Marvel Comics Continued Shady Practices Intended To Mislead Readers?! Since When Is A Second Print A Variant Cover? Amazing Spider-Man #797, Avengers No Surrender & More!

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Marvel Comics Continued Shady Practices Intended To Mislead Readers?! Since When Is A Second Print A Variant Cover? Examples imclude Amazing Spider-Man #797, Avengers No Surrender #675, #679 and More!

Take a gander below.

Second print for Avengers #675 with first appearance of Voyager.

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Second print for Avengers #679 with first full appearance of The Challenger.

Second print of Amazing Spider-Man #797 with Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker making out on the cover plus Norman Osborn’s “eureka” moment.

Second print of Amazing Spider-Man #796 with a Norman Osborn consumed by Carnage; the precursor to the Red Goblin.

What does these all have in common?

At the top, prominently, by the Marvel logo and issue number are the words “Variant Cover”. At the bottom, by the barcode, are the words “Second Print”.

Now, I much prefer the two Avengers second print covers to the main ones, despite being a HUGE fan of the regular cover artist Mark Brooks, but why the variant cover branding for second prints?

Also, the placement of the words leads me to believe that Marvel wants to at least confuse casual fans about what the cover is and isn’t. Now, I haven’t inspected DC Comics approach to second prints, but I will and contrast it with Marvel’s approach for you.

This is silly and misleading. Marvel change this practice now, please.

John is a long-time pop culture fan, comics historian, and blogger. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Comics Nexus. Prior to being EIC he has produced several column series including DEMYTHIFY, NEAR MINT MEMORIES and the ONE FAN'S TRIALS at the Nexus plus a stint at Bleeding Cool producing the COMICS REALISM column. As BabosScribe, John is active on his twitter account, his facebook page, his instagram feed and welcomes any and all feedback. Bring it on!