Note: These have been cleared off Demonoid, so I wanted to make sure I didn't lose them entirely, so I'll post them here.Here's our next gimmick:
(Click here for larger image)Eclipso: The Darkness Within Special #164 pages, squarebound
$2.50
July 1992
DC Comics
Cover Pencils: Bart Sears
Cover Inks: Mark Pennington
For a time, DC and Marvel would run annual crossovers in their annuals, meaning that the crossovers only took place in the annuals published for that given year (usually summertime). So I guess they'd be annual? crossovers, then...
One of these was the
Eclipso: The Darkness Within saga which had Eclipso either gathering or dispersing these 'black diamonds' which would turn heroes into Eclipso versions that I think Eclipso then has control over (Mon-El is the first one taken). And then he has them do something or other. I dunno, I could never get past the special and I just can't bring myself to read it again.
If you know what's going on, feel free to explain, I'm here for the cover.
So the aforementioned 'black diamonds' in the story spurred some marketing cog at DC to turn out the idea to affix a translucent purple plastic gem to the covers. If you look on the upper left of the 'gem' you can see some of the flashing where it came off its molding tab. The cover stock isn't much thicker than an average monthly, so some of them got really jacked when the glue didn't dry properly. Oh, and I chose to bag these too since the bottom of the back covers can slip under the top of the 'gem' just enough to shred it. Nice!
And in general, it's not a horrible idea, except for the fact that the gem is about ?-inch thick. So coupling that with it being a cheap 64-page squarebound comic, it didn't take too many on the shelf before the ones in back started bending forward the ones in front. I had to try and stagger them by putting some upside-down in hopes off counterbalancing what inevitably lead to spine damage. And once they've got spine damaged, the very speculators these were created for were no longer interested.
I dunno, maybe this one isn't as ridiculous as
Force Works (cuz the gem actually looks kinda cool) but I'm seeing this from a standpoint of trying to stock and sell them at the time. And to their credit, DC did put out a version that didn't have the gem on it, but we didn't order nearly as many of that one and didn't sell many either.
This comic was a big hassle, really.
