No White (Covers) After Labor Day

So I'm a little slow sometimes.

For years they've been releasing comics with "variant white covers", and I've been asking myself, who would want such a thing? I think variant covers are an evil marketing gimmick on any given Wednesday, but agreeing to buy a full-price (or over full-price if someone is desperate enough to get all the variants) comic that's MISSING A COVER?! I didn't get it.

Then someone told me they'd gotten an artist to sketch a cover at a convention and I went ohhhhhhhhhh. Your white covers are supposed to end up looking like this (this sketch by José Rodriguez):

Since I've never gone to a convention, nor do I have the artistic chops to draw my own covers, that just never occurred to me. I feel like a dumbass.

If they'd been available when I was a kid and fancied myself a good tracer and a fair cartoonist, I might have been all over this personalized comics stuff. Alas, now I'm old and cynical and talentless... Ah well. (Defeatist too, it seems.)

But it's a good day to be those things. Labor Day. I'm going to sit on the couch and do no labor whatsoever.

(What do you mean I've still got a podcast to edit?!)