Comix Tawk

Cosmic Treadmill Presents… Comix Tawk, Episode 1: Variant Covers

Want to start today with a little bit of housekeeping.  I mentioned the other day that I finally figured out how to regain access to the Chris and Reggie Patreon page (in order to turn out the lights… and download all of our exclusive audio, of which there was plenty).  I decided to start transitioning all of that exclusive audio to the main Chris and Reggie feed… and that starts today, with the first episode of our “off-the-cuff” Comix Tawk.
 

Comix Tawk was more or less Reggie and I committing some of our pre-recording “warm up” chatter to audio… only without quite as many expletives.  We thought it would be fun to share some of these discussions with our Patrons, while also allowing them to see a more casual side to us.  This program, along with Cosmic Treadmill: After Dark were the initial (and ultimately, only) “exclusives” we offered to our wonderful supporters.

 
Over the next several months, I will be sharing this “new-to-most” content… probably weekly… probably on Sundays.  This will include five full-blown Cosmic Treadmills (After Dark), which will bring our total episode count for that series to a round 150.
 
 
The topic we chose to begin is one of the more contentious and controversial among the comics community… variant covers!  After a look into the history of variants… we share some of our personal feelings on the “current year” glut, and how these shelf-hogs inflate the numbers on some books that might not necessarily deserve the “rub”!

What are your thoughts on variant covers?

2 thoughts on “Cosmic Treadmill Presents… Comix Tawk, Episode 1: Variant Covers

  • I remember buying that Man of Steel #1 variant, then going back the next month and looking for #2 with that variant logo. I was very disappointed to have to buy the cover with the big "S" logo. It took me a couple years to track down the regular cover so my complete mini series would all have the same logo.

    Modern comics have shrunk into such a niche market that stunts like variants and multiple new number 1's are a necessity to milk all the cash they can from an ever shrinking market just to keep the company open and publishing new comics.

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  • I don't remember if when this was originally released if DC was still releasing themed variants on their main titles (Neal Adams month, Lego month etc..) or if they had got to the point where the variants were the issues with limited trade dress so it was easy to tell the variants from the main cover.

    Either way I bought a lot of those themed month series, not every month, but the ones I liked I bought all the covers. Eventually, like many things it got out of hand and it was just too much. I then moved on to only buying the variants that I really like the pic. For me variants were another way to enjoy collecting modern comics.

    Since last fall though I have pretty much stopped buying any variant cover. This is mostly due to wanting to cut back on all the comics I was buying any given month rather than anything to do with variant covers and the non sense they can be.

    I agreed with a lot of what you and Reggie said in this episode though and it was pretty thought provoking for me as a collector.

    When comic shops start to re open I doubt I'll be buying variant covers anymore, it would have to be something really special to get me now…

    Reply

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