Welcome to Variant Watch where each week I’ll be discussing the new hot variant covers of the week.  As all comic collector’s know, each week on Wednesday Comic book Santa Claus flies around to every comic shop in the world delivering that week’s new comics and there is much celebration.

Now the avid collectors also know that with each shipment of new comics comes a select few variant covers of regular issues.  Why are they special you ask?  No, not because they cost two-to-fifty times that of the regular issues.  Variants are rare and “rare” is a word that comic collectors both love and hate.  When you have a “rare” book you love it.  When you are looking at “rare” books on Ebay and questioning your station in life because you can’t even picture a time when you’ll be able to drop $500.00 on a comic book, “rare” can be an awful term.

Click through the jump to see my picks for Variant Watch!

Fear not comic nerds! Variant Watch returns! What do you guys think about a Variant Watch soundtrack? Last.fm has a cool widget you can embed in a blog that would enable you, my freaky-attractive readers, to listen to the Psychedelic-Doom-Metal that I was listening to while I wrote this. We could share a moment moment in music man, just you me and Satan. Picture that last line being read by Dennis Hopper and it’s much more effective. Let me know what you think.

This week was a huge a variant week. Uncanny X-Men #500 had four alone! Lots to choose from but we at Variant Watch (I say “we” because “me at Variant Watch” just sounds stupid) know that you, the physically fit and visually appealing reader, are on a fixed budget so we’ve (me’ve) narrowed down to two:

This Wednesday’s Variant of the Week:

Ambush Bug: Year None, 1:10 Variant By Kieth Giffen

Maybe your not an old wrinkled nerd like myself and find yourself saying, “who the hell is Ambush Bug”. Trust me when I tell you he’s hillarious. I’d be shocked if most retailers order more than five compies of Ambush Bug #1 seeing has the character hasn’t had his own book for at least 15 years. Keep in mind Ambush Bug creator and writer Kieth Giffen has been responsible for several surprise sellout hits such as DC’s Formerly Known as the Justice League and Marvel’s Drax the Destroyer miniseries, both of which were impossible to find by the time fans figured out how great they were. Ambush Bug is going to be fun and the low initial orders on #1 will make this Variant a tough one to find.

Honorable Mention:

War Heroes #1 1:20 Variant by Marc Silvestri

Great looking Variant by Silvestri for what looks to be a great book. I used to be a huge Silvestri fan but his art seemed to become stranger in the last 10 years. So much so that it’s refreshing to see him do something this understated.

This Wedensday’s Stinker Variant of the Week:

Uncanny X-Men #500, all the variants (see them all here)

First of all, I’ve said it a million times and here I go again, I hate the 50/50 variant unless the two covers form one picture. I love the Alex Ross cover on this book and will be content to buy it for cover price passing by the 50/50 Greg Land cover, the 1-in-30 Dodson/Land cover, the 1-in-30 Michael Turner cover and the ridiculously limited 1-in-200 Michael Turner sketch cover. Seriously, I’m not making this crap up. Marvel chose to make the super-limited 1-in-200 variant cover a sketch cover of the 1-in-30 Turner Variant which can be purchased, in full color I might add, for $20.00 to $30.00 depending on the how cruel-natured your comic shop owner is. How about a slow sarcastic round of applause for the rarest and most worthless variant cover to date. Way to go guys.

That’s all for this week.

This is Variant Watch signing off…

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