The Variants
US television program

The Variants is an American comedy web series about four employees who work in comic retail. This scripted comedy has completed 28 episodes comprising three seasons. The Variants aired its first episode August 4, 2009 and wrapped season one in May 2010. Its second season began May 3 of 2011 and completed in February 2012. The Variants completed a successful Kickstarter campaign on May 29, 2012 to fund a season three. A promo teaser was released on August 8, 2012 to Comics Alliance in advance of the new season. Season three launched weekly on September 3, 2012. The show is filmed on location at Zeus Comics in Dallas Texas.
While the series is available free on YouTube, Season One of The Variants was compiled on DVD in June 2011.
Plot
Richard and his employees handle the ins and outs of a struggling comic shop and its particular customers.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7772068. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Variants” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.