Finding success in the comic book world can feel overwhelming at times. With so many options for what you can stock on your shelves and a variety of potential customers to appeal to, picking exactly what verticals you want to sell can be stressful. I’m here to help take away some of that stress with some simple, straightforward recommendations, while also helping to explain one of the largest parts of today’s collectible comic market: variants.

What are Variants?
We’ll start with the basics. A variant is, as the name might suggest, a comic book that features a varied cover from other printings. The interior of the comic is typically the same as any other printing, but the cover itself can vary dramatically- often in distinct and artistically interesting ways! For example, you might consider The Mighty Thor #1. It normally features a bright and memorable cover, but has a curious variation that features an entirely blank cover that highlights the title and catches the eye with its extremely minimalist aesthetic.

Are Variants Valuable?
Variants can sometimes be worth considerably more than their mass printing counterparts. A variant cover is, very often, a much smaller printing and can feature work from artists that are in high demand. The value of a given variant can vary wildly, however, with popular variants potentially spiking substantially in price while less loved comics can be worth only a little bit more than their base print run. With that in mind, however, it is often worth speculating that the value of a variant will increase, often making them safe buys for your store and, arguably more importantly, sought after by collectors. 

Two-for-One Value
While the variants themselves can potentially be collectors pieces on their own, many comic book buyers are themselves “completionists” when it comes to their collection. This means that they are often looking to have every single issue in a series. In the case of comics that feature variants, that also often means that they will want every published version of a comic, not just the initial mass market printing. For your store, that means you can potentially be getting twice as many sales from buyers that can’t resist their FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) when it comes to completing their collection.

Variant Variations
Adding some complication to the concept of variants, there are often numerous kinds of variants and potentially even variations within those variants (say that three times fast). For example, you might be able to find Superior Spider Man #1, its Camuncoli cover variant, and a convention-exclusive variant! You don’t have to stress about trying to have every variant on hand, especially as those convention exclusives might be out of reach, but you can get incentive or retailer-exclusive variants by committing to receiving a certain number of a given issue –– publishers then reward your store by providing you with the variant for that issue. All it takes is asking the publisher what kind of incentive variants they offer.