DC bringing back metallic foil covers for Dark Days: The Forge

Metallic foil covers were all the rage during the 90s speculator boom and now DC is bringing them back for Dark Days: The Forge.

Ah the 1990s. Depending on your point of view, it was either a glorious time to collect comics or it gave birth to some of the worst gimmicks the hobby ever saw. While it saw some books debut that have become classics, most readers remember the 90s as a time when covers became more important that what was inside.

Foil covers. Embossed covers. Draw it yourself covers. Variant covers. Glow in the dark covers. You name it and there was likely a company that tried it on one of their comic book series.

Speculators thought that any comic with a special cover would be worth more and so they bought them in droves, taking home piles of comics that someday they thought would put their kids through college. So the comic companies printed more and more of them until finally the Great Implosion happened that almost killed the comic book industry.

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Since then, companies have been very selective about bringing back any of these gimmick covers, usually saving them for big books that they want to get some extra media press. The nostalgia factor unusually kicks in and most fans forget just how much they used to hate and complain about gimmick covers.

It looks like that is exactly what DC is counting on for the upcoming Dark Days: The Forge.

The Batman-focused one-shot that, along with Dark Days: The Casting, will act as a prelude to this summer’s big Dark Knights: Metal super-mega crossover event. And to celebrate the event, DC is bringing back the metallic foil cover for Dark Days: The Forge.

As revealed by artist Jim Lee on his Instagram, Dark Days: The Forge will include the metallic foil cover treatment that became immensely popular in the 90s.

Given the fact that the event is titled Metal, it kind of makes sense. Which is more than you can say about most of the gimmick covers readers saw in the 1990s.

That said, I really hope this isn’t the return of gimmick covers instead of variant covers. DC seems to have finally realized that publishing multiple covers for titles isn’t helping anyone, least of all retailers. If they replace that thinking with the return of gimmick covers, we’ll be right back to square one.

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Dark Days: The Forge arrives in comic shops and digitally on June 14 with Dark Days: The Casting following on July 12.