What happened to the glitz and glamour of foil and hologram covers on comic books? Sure you can get 20 different variant covers, 19 of which are probably drawn by Mister Turner, but gone are the days of straight to shelf flashy covers. Or you could always go to Dynamic Forces if you are willing to part with your hard earned.

T'was the early to mid nineties, maybe the height of the "speculator" craze that brought about so many variables to the fore. Or maybe it was because the comic companies were just trying to defribulate a market that was all but dead. Either way, covers like Iron Man #290 with its gold foil inlay, Superman #123 with glow-in-the-dark electricity zapping from his new duds, Wolverine #75 with a banging hologram stuck straight on the cover and Spider-Man #25 with its giant hologram cover making it one of the coolest covers of its time.

Either way, these covers were exciting. Even though I wasn't slightly interested in any 2099 series except Spidey, I still had to get every issue #1 just for their kick butt chromium facia.

I'm not saying that chromium, foil and hologram covers are no longer released. Only that their prevalance on the shelves is going the way of the collectors card... only difference is, I was happy to see cards go.

 

Two weeks running with a block on the end of customs. Then a week's shipment that made it through turning out on the weekend of Supanova. Of course, those hitting the expo looking for those exclusive Aspen covers were disappointed. Customs problem again. And so another week. That's three weeks in four with a problem at Customs end.

Dropping in with the comics week to week like this and seeing nothing new helps those needing time to catch up on all the many comics they've already bought but failed to allot the proper time for. Doesn't help then when the backlog is flushed through with a coffee enema and instead of the four or five titles, it balloons into numbers over a dozen.

 

Running up and alongside the new volume of The Ultimates (with Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch at the helm), a black and white variant was on the table at a 50/50 split. Concerns over the possibility of retailers being left with the uncoloured version on their shelves saw that ratio switched out to 1/10.

The standard full colour version was just like any other Marvel comic. The variant, however, featured no lettering and instead the raw inks (or pencils, I'm not too sure), with the script at the back. Or part of. They hardly do the full on a single issue.

So anyway, Hart, a long time customer, was among the few to be offered the variant along with the normal version. Saying, "No, thanks" would have been easy. Buying that over the regular or buying both would have been okay. Neither of these happened. Instead, deliberation.

Weeks of.

It's a hard decision: go both or the variant interior to the normal. Buy only that, and the story's a little punctured following on. Buy both, and that's another comic not being tested.

What would you do?