Variants and Adaptations v. The Pivot

Whether you’re a Disney+ fan or a comics’ reader you’re surely aware of the term variant. And this goes hand-in-hand with adaptation.

Marvel’s Loki (a variant of a 60-year-old adaptation of a 1,000 year old myth) is an entire show is built around the idea of different versions of a character across a multiverse. In the comic shop, variants refer to comics with unique, limited-edition covers that make a small percentage of those books potentially more valuable.

All comic characters have “variants” - whether it’s different versions within the comics continuity, “what if…?” versions, or distinctive representations created by movies or TV. With many decades of stories behind them, there’s room for an Adam West Batman, a Michael Keaton Batman, and Batmen and women who are not related in any way to Bruce Wayne. This also allows for a perpetuation of the classic origin story, something that comics are far too eager to rely on instead of unique, progressing, or multifaceted narrative.

Variant-cover comics get disturbing, though, when we hear things like this. A comic shop manager friend recently stated that 1/3 of the comics being purchased by his regular customers were ones with variant covers. This means that, by one metric, more than 30% of comics being purchased today are being bought for speculative purposes.

Speculation is an activity in which a party buys a good or product perceived to be uncommon in the hopes that they will be able to resell it at a significant profit. It’s the basis of concept behind everything from spices to precious metals to NFTs. Back in the ‘90s we saw an extreme incident of speculation in comics known as the “Collectors’ Boom.” At that time, estimates are that as many as 7,000 US retailers sold comic books. In the years since, that number has dwindled to around 1,500. And those 1,500 boutique shops are sustained on a broader variety of collectible goods.

So simple math, if people stop believing that these variants and collectibles have value, the number of retail comic specialty shops in the US could drop from 1,500 to 1,000 in a heartbeat. The big publishers of comic books today really only still exist because they were bought up a decade or two ago by intellectual property and film production powerhouses Warner Brothers and Disney.

Variant covers on comics books are an old scheme at this point - a nostalgic tear in an ocean of entertainment revenue. They’re an extension of collectibility in printed material which probably goes back to first editions in literature. But comics attained the perception of collectibility because they were printed on cheap materials and so, unless they were well preserved, their printed numbers dwarf the current quantity of available, high-grade specimens. Today, most comics are printed on magazine-quality stock and require little to no preservation. Collectibility is driven by two other things - low print runs and the belief that a book’s value may be bolstered if it’s adapted for the cinema or streaming.

I will only briefly touch on a subject I always cover, and that’s how comics fell from grace with the American public. At one time, comic books were as broadly consumed as movies. But in the mid-1950s, and desperately trying to ignore the rising demand for equal rights among Black Americans, the federal government turned its attention to comics, then kink, then rock and roll as explanations for rising youth “delinquency.” In doing this they also ignored that rebellion and reinvention are intrinsic to our national character, but I digress. The point is comic books were relegated to fare for children, the uneducated, and the socially inept.

Comics only really experienced a resurgence in a pop-cultural sense in the late 1980s when Hollywood started paying them greater attention as intellectual properties to be mined. But in order to give their new creation a shade of realism, movies killed off the supervillains almost straightaway and relied on epic threats. That’s a shame, because the villains were often the only characters with any emotional depth or potential relatability for the audience.

So here we have comics, almost 40 years from their last period of relevance, 80 years from their humble origins, selling it cheap on the street corner for anybody who will produce a film adaptation. Comics creators probably literally pray it will happen because they have seen the alternative that awaits them - a $6,000 mention at the end of a $300M movie, in some cases amputees, literally living the remainder of their lives in their cars. Meanwhile, the publishers pay artists to do variant covers and try to hang on by pandering to constituencies that don’t like each other. They exploit marginalized groups (IMHO as does other media) in the name of diversity. Sounds a lot like US politics.

The one thing you don’t see these companies (and in some case creators) trying to do it produce a quality product designed to appeal to a broad audience and bring new readers into the comics market. Some companies run from it - temporarily killing off characters before their Hollywood movies come out in what can only be interpreted as efforts at self sabotage.

People said that comic books were dying for decades. And they weren’t wrong. Save for licensing and adaptations, the majority of American wouldn’t even be aware of comics. But it’s not of a terminal condition. Comics themselves are renewed year after year by the infusion of new creators and perspectives. Sure, sparkly spandex superheroes are the entrée at every comic book meal, but that doesn’t mean that the main course, the appetizers, or the dessert have to appeal strictly with high calories, food coloring, and garnish.

We should seek to create works that challenge public perception like Art Speigelman’s Maus, Rep. John Lewis’s Civil Rights autobiography March, and even things that are just plain entertaining, like Department of Truth, Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters, or Impossible Jones. You’ll see anything is possible.

Comics have to pivot hard from variants and adaptations and put the emphasis back on meaningful storytelling. Not vanity projects, chasing big contracts, or the morass of the obsolete, work-for-hire graveyard. You, yes you, should think about telling your stories through a comic book. Especially if you haven’t even thought about the concept in your adult life.

It’s not going to be easy, but then it hasn’t been since the 1950s, so we at least have some practice.

The rest of the planet Earth doesn’t have this problem with comics. Everywhere except the US they are widely accepted… everywhere except the largest consumer economy in the world. All thanks to some ambitious politicians, a pop psychologist, and proro-DC executives who wanted to destroy their competition.

We can’t do anything to change that. So those of us who care about the art form of comics have to get out there and make good ones and help more people see the intrinsic value of comic book storytelling.

Because comics aren’t a joke. They’re not a scam by which the entertainment industry can scrape a few bucks off marginalized groups. They aren’t a hustle or a get-rich-quick scheme.

We have to move beyond the toxic cycle of marginalizing comic books to find an audience and a future for the best communication medium humankind ever created.

And that’s the pivot.