Comic Reviews by Walt

I don’t know how "regular" a "feature" this’ll be, but decided this was an appropriate sort of post to do. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I have a definitely dislike of most "variant covers." And thanks TO variants, I’ve largely felt that covers are near-meaningless now because any issue that SHOULD have an "iconic" cover has it FURTHER diluted from 2-3 covers every. single. issue. to umpteen extra covers such that there are more covers than there used to be for TWO YEARS OR MORE of any given single title. The "heat" is on the VARIANT, the CHASE, etc. Making the "regular" or "NON-variant" something "common" or "less than" or "basic" or "undesirable" or whatever.

But for Bought it For the Cover I want to highlight an issue that I bought for the cover–only, it’s the REGULAR cover.

Today, it’s The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. whatever…6? 8? 12?*) #54…ostensibly the penultimate chapter of Last Remains.

(*at this point I just figure EVERY Marvel title is at LEAST half-a-dozen volumes in, with all the reboots. Maybe sarcastic, maybe tongue-in-cheek, maybe just snarky or whatever.)

This was an issue that grabbed my attention seeing the cover. It may be fairly generic–"just" a closeup of Spidey’s face…but rather than white eyepieces, we see a reflection of his hands as he’s shooting webbing out at the city, preparing to swing out.

And there was just something "familiar" to me about the image, that turned out to be that it’s Mark Bagley art! I’m most familiar with Bagley thanks to his stints on Ultimate Spider-Man, but apparently also on Amazing back during the ’90s.

Anyway, the image grabbed my attention, maybe also reminding me of Spider-Man #50 with a holographic/foil/shiny cover in the ’90s.

(As you’ll notice by the image being present here, I pulled the image of the aforementioned Spider-Man #50 for comparison!)

While not quite as zoomed-in/close-up, should be pretty obvious on the similarities. Prior to googling the old cover, though, I was thinking the holographic eyepieces were simply reflective…I totally forgot about (Kraven?) being visible…but having something "reflected" in the eyepieces certainly lends itself to why I "automatically" or "subconsciously" drew the comparison seeing the issue on the rack.

And being such a fan of ’90s comics–especially ’90s Marvel and DC (as well as Malibu‘s Ultraverse, and Image and such)…it was definitely the nostalgia that helped prompt me into buying the issue even though I knew it was not an opening chapter of a story; it’s by a writer whose work I’ve really not much cared for, and is the 54th issue in a run I’d NOT bought ANY issues from prior.

But that’s actually all the more the IMPACT I want to call attention to, of this simple, basic, "A", "###11", non-variant, cover.

54 issues in, zero context to the story, no particular hype that I was aware of over this issue (plenty for the NEXT issue, though with the newly-coined "webhead" cover), latter chapter of a story, not a writer I care to follow. TOTALLY the ART of the COVER prompting me to pay the $3.99.

No advance hype for this cover reaching me, I wasn’t aware it was gonna be out, I wasn’t looking for it, and even though it caught my attention, I wasn’t even going to BUY it.

But I wound up doing so.

And thanks to this REGULAR cover, I wound up getting the entire Last Remains arc and two issues of epilogue/fallout after the official story itself.

Filed under: 2021 Non-Review Posts, 2021 posts, Bought it For the Cover, NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: Amazing Spider-Man, Bought it For the Cover, comic covers, covers, Last Remains, Spider-Man, variant covers, variants |