A Variant Cover is a term used to describe issues of comic book series that are distributed with one or more alternate cover arts to the standard wide-release cover art. These different covers are special in that they are, usually, only ever distributed specifically through certain comic book retailers or through other specific means, being completely unavailable to those who receive issues via mail-order subscription. For the casual comic book reader, this provides the novelty of being able to choose the cover that appeals to them, whereas hardcore collectors tend to buy multiple copies of the issue specifically for the variant covers.