Ive got a bunch of variant comics. How do I know what to call them?
Once upon a time, variants were a rarity, and were easily handled by just designating comics as, for instance, “#1” for the regular edition, and “#1/GO” for the “Gold Logo” edition of issue #1. Today, with publishers like Avatar regularly publishing over a dozen variants for every single issue, we’ve shifted away from the more descriptive variant abbreviations (e.g. “1/PL” for “#1 Platinum Edition”, “1/SI” for “#1 Silver Edition”, “1/Nude” for “#1 Nude Edition”) in favor of the simpler “1/A”, “1/B”, “1/C” etc. as it was becoming increasingly silly trying to concoct meaningful abbreviations to designate “Skeletal black light nude limited edition with ruby red foil logo” and the like. If there’s a known “regular” edition of a given comic, we’ll refer to it by just the number (e.g. “1”) with variants listed as “1/A”, “1/B” etc.). If there is no real “regular” edition—only variants, we’ll tend to go straight to the “1/A”, “1/B” stuff. If the publisher actually listed or labeled which varia
