Unfortunately, I must rely on memory for the following...
Back in 1997, After the Big Comic Book Explosion of 1993, the subsecuent, and logical Implosion, AND Marvel's Bankruptcy in 1996/1997, I read somewhere about percentage of comic book readers back in the 50s, compared to the 90s.
They mentioned the fact that back in the 50s, from a 50-student classroom, more than half of them read comic books. In the 90s, only ONE student from 50, read comic books. Of course, the key word is READ.
It's know for all of us, that each year, less people read- anything, from books, comics, magazines, newspapers...
This dumbing down of sorts has created, at least here in the comic book medium, a special kind of collectors. People who does't read, AT ALL, the comics they purchase because they collect COVERS! Be those, Eurovariants/Foreign, those made by an special artist, ROSS/MATTINA/ARTGERM/CAMPBELL, anyone that is the Flavor of The Moment, or... Homage covers! This means, that some artists draw covers similar to some of those that are relevant or important to the medium, and give them their special artistic touch, so they won't be accussed of plagiarism...
Who's the biggest right now? Well, it's a close call between Amazing Spiderman # 300 and Spider-Man # 1. Below, the covers of both issues. As an aside, Amazing Spider-Man # 300 its the first appearance of Venom, (movie coming in a couple of months) and Spider-Man # 1 is the first All- McFarlane issue, and maybe the most sold comic in the US, at least!
And here, just below two photographic mosaics, depicting both homage trends, or at least, most of the published ones!
![Torment set.jpg]
(
Some of them are so expensive as to be ridiculous, speaking of a modern times comic book price, or so scarce, since the printing of course, as to only exist less than 25 copies, for some of them...
Anyway, if you are a collector of covers, congratulations! This is your time! Enjoy!Me, I'll keep collecting some Golden and Silver Age stuff!
Thanks for reading my posts.
Cheers!