my comic collecting started as a kid. mostly spiderman, and it was around the 90's where people were easily drawn in by the many variations of "shiney" covers they made for comics those days. hologram, lenticular, chrome, ect. but it got to the point where anything and everything qualified as being special enough to warrant having a cover like that, thus ruining the special feeling you had when you saw them for the first time. well i recently got that feeling back when i started collecting just over a year ago now with the retailer incentives. also convention exclusives. normally just a new cover featuring a different artist or a sketch version of the original, ive been enjoying. i think theyve done well in making collectors buy more.

i think something else theyve been doing is trying to generate more intrest in the industry and obviously new readers. mostly by promoting the artists and writers themselves, and with their "events". 52, civil war, world war hulk, ect. its what got me interested again.

but at what point are these current methods going to go the way of the hologram cover? overdone to the point where people lose intrest once again? i can already see it happening with marvels next big thing, the "secret invasion". theres hardly been a break between civil war and wwh, and now they already have the next event ready to print. personaly i (meaning my wallet) was looking forward to the end of wwh so i could take a break. looks like that wont happen.

personaly, i like the incentive variants of the comics i been getting. however they are many. so one cant help but wonder how other people think. how much is to much? i can think of a few different series' that trying to get every different cover is beggining to feel more like work than a hobby. im aware its not nessesary, but thats just the kind of collector i am. right now im a little overwhemled with all the events and alternate covers for the comics i buy. but it hasnt made me lose intrest in the hobby.

you can only go to the well so many times.

I got into them the same time you did, around 2nd grade in 1992. I got out around 1995 when places like Wal-mart and grocery stores quit carrying them. At the time, I thought all that crome cover stuff was pure awesome melted down and pouring into a comic book shape.

I came back to them at the tail end of 2005 when IDW put out Transformers 0. I've picked up more titles since then, but have avoided core titles purely because I don't want to spend money on events. If they gave it a rest for a while, I might get into them. As it is, I'm just reading indys, back issues, and fringe titles like Ghost Rider and Nova.

I completely understand why Marvel has been putting out the events they way they have been. It seems like since Dissassembled / House of M, all the events have led one into the other, with Secret Invasion having been planed since the beginning (according to Bendis). So really, the last 5 years has been one giant event that took breaks.

In an interview last month, Bendis said he's not aware of any event planned after Secret Invasion. Hopefully he's honest, and right. Then all the books can enjoy their status quo for more than 2 arcs at a time.

FWIW, the only varient covers I ever buy are TF spotlight covers to characters/plotlines I particularly enjoyed, and to show support for the title at my LCS.

heres a new one. with the 08 marvel masterpiece set slated, ive heard the numbers are higher, thus needing more sketch cards. this is only speculation but ive heard some artists will be doing as many as 1000 cards for this set. the potential for lazy and effort lacking cards should be considerable. so they learned that their cards will sell again and they learned how to do it. this doesnt mean you have to over do it in the second run...