Marvel Announces Story Thus Far Variants

When I was but a wee lad, comic book covers were intended to entice readers with some idea of what you could expect on the inside. They tended to be a bit (sometimes more than a bit) melodramatic, but at least you had an idea of what you were buying, and especially effective covers could lead to impulse purchases.

Covers have changed since then, entering a dark phase where they were just artwork with nothing much to do with interior content and then transforming again to their current state, which is somewhere in-between the two extremes. Leave it to Marvel to try something new again, revealing the Story Thus Far Variants it has planned for some of its titles in February and March.

The idea behind them is that the variants will sum up the first arc on each series in a single image, which is actually a cool notion. Here’s the Story Thus Far Variant cover for Invincible Iron Man #6 (by Julian Totino Todesco), which includes Madame Masque, Handsome Doctor Doom (patent pending), the beach party ninjas, MJ and more.

It’s not really a substitute for a good summary page, or reading all the previous issues, for that matter, but I do like it. As for the complete list of issues that will be sporting Story Thus Far Variants, well, we can give that to you too:

• All-New Inhumans #5
• All-New X-Men #4
• Amazing Spider-Man #9
• Carnage #6
• Deadpool #8
• Doctor Strange #6
• Extraordinary X-Men #8
• Guardians of the Galaxy #6
• Invincible Iron Man #6
• Spider-Man 2099 #8

Next: See Which January Marvel Comics Are Arriving Early

What we can’t do is tell you how you can get your hands on these bad boys, so we’re going to say what we always do: be nice to the employees at your LCS and maybe they’ll advise you on what you need to do to acquire one. Enjoy the variants, just not so much that you stop reading our comic book reviews to learn more about what’s going on in your favorite Marvel Comics!