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!

variant, Variant, VARIANT WATCH!  HOOOO!

Strange week on the comic stands this Wednesday. No big titles or specials, a lot of one-shots, B-list comics and still no Final Crisis on the stands. This must be a fifth week month. Remember a few years ago when Marvel and DC use to have self contained fifth-week events where all the characters turned into apes or all the books highlighted an international hero? There’s only a couple of months a year that have five Wednesdays instead of four so rather than put out 13 issues a year comic companies came up with the Annual issue. This week only saw one annual, JSA from DC, but it’s a great one. I can’t tell you how geeked up I am on the GOG storyline. Marvel favored Must Haves and 2nd printings instead of annuals. There was even an Amazing Spideman Extra, because three issues a month just isn’t enough, I guess.

The fifth week can be a rough one for variant comics, unless you count 2nd prints as variants which I don’t. Disagree with me, wanna fight about it? Post your case below and then get ready for a fat lip. 2nd prints are just that, a second printing of the comic and therefore not a variant, just a 2nd printing. Are 2nd prints worth anything? Hells Yeah! Sometimes they’re worth more than the first prints, rarely but sometimes. But, if you ask me, they’re not variants.

Speaking of variants, though there were not many this week I do have some picks for you, my drop-dead gorgeous readers.

This Wednesday’s Variant of the Week:

Reign in Hell #1; 1:10 variant cover by Matthew Clark

Reign in Hell is going to be good fun. Why you ask? Because Kieth Giffen writes great comics and if your like me, you’ve got a soft spot for both him and the DC supernatural characters like the Demon and Neron. This book has a couple of things going for and against it. In the “for” column; Like I said, Kieth Giffen, the Demon (who hasn’t been seen for a while) and two great looking covers. In the A”against” column; Tom Derenick’s pencils are nowhere near as impressive as the covers and last time DC gave us a limited series that focused on the magik/occult characters of the DCU (Day of Vengeance) it was confusing and ultimately pointless. Retailers remember the piles of Day of Vengeance and Shadowpact issues that didn’t sell to uninterested or confused fans and you can bet they’ll take that into account when ordering Reign in Hell. If the book is a hit, and that could be a big “IF”, this variant will be a hot one due to the low orders on issue one. I know that barely sounds like a prediction but give me a break here, this is fifth week comic news.

Honorable Mention:

Legion of Superheroes #44, 1/10 Neil Adams variant

The only thing that stopped me from picking this one as #1 this week is the fact that the book sucks so bad. But hats off to Neil Adams for a great variant cover. It’s nice to see that some of the legends are aging gracefully as opposed to the John Byrnes of the world. Oh, you can bet that’s gonna get me some hate mail. Don’t get me wrong John, I used to love ya.

This Wedensday’s Stinker Variant of the Week:

Project Superpowers #5 1/25 negative variant cover by Alex Ross

Negative variants are so STUPID! I can’t speak to the origin of the negative variant cover but I’d bet ya dollars-to-donuts the first one was a printing error that was given to the comic company free of charge. Rather than throw the errors in the garbage the hypothetical comic-company shipped the negative covers out and Booyaa! The negative cover was born. Who falls for this garbage? Seriously, are any of you going to buy this variant where the blacks are white and the greens are purple? Does anyone think this is cool?

Next week seems to be back to business as usual as the first new comic day of August is upon us! They’ll be variants galore that we can explore. Just take a look. It’s in a book. A Reading Rainbow! reading… Sorry about that. Just finished watching Dr Horribles Sing-A-Long video podcast and can’t stop singing about everything. If you haven’t seen it you need to. It’s Joss Whedon, Niel Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and other recognizable friends in the best short musical performance ever. You’ll love it.

This is Variant Watch signing off.

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