The Speculator Boom of The 1990s
In reaction to the boom, comic book publishers began to market specifically to the collectors' market. Knowing that many collectors are completists, buying, for example, every issue featuring a certain character, publishers began to produce comics with multiple covers, and completists and speculators alike bought them by the millions. The variants often depended on whether the copy was sold through the direct market or at a newsstand.
1991's X-Men #1, featuring the artwork of superstar artist Jim Lee, had five covers. Designated #1A, #1B, #1C, #1D, and #1E, the first four's cover images fit together to form a larger image, used again as the gatefolded cover to #1E, released one month later. As of 2006, it remains the best-selling comic book in history with sales more than 8 million copies.
Not every issue with variant covers sold that well, but that didn't dissuade the publishers. Variant covers graced the covers of titles from Marvel, DC, Valiant, and Image, as well as numerous small press publishers. In 1993, DC Comics' shipped the first printing of Superman #75, featuring the climax of "The Death of Superman" storyline, in a black polybag with a Superman armband inside. Collectors wanting to keep their copy pristine but also read the story bought multiple copies or the subsequent printings, each of which had the same cover as the first, but without the polybag and fan incentives. Likewise, the second printings of other issues with "gimmick covers" shipped without the gimmick.
Jim Lee, now one of the co-founders of Image Comics, remembering his success with X-Men #1, published variant cover comic books through his Wildstorm Studios imprint. Gen¹³ #1 bore 13 different covers, each with a character in an homage to a comic book, advertisement, or movie poster. DV8 #1 bore eight different covers, one a group shot and the rest representing the seven deadly sins.
Read more about this topic: Variant Cover
Famous quotes containing the words speculator and/or boom:
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The cohort that made up the population boom is now grown up; many are in fact middle- aged. They are one reason for the enormous current interest in such topics as child rearing and families. The articulate and highly educated children of the baby boom form a huge, literate market for books on various issues in parenting and child rearing, and, as time goes on, adult development, divorce, midlife crisis, old age, and of course, death.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)