I had forgotten about the LotDK covers . . .

I can't seem to remember anything earlier than that, as far as variants go.
Jason | Email | Homepage | 09.25.05 - 11:57 am | #

as far back as i can recall there were always considered 2 varients... newstand and regular.. but i doubt that's what you mean.. the worse by far i think was the five for x-men #1
Porkspam | Email | 09.25.05 - 1:22 pm | #

That's interesting about ASM Annual, I've always seen it noted in price guides as "direct" and "retail," never with any indication of both being available in the direct market.

LoDK and X-Men #1 don't seem like true variant covers to me. Int he former case, so the border color on the outer cover was changed- so what?

With X-Men, it seems more a case of "Say, why don't we chop up this Jim Lee cover so we can sell it five times?" Any reasonable person would just buy the gatefold version.
Joe Gualitieri | Email | 09.25.05 - 2:04 pm | #

ngggnnn....

I know there was a variant cover brought out decades before Lgends of the Dark Knight, but bugger me if I can think off what it was. One of those facts reported in one of the trade rags during the nineties...
Martin Wisse | Email | Homepage | 09.25.05 - 2:46 pm | #

How 'bout: Superman: The Man of Steel, Issue #1, by John Byrne, which predates the ASM Annual and LOTDK #1. It had two variant covers: the widely-distributed "exploding Krypton" cover with a full body shot of Clark Kent changing to Superman, and second a silver-ink logo cover, for direct sales shops only, with a close-up of the "S" symbol reveal under Clark's suit.
FM ZOMBIE #1 | Email | 09.25.05 - 2:55 pm | #

Continued... There may have been other unintentional variants, but MoS #1 was the first I can remember being marketed as such....
FM ZOMBIE #1 | Email | 09.25.05 - 2:57 pm | #

"Superman "test logo" variants of Justice League #3 and Firestorm #61 from '87"? What's this?
Daniel Taylor | Email | Homepage | 09.25.05 - 3:03 pm | #

Nothing to do with comics but I remember when Abacab came out in different colors. That was in '81.
nidrian | 09.25.05 - 5:00 pm | #

Daniel,
see here and here. It's very odd, I wonder if there was ever a serious intention to change the name of the company?
bob | 09.25.05 - 5:41 pm | #

I live in MA and I have the Justice League test cover that apparently was only sold on the west coast. I know I bought it in a store here in MA, but I don't remmeber any of the details. For years I thought i had some sort of bootleg comic book and was terribly disapointed that it was just a marketing test.
Eric L | 09.25.05 - 6:34 pm | #

"Unicycle Tragedy" is possibly the best title for a comic ever.
Martin Rebas | Homepage | 09.25.05 - 10:02 pm | #

Martin - the more I think about it, and I thought about it all day, the more I want to do it. Unicycle Tragedy will happen.

Everyone else - I have response to most of you in Monday's post!
Mikester | Homepage | 09.25.05 - 11:26 pm | #

Mike, I am still waiting for you to answer the question I sent in email as per your direction. I need your powerful comics-enhanced brain to answer this vital query.
Evilbeard | 09.26.05 - 2:09 am | #

No discussion of variant covers would be complete without someone asking what the deal was with Wasteland #6 (or was it #5?).
Chris Galdieri | Homepage | 09.26.05 - 7:39 am | #

Hey, Mike! Rmeember that newsprint/"Delixe" X-Men comics stuff in the mid-1990s? What the hell was that all about? That was before I got myself on the internets, so I don't know what the diehards thoguht abuot it. Did anyone actually buy the newsprint viersions? I assume they did, since they came out two weeks earlier and y'gotta have your x-fix.
Mark H. | Homepage | 09.26.05 - 8:05 am | #

Holy crap, that's some poor typing up there. Sorry, everybody. I'm suffering from exhaustion.
Mark H. | Homepage | 09.26.05 - 8:06 am | #

My vague memory of the newsprint/deluxe split on the X-Books is that the deluxe editions were the ones that came two weeks earlier.
bob | 09.26.05 - 10:01 am | #

I might just have been confused by the first zero issue, which was Zap #0, comign out in the mid sixties, rather than one of the more obvious candidates in the early nineties...
Martin Wisse | Email | Homepage | 09.27.05 - 12:31 am | #