Realm #6 is an average comic book, but I give it an extra review point for the cool variety of variations of the original cover art. The first variation at the top left is from the first printing. It features gold metallic ink that offers an interesting reflectivity even on the uncoated paper stock. The other three are from the second printing, which took place just a couple months after the first.

All of these covers were silkscreened, which leaves the ink slightly raised on the surface of the paper. The silkscreen method allowed for different colored inks to be used and blended together when the squeegee forced the inks through the screen. It also allowed for ink to be spattered onto the cover while protecting the unprinted areas (top right cover).



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
There are three printings of this comic book, all by Everyman Studios (but credited to Cubist Da Da Cartoon Movement on the first page), and all with 75-cent cover prices. The 1st printing (300 copies) features gold metallic ink on the front cover. The 2nd printing (600 copies) was produced just two months later and features individually multicolored silkscreened cover art, which means no two covers of the 2nd printing are exactly alike. Everyman Studios changed the cover artwork for the 3rd printing (850 copies), which came out just a few months after the 2nd printing.

Under typical comic-book publishing practices, having three small print quantities of the same comic book in such a short span of time (9 months) would have been costly and ineffecient, but Everyman had their own little offset machine for printing comics, so for them it was purely a matter of time and labor. The business partners probably didn't want to risk being left with unsold copies of the book, so they printed only as many as they reasonably believed would be sold.

Everyman Studios did not identify any reprinting of Realm #6 until the 3rd printing, which they stated was the "Second Printing" on the inside back cover. Perhaps they felt the first two printings were so close together they should both be considered the 1st printing, but because the different printings took place months apart, there's little doubt that they should have been identified as separate printings.

The 3rd printing featured all-new cover art by Darrel Anderson (who also did the previous cover art). It's amusing that he showed the previous cover art lying in the gutter, torn and tattered, in the new artwork for the 3rd printing.