"Appetite for variants has waned steadily over the last few years, especially on the Marvel side," said Ryan Seymore, owner of Comic Town in Columbus, Ohio. "Initially, the hip hop variants as well as the other random/order threshold variants sold well. With the most recent Marvel NOW soft reboot, they have all but ceased selling.
"With DC, the variants do better since they aren't attached to any order threshold and remain at cover price," Seymore said. "At this point, I believe the current glut of variants has only hurt retailers who are chasing variants by over-ordering titles just to get them. Early on, I was guilty of variant chasing myself and my bottom line alerted me of my error."
"Marvel fundamentally doesn't seem to understand the idea of how to give our customers a sense of satisfaction at their purchase," said Bret Parks, owner of Ssalefish Comics in Winston Salem, North Carolina. "Why should Alex Ross be the standard cover while artists that have never been heard of and frankly aren't at the caliber of Ross be incentivized?
"Oftentimes, when we run out of a Marvel book on the shelf, the variant becomes the shelf copy and is sold at cover price," Parks added. "Some customers are still disappointed and would rather have the regular cover."
Several retailers said Marvel could learn some lessons from DC's approach to variant covers.
"DC has chosen a method for variant covers that works for them, the guests and the retailers," Seymore said. "By not attaching the ability for the shop to acquire to any order requirements, shops can order what they need and the guests can make personal preference choices without having to pay top dollar for the cover art they prefer."
"The 'open to order' variants that DC and others provide as subscription variants don't seem to have 'investor' value so they just give the customer more choices - and that's great," said Charlie Harris, owner of Charlie's Comic Books in Tucson, Arizona "The ones that require the retailer to increase their orders or jump through other hoops are most often from Marvel, frequently have no artist attached and often arrive with art by creators who don't have large fan bases. It's unusual to have them be worth more than cover price."
"I do wish that DC would still do ratio variants," Parks countered, "but admittedly the returnability of their titles and the higher sales due to the lower cover price do make up for it."
Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics in Concord, California, said variants, in general, make ordering more of a challenge, so they do stress out some retailers.
"Variants, even 'open to order' variants, can be huge curve-balls for how we order," Field said. "And it's a shame that some fans only want a certain cover that a publisher purposely makes it difficult for retailers to qualify."
