10 Comic Book Crazes You Totally Forgot Were A Thing

10. Gimmick Covers

If you collected comic books throughout the 1990s, odds are, you haven't forgotten about gimmick covers, but for everyone else, they were ubiquitous throughout the decade. Not only were they slapped onto just about every book a publisher put together during that period, but they also helped lead to the collapse of the industry.

Marvel and DC were notorious for gimmick covers back in the 1990s, and it was pretty ridiculous. The publishers printed gold, silver, and platinum foil-embossed covers, hologram or reflective foil covers, die-cut, glow-in-the-dark covers, and more.

This practice flooded the marketplace and helped tank the industry for years due to driving the speculative market for would-be collectors looking to buy something rare only to find out there were millions made, making them anything but rare or collectible.

Technically, the craze hasn't entirely gone away, but it has changed over time. Instead of buying a foil-embossed, hologram, platinum, or whatever else kind of cover a publisher makes for a book, fans eat up variant covers, and they are far better than the old gimmicky stuff.

Variant covers released nowadays feature entirely different artwork and depending on the book, there could be more than a dozen options, each one printed in a limited quantity. This doesn't hurt collecting like the old gimmicks did, and in many ways, it reinforces it, as some variant covers are scarce and highly sought after by collectors.