damned variant covers! lol

[malcolm]

rebought tankgirl 4 yesterday and made a fuckin stink bout how it wasnt pulled for my reserve box bein as it's on my list and shit being as they're always screwing up my hold list at atomic, mainly cus theyre always losing people and shit (too bad they layed me off,eh?)....it wast until i got on the bus and opened her up that i realised i had alrady bought that issue and didnt realise it cus it was a different cover. see, the new tankgirl series always has three variant covers each month which gets annoying cus i think variants should be left aside for second or third printings rather than as an incentive for collectors to just spend more money othe same damn thing that'll take thirty plus years for it to accumulate in value (unless they get a non personalized autograph or something on it or it really sells well-like walkin dead and marvl zombies series one did) anyay, i got to work and remembered my bss,jim wasalso a omic fan but not as hardcore as me so i gave him he copy. all it was gonna do for me is sit in my comic box. anyway, anyone else get frustrated by the multiple cover crap especially when they only hav so much a month they can spend on comics?share your story

[Mr Karl]

I buy comics to read not collect so yeah, that pisses me of too

[malcolm]

i used to buy em to collect them but hae grown out of it-one reason being is i spent years keeping certain issues i have all nice and spiffy and never touched em (my spawn issue 1 and 100 todd cover-the superman issue where he dies-the batman issue where he's broken in half-amazing spiderman 375 where it was supposed to be venom and spideys final fight) but now i just buy shit t read it. i mean, i may buy a issue here or there just for the cover but if i do it's usually because im planning on gettin it autographed or just to frame it. like i just bought an amazng spidergirl issue because it has a cover of her as a zombie by arthur suydam (really kickass painter) and he's gonna be at cactus comicon this year so im hoping to get autograph number two from him. oh! and i had bought an issue of strangegirl as well-im reading it in tpb instead of serial-to get rick remender to sign it. was gonna get my copy of blackheartbilly signed but chose not to.

what do you like to read,mk?

[Donald Rilea]

Am just glad that, like Mr. Karl, I get comic books, when I infrequently do these days, to read, especially if the book's story-line, themes and characters intrigue me.

As for collecting them as some sort of monetary investment, well, to each his or her own, but I think that's silly, myself.

If one wants to do that, better to get gold, silver, diamonds, platinum, or invest well in some sort of stock or mutual fund plan than in collectibles(am only generally speaking, of course. There are always exceptions to that rule, as to any other).

Haven't encountered the multiple-cover variant problem when I've bought comics, though, in the action figure collecting community, there is a quite similar issue when it comes to multiple variants on figures, and, believe it or not, the boxes in which they come.

Can be a bit frustrating, not mention bloody expensive, that.

So, I collect what I like, can afford, and read or use either books or figures as I see fit.

As for their potential monetary value sometime down the line, well, I've probably already well compromised that, I'm sure, so I don't worry about that over-much.

Finally, the sorts of comics I like to read have changed a bit, like everything else, over time.

Was very much into Marvel Comics, especially Daredevil, as a kid and teen-ager(most of DC's writing in the '70's and '80's, was, I thought, inferior to Marvel's), began moving into alternative comics like Love And Rockets in the early and mid-'90's, and have more or less continued in the same direction since, with Jason Lute's Berlin and the manga version of Battle Royale being the series I've gone after most in recent years.

[Morning Glory]

remember the days when Image said "fuck you Marvel and your foil deluxe 3-d cover bullshit, its what's INSIDE the book that we care about." Oh how the mighty have fallen...

variants are a shame to the comic book industry. Sure I've bought two or three myself, I'm just as guilty, but it was always for the sake of art, and it was a cool little insentive for the discriminating fan, not for the buyer's market- In other wors, the book was what sold and it was intended for the stock book to be the seller.

well, sometime ago that changed and it took exploitive shlock to a whole new level. it's disgusting and it drove me away from comics. What i'm refering to is how the once "special edition" has become the normal edition. It seems like every book these days, even the most uncollectable, has four variant covers for every single fricking issue.

When I was still buying books, back when Civil War was just coming out, the typical marvel book would have as follows: the normal run of covers, what however many is it? 50,000, a 100 a print? well whatever, and then the "standard" variant cover, it would be like one out of ever ten books, and then the super duper cover which would be one out of every 25.

get back to that in a minute I want to interput to pick a bone with another outrage, the comic con edition cover. What a rip off. they'd sell for 200 bucks on the net, the very next day, when anyone could have gone to the con and bought one for ten bucks, plus the cost of admission, so no more than 50 total.

But even worse, the absolute limit, back to those "normal" variants... Ok, so they really aren't that rare, you'd get two super "rare" one's per store, and like ten of the normal "rare" one's. But these bastards were pricing them and preselling them online BEFORE they even hit the shelves, at inflated rare values of course. So no less, the stores would follow suit and they'd pull the shipments before display, take these covers, which would have since as long as I can remember be what they were supposed to, which was buyer insentive, and go out among the normal ones to be found be the lucky one in tenth customer. - they'd take it, bag it and slap a 20, 25 dollar tag on it behind the counter on the very first day and then keep raising it up every month as it collects in value.

Forget that bullshit. I don't need a cover, you can keep it and sell it for 200 bucks, I'll take the quality story and art on the inside... if such a thing still exists, that is.

Oh yeah, and interstingly enough I did have the oppurunity to get my marvel zombies signed by art sudy as well, but I declined. As our freind chuck D so sagely spouted: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!

[Donald Rilea]

What you just said, Morning Glory, sounds just about right, and, in the case of not believing the hype, quite sound to me.

[malcolm]

i could care less about wether autographs are vauable or not, just like the comics themselves, i only get issues signed by artists i like as well.like the suydam one. he was at cactus last year sittin square across from mike mignola who was the major guy of that event. people were so intent on mike that the line tosuydam was abarely even there when i got up o it wen he first got there. pretty nice guy too. h asked me if i ws a musician cus of my buttoned up jacket (i hve all these funky buttons on my jacket) and i told him i was an rtist and he smiled and then drew this huge honkin skull in my copy of mz as wel a personalized it to me.

the oter autographs i have are one od dan ponasian i got for a birthday gift from soeone back when i was in the boyshome and rick remendersfrm my last day at atomic (they layed me off after free comic book day-assholes-)

and when did image say that? anybody remember shadowhawk? savage dragon?

both of em had variant covers and fancy pants covers out the wazoo from the get go and they were two of the founding members of image.
not to mention he trainwreck spawn has bcome. i remember it used to be funny and spooky ad cool all at once but now....it's just dull an dry and lasts five minutes tops in real time. the only major tings i read from image these days is alien pig farm, strange girl,battlepope, and walking dead

and convention variants are irritating too. it seems like every swinging dick on dec has some garbage t hove in yor face from them or their company. i got this free issue of something written by ahmet zappa last year and am like -sucks-
at the same time though, i did grab a couple of demi the demoness from s.s crompton himself for like fifty cents a pop so that was cool.

[malcolm]

p.s love the brainiac avy,mg.

[hewhoisagod]

only variant cover I bought was the Hush series of Batman that Jim Lee did........ and that was for the final issue only

[Mr Karl]

trying to remember the first variant cover book I saw, I think maybe it was the spiderman one right after the first secret wars. Actualy my comic guy pulls my regulars every week so I not really aware of the variations. All I buy regular anymore is vertigo titles and conan

[malcolm]

i thought about doin variants for murderkitty but decided not too.instead i was plannin on doing variant issues,one in bnw
(for stores only if i can get off my ass and get her in stores) and another in color wth more cussing and deleted scenes and a variant pinup to it.(orders only or online only maybe?)it wouldnt be too big a hastle for me cus im just gonna do her in mini serials anyway just for storyarchs ad thn maybe do a second series or so as ideas come to me cus i dont wanna do a story filled with random fluff. thats why i quit reading spandex soaps in the first place, too much fluff between serious story lines.and i hate my comic guys but atomic is the only shop this side of town. half the time they change companies they can hold for or they dont hold an issue here or tere (i hadto scrub umbrella society cus they didnt hold isse one for me but held issue two and they dont even hold tarot anymore which sucks-i have to pick em up in tpb)

[grebo]

i hate all the recent Zombie variant covers for stuff without any zombies inside, theyre milking the zombie shit for all its worth

[malcolm]

and marvel zombies vs. army of darkness and the new marvel zombies2 didnt tip you off to that? they're planing on mikling that atleast until 2010 and all the other companies are piggy backing-granted it was actually walking dead that revamped the zombie book genre though.

[Mr Karl]

oh right the marvel zombies shit

[Donald Rilea]

Sheeeeeeit!!!! Glad my comic book reading habits changed when they did.

Sounds like y'all are having an awful time with this kind of crap.

[malcolm]

as a lifelong zombie fan i even find it annoying now how much zombie crap there is out there andit's all the same shit bascally with a few cool differences her er there but thatsabout it. i'd love to see something new out there for that genre like maybe life through the zombies eyes or something.ad i dont mean like mrvel zombies, i mean like normal non super powered zombies.

[Donald Rilea]

Actually, the idea of doing a book, comic or novel, or film from a zombie perspective strikes me as being a crackling good idea, Malcolm.

Now, as to the idea's execution, that would depend on who does it, and how much in-sight and skill he or she could bring to making that idea come to life.

[evilstonermonkey]

i guess im lucky in that, since i can rarely ever read a comic more than once, no matter how much i enjoyed it, i never buy them. although the sandman series is feckin awesome, i could read that for evers. i keep meaning to buy them, but i keep being broke whenever i get the chance. damned money

[Mr Karl]

seeing Galactus as a zombie made me want to puke............some lines should never be crossed

[malcolm]

he was eaten by tezombies in the book. they then gained his powers and became galactus- te big galactus zombie didnt appear in the comic himself no did zombie silver surfer being as there wasnt much left after they figured out how to remove his metalic skin.