Alright, let’s talk about variant covers:

I generally dislike variant covers. They make a series look less homogenous, which is distracting when looking at the series on a shelf or in a stack. They often contain art that a) has nothing to do with the story inside or b) doesn’t even feature the characters that star in the series. When I regularly collected monthly series, I used to hate finding a variant accidentally added to my pile of comics. If I could, I would almost always swap the variant with the main cover.

But I’ve made exceptions. And this variant for The Wicked + The Divine 21 is one of them. Wic/Div is a story about the power of pop art. So this striking variant cover by David Aja fits the series to a tee. Matt Wilson’s credit being the Wilson sporting goods logo, the “tacked on” price tag, the Image logo being smashed into the series title – I love nearly everything about this insane collage.

Which is why I kept this variant, and have no plans to replace it with a main cover copy. Yes, I do go back and purge variants when I get a chance. I have several variant-covered issues of Grayson, New 52 Wonder Woman, and Tynion Batman that will hopefully get replaced with their main cover counterparts some day. But I’ll be keeping this edition of The Wicked + The Divine 21, because it makes me smile (though not quite as gleefully as David Aja’s Ananke).

(Want to check out more posts in the Cool Comic Covers series? If so, click here.)