For those worried about the cover....

I sort of went nuts with this...

So you're the one!

Yeh, but I stuck with the ones which were relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain. Check out the price-gouging which is going on with sellers on Ebay, especially with the Gamestop version.

I picked these up for $65 off ebay.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 - MARTIN VARIANT (1:50)

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 - J SCOTT CAMPBELL CONNECTING B VARIANT COVER

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 - POP MHAN VARIANT COVER

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 - BLANK COVER VARIANT

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 - SKOTTIE YOUNG BABY VARIANT

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 - REGULAR COVER

Are you guys going to slab them or something? I'm honestly curious.

If I ever slab a comic more recent than 1960, shoot me.

I am very lucky that variant covers hold no sway over me. Anyone know when they first became common? Was it the introduction of the direct market? They had become a fairly regular gimmick by the early 90s.

I'm glad I sold all my variants back when they still had some value over a decade ago. They had a lot of power for some crazy reason in the mid or late nineties then I finally figured it would make more sense to purchase new content vs a different cover. Even at cover price. I see regular priced variants has options thee days.

First variant covers I remember was when DC started doing different editions for the Direct Market (though around the same time they started doing 12 months of filler for the newsstand editions to make the more expensive, Baxter paper direct market editions stand out).

I've seen others mention Man of Steel #1.

But the whole "order X number of books, get a variant cover" incentive deal didn't exist until the 90s boom, I think.

First one I remember with multiple covers was X-Men #1. Was that in the 90's or late 80's?

1991.

Which is now almost as old as the original X-Men #1 when I started collecting comics. Ugh, the 60's seemed so long ago back then. Now I'm an old guy remembering "all the way back" to 1991.

I just got this version (not my photo).

Yeah. My kid got that copy in his Nerd Block yesterday. It said on the card that it was an exclusive Fan Expo/Nerd Block variant.

And to make some of you cringe, my kid has already taken it out of the plastic bag, read it, bent it, and enjoyed it.

I remember the Man Of Steel series being the first I ever remember of an alternative cover. I loved that series so I was a dummy and bought both though I had no idea what a "direct" version was back then.

The dumbest mistake I made with alternative covers was when they started the new series Legends Of The Dark Knight and did about 4 or 5 different colors of the ugly cover. I was a dumbass and bought several copies of each color. Then it seemed this started happening with every fucking issue of every other comic book being published at the time. I soon quit comic collecting completely right after that. I have never regretted the decision to quit.