U know, I saw the same thing happen with sports cards; companies saturate the market with SOOO MANY 'special', cards that none of them are truly special anymore!

And with comic books, Marvel is notorious for making so many friggin Variant covers, who cares anymore?! The bum thing about variant covers is that its the EXACT SAME issue on the inside! Its just a cover, for crying out loud! Nothing special really.

CASE IN POINT: Ultimate Spiderman #104. Ok, this was whack. A Variant mock cover of another Variant cover! How lame can it get?!!!  Marvel, Dynamic Forces and Wizard World all teamed up and offered issues of #104 with a White variant mock of the super-collectible Ultimate Spiderman #1 white variant - did I lose u yet?
So in an effort to milk more money from the marketplace, they offered a 'fake' variant of another variant! But unlike #1, issue #104, the actual book wasn't anything special!

the icing on the cake: They wanted $150 for this 'mock' variant! WTHell?!

MY POINT: A cool cover is just that; a cool COVER. I think comic book companies should focus more on good books and less on marketing gimmicks.

After the Death of Superman and Knightfall drama at DC, and the extra-goofy Onslaught/Heroes Reborn at Marvel, I had to take a break from comics. I guess I had enough of
gimmick covers and killing off everyone and Crisis storylines. The 90's was like one big Special#1VariantFoilInfinteDeathofHeroesBreakingRebirth! It was a case of oversaturation.

Then 2000 came along. And Marvel launched the 'Ultimate' line. That followed up with the 'Max' line, not to be outdone by DC's 'Vertigo' line.
And comics had new life breathed into them! Writers were the new HOT THING.
Jim Lee, Todd, Leifeld, Jae, Kubert...who cared?! Bring on BJB, J. Michael, Frank Miller, BK Vaughan, Morrison, and Ennis! (of course, I'm forgetting some names here)

MY POINT IS - is that the ga-ga leftover from all the artists of the 90's, was replaced by well-written, tightly scripted, 'grown-up' books of the new century.
And IMO, 'Ultimate Spiderman' shook up the industry the same way McFarlane's Spiderman and Lee's X-Men did just 10-years prior. Ultimate titles flew off the shelves in record numbers! (Im not a shop owner, but I know this must be true), and Ultimate Spiderman #1 white variant still commancds top $$ to this day! (9.8s go for well over $1,000).

Heck, I was buying books just because they were a GOOD READ - honest to God!

Some of my faves - solely because of how incredibly engrossing they were written - were, Fables, Y; The Last Man, Just a Pilgrim, 100 Bullets, Amazing Spiderman vol. 2, and Daredevil vol. 2 (starting with the now classic Bendis/Maleev run!) BTW, I mentioned before that Claremont/Silvestri is my all-time fave creative team? Well Bendis/Maleev is a photo-finish close second!!

I gotta say that Quesada is doing a hell of a job over at Marvel.  Wolverines 'Origin' is still one of my favorite all-time book/series ever.

Here's to hoping this new crop of 5 variants-for-every-single-damn-issue doesn't become another 1990's again!

-Will