, there is joy in knowing you have a complete set. I know of other collectors out there, like myself, who find joy in knowing they have every single cover for an entire volume of a certain book and this is something that I don’t think can be correctly described to readers who just don’t have an interest in being a completionist.

Something I very lightly touched on already, at the retailer level the prices of variants are not speculator driven. Shops assign the value based on the demand and rarity of a particular variant and usually also compare prices to large shops like midtown comics in New York City and EBay. However, EBay and private 3^rd party sellers are whole different matter, many of these variants sky rocket in price in an effort to artificially raise the price of a copy. This is something that happens on EBay for all items really but it is unfortunate because the high prices are a consequence of speculation and artificial price/value inflation.

Ultimately if I had one message to comic readers is this, if you don’t like variants and the prices, that’s fine but don’t try to take away the joy from people out there who do. You don’t have to buy them and they don’t affect your enjoyment of the stories being told.