Am I alone in saying enough with the variant covers and reboots?
As along time DC Comics reader and Collector (4 decades and counting), I have to say that I’m tired of all of the Variant covers and Reboots.
At least DC now notes that comic’s cover is a variant, I now find myself going out of my way to purchase only the regular cover. I understand that variant covers keep artist at work, but the novelty of a variant cover is long gone (it’s not the 90’s).
As far as reboots and new number 1’s go, please stop. There’s nothing wrong with a good mini-series (Mister Miracle and Raven are great), but having a new Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman number 1 every couple of years is painful.
I haven’t thought about it that way before; I’ve been buying mostly variant covers on the theory that they’ll probably be somewhat more scarce and possibly more valuable in the future. But it does annoy me in the sense that it seems like they’re glutting the market with extra, unnecessary product like this to artificially make more money. I’ll have to think about this and possibly will switch to seeking out the “regular” covers like you.
Also, I don’t like the reboots. I love the idea of buying a comic with a long, storied history and prefer large issue numbers. Unfortunately, we seem to be in the minority on both of your main points, or DC wouldn’t keep starting the numbers over.
Yeah I just wish they keep the number going instead of rebooting with number ones just change the creative team like they did in the New 52. Now as far as variant covers goes I say keep it to a minimum of 1 or 3 not like Batman 50 with 100+ variant covers now that’s was ridiculous.
I worked at a comic shop and I will say that variants sold like crazy especially once you got above the 1:10 variants which from DC’s side stores order more to get. And reboots… #1’s sell. yes as a collector having 300 copies numbered 1-300 is a thrill but rebooting sells more to casual and non hardcore comic fans.
I do think people will eventually burn out on variants and they will become less common, I honestly am surprised it hasn’t worked now but that bubble will burst sooner or later IMHO. As for rebooting at #1 so much… if wouldn’t be good business sense to say "these rebooted series keep sales up and make us mor emoney… but we need to go back to numbering over the 100’s and not rebooting to please hardcore collectors who like thumbing through a long box at hundreds of books numbered in order 1-whatever… even though those same people are not going to stop buying them if we reboot them but the bigger number who likes the lower number jumping on point.
Not criticizing anyone’s opinion, I am not a fan of constantly starting over at #1… just from a business point they are not going to stop because they would lose money.
I’ve only been irked with variant covers when I bought books in print. Namely the instances where a variant was better than the regular cover but much more expensive, to the point of where getting the eventual trade was cheaper than that one variant on its own.
When it comes to digital, I don’t mind the variants at all as they’re free and automatically come with the books.