"Batgirl" Variant Cover Cancellation Sparks Further Debate Among Comic Pros and Fans

[nepenthes]

This point is brought up a lot. But we don't really know how often, if ever, the creative team needs to approve of a variant before it goes to press. If this is a nonstandard thing, then the excuse that they didn't approve of it doesn't hold much weight. Because I'm sure other creative teams would reject variant covers on their titles. The fact that variants come from a different department suggests that editorial does not have to sign off on variant designs. If all a creative team needs to do is say it doesn't match their tone then maybe we found a way to get rid of all variants.

This is exactly the whole issue. From what's reported to BC the Editorial teams have NEVER been involved in the briefing or approval of variants at all, which come instead from a Promotional team; and where usually the variants have fat zero to do with actual contents (which is completely fine), the difference here is that as online content it's aggressively clashing with everything the new team and associated marketing are working to achieve. Now considering that DC have adopted the Batgirl approach line-wide and are rolling out a number of New Fun Modern Female-Friendly books, I'm assuming that they're hard at work on an improved internal process as we speak to avoid such similar repeats in the future. There's nothing wrong with variants themselves, just the gap in consultation.

[JasonTodd428]

This is exactly the whole issue. From what's reported to BC the Editorial teams have NEVER been involved in the briefing or approval of variants at all, which come instead from a Promotional team; and where usually the variants have fat zero to do with actual contents (which is completely fine), the difference here is that as online content it's aggressively clashing with everything the new team and associated marketing are working to achieve. Now considering that DC have adopted the Batgirl approach line-wide and are rolling out a number of New Fun Modern Female-Friendly books, I'm assuming that they're hard at work on an improved internal process as we speak to avoid such similar repeats in the future. There's nothing wrong with variants themselves, just the gap in consultation.

If that is indeed the case then I think there needs to be a movement toward making both the editorial and the creative teams a part of the variant cover process instead of simply letting the Promotional team have sole control over the entire process as it appears they have right now. If the Promotional Team had gotten impute from both of those this cover could have been altered by the artist instead of what happened.

[Matt]

This discussion is now going in circles, with too many people attempting to make posts that do not contribute to a reasoned, intelligent discussion - or chiming in without reading any actual facts first.

This thread is now closed.