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Post by jason on Nov 29, 2019 12:19:11 GMT -5
What did you think of comics that reprinted other comics (ie, Marvel Tales, Classic X-Men, Tales of the Teen Titans, the DC Digest titles (im aware they had some "new" stories as well), etc). Cheap cash-in on popular titles or a good way to check out classic stories (or revisit ones from issues you may have lost)?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2019 13:03:35 GMT -5
I have no problems with this and it's a great way to reintroduce them back to the readers.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2019 13:09:52 GMT -5
What did you think of comics that reprinted other comics (ie, Marvel Tales, Classic X-Men, Tales of the Teen Titans, the DC Digest titles (im aware they had some "new" stories as well), etc). Cheap cash-in on popular titles or a good way to check out classic stories (or revisit ones from issues you may have lost)? a series offering re-prints (with potentially new short stories that fill in some things, as Classic X-men did) I think is a Great idea and would support it no questions asked.
I love what DC has been doing with the Giants - which is basically the above.
this new trend of reprinting complete older issues, ads and all, with same covers, but now $3.99/$4.99/$7.99 ?
Cash grab, plain and simple, and they should be ashamed of themselves, for screwing over those who don't have access to a comic shop, or used bookstore - that often have these same issues for way less than the reprint is offered for.
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Post by chadwilliam on Nov 29, 2019 13:23:56 GMT -5
Considering how obsessed I was with comics as a kid, not having access to reprints as a child would have felt like not having access to history books as an adult. If it weren't for Batman: From the 30's to the 70's and Superman: From the 30's to the 80's with the rich histories contained therein, I can't imagine that whatever was being published at the time would have been enough to sustain my interest in these characters and the very medium of comics. I don't mean that as a knock against whatever was current at that time, but simply as an acknowledgment that with reprints, the two-dimensional world of the present day suddenly opens up into something three-dimensional.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 29, 2019 13:27:42 GMT -5
Marvel Tales, Marvel's Greatest Comics, et. al. were in their heyday when I started buying comics. It was a great way to be able to get access to old stories in the days before comic shops and reprint collections.
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Post by tarkintino on Nov 29, 2019 14:45:43 GMT -5
Reprints were always about making money off of old inventory, but it was a smart business decision, as it--as already observed by other members--was a way to introduce old content to new readers. It was a form of consumer-friendly world-building that gave readers a sense of the importance of long-lived characters and their creators, so going forward with then-current monthlies, one had a bigger picture view of things, and with that, a greater chance that the reader would be more invested in the publisher's content.
Between the 80-Page Giants, 100-Page (DC) issues, Fantasy Masterpieces, Marvel Tales, Treasury Editions / Famous First Editions and the TPBs from Warner, Fireside, Golden, etc., you were provided with a character/publisher masterclass without worrying about not being able to afford back issues ranging from 3 to 7 digits in price.
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 29, 2019 16:03:59 GMT -5
I love a good reprint comic. The oldest ones I ever have had were those DC 80 Pg. Giants, some were titled annuals (the earliest of them?), some were regular issues of a title, and then there was even an 80 Pg. Giant series in the '60s outside the numbering of the regular titles. Next up they started doing extra sized comics with part reprints, 52 pagers and 100 pagers, and then came the giant tabloid 'treasuries' (and these sometimes were all new material, but many were a collection of reprints or an entire key golden age comics).
You probably all know this. Marvel would use old monster era reprints sometimes to fill-in part of a regular title, but they really got started systematically with a couple "72 Big Pages" one-offs, or reprints added to an annual of new material, then one of the once a years became a regularly scheduled and numbered title, Marvel Tales. Marvel Tales had a bunch of features in an issue, and with the third the covers showed miniatures of the covers from four of the original comics being reprinted. Fantasy Masterpieces started as a thin collection of the monster era short stories but with the third issue switched to thick format and golden and atomic age superhero reprints, which was pretty exciting even in the early '80s buying them as back issues! Marvel Super-Heroes, which had been a one-shot of reprints in 1966 (and that had a golden age Torch vs. Sub-Mariner in it), is what Fantasy Masterpieces became with #12... but with one new cover feature (Captain Marvel, Medusa, Phantom Eagle, Black Knight, Ka_Zar, Dr. Doom, Guardians Of The Galaxy and one Spider-Man) plus the gold/atomic reprints, then that went all '60s reprints with #21. Marvel Collector's Item Classics was the other regular thick '60s reprint book and like Marvel Tales had miniature cover repros for it's cover early on. Then like DC Marvel tried extra sized regular issues of titles, X-Men was all reprints at this time, but Marvel didn't stick with it and went back to thinner lower prices, even the formerly thick from the start Silver Surfer went thin. Then in the middle '70s they went into oversized treasuries like DC and fewer in number.
I did buy most of the various Marvel reprints in the late '70s-early '80s, and many of DC's digests. They didn't have letters pages and even with that page they apparently still had to cut panels to fit in an entire issues (with the X-Men they did one issue over two reprint issues). I compared some of the original '60s Avengers once I had them to the Marvel Super-Action reprints and decided to just not do that again. Usually the cuts were as intelligently done as you could hope for, I guess maybe that was Danny Fingeroth's job? What I didn't like was the Classic X-Men which partially reprinted some older stuff with totally unmatched John Bolton drawn between the pages additions. I think that was just a bad idea. Where there was a new separate back-up story it was a little better, but sometimes the art styles were still chalk and cheese, did not go together in the least. The new covers were almost worth the price though.
Recently I got one of the one-off Marvel Mystery Comics golden age reprints... the one with the Human Torch vs. The Parrot was very well done, but the one with shiney pages and Human Torch vs. Sub-Mariner was absolutely awful... like they were enlarge from microfilm and then the color dropped out and recolored. Worst looking reprint I have even seen... and I remember the Fantasy masterpieces appearances of these pages from the '60s being pretty sharp... I wonder what happened?
In the mid '80s DC put out a bunch of Silver Age classics of individual issues, the last things to be printed in Sparta Illinois? I have all but two of them, the two I simply don't want. The original covers are tipped at an angle on the front with a frame common to them all and are attractive as a group.
Now we have the DC repros and what-it there had been an 80 Pg. annual... they have heavier covers and the insides are either the original annual (Batman, Superman, The Flash are ones I have) though maybe with replacements for the period ads for other comics, or what a period annual or giant might have contained (I have the Green Lantern, Teen Titans and Plastic Man ones, Plas may even be DC Special #15 in part). There was also a Superboy 147 (with the Legion) in this format, and a Weird Secret Origins which I have. The Weird Secret Oigins seems like it could've been an actual issue published circa 1969-71, some of the golden age repros are not good though, if not quite as bad as the Marvel Mystery i mentioned.
Now we have these facsimile editions with period ads and letters pages. I've sampled four of them and think they have been excellent. I can't pay what is being asked though for many of the similar J C Penny's repros, or the 'not for resale' China printed ones that came with action-figures. I have none of the former, and three of the latter, and the repro on them is not so great, and the original covers are in a black border so don't look like the real thing at all.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 29, 2019 16:08:44 GMT -5
I loved the reprint books back in the day; as others have noted, they may have been a low-overhead way for the publishers to pad the bottom line, but that didn't matter to me at the time. I just appreciated the opportunity to read up on so much comics lore from the past that would have otherwise been virtually impossible (and quite expensive) to obtain.
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Post by rberman on Nov 29, 2019 16:23:54 GMT -5
Back when comic books were mainly a spinner rack phenomenon, reprints were a crucial part of the experience for new fans. They were the precursors of today's collected trade editions, omnibus editions, etc.
I would much rather read a good story in its original form than read a new comic book which is essentially retreading a previously published story.
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Post by profh0011 on Nov 29, 2019 17:06:31 GMT -5
Reprints way back were fun when you'd get 3 or 4 stories in one issue. When it got to be 1 story per book... and then, they started cutting pages for more ad space (like syndicated TV reruns)... I got fed up. Especially when I realized that (mostly with Marvel), the line quality in their reprints was appallingly bad compared to the originals. (No wonder the original back issues cost so much.) When DC Archives and Marvel Masterworks started in the late 80s... my feeling was not so much, "What a great idea!", as... "What the HELL took them so long?" A couple years ago, I had a home care client who was a big fan of the 1966 BATMAN tv series. On Sunday nights, we used to have fun with me reading old comics (and sometimes doing voices-- heh). I was slowly plowing thru a chronological reading of the earliest BATMAN comics from the beginning. Unfortunately, his insurance company did something monstrously stupid, and replaced ALL his aides... just before I got to the introduction of Alfred.
Why would ANYONE want to see ads in reprints? I spent decades recording TV shows off the air and REMOVING the commercials as I did so!!
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 29, 2019 17:21:46 GMT -5
Well, I like the ads that are comic book related, the rest I could stand not having there, but maybe some think the Count Dante thing or the Polaris Nuclear Sub that holds two kids are fun to see, not everyone will have seen them before I suppose. I definitely like to have the house ads, the bullpen type page, and the letters pages. The JC Penny's editions have new ads for Stridex on the backs, I assume inside maybe Penny's ads or more acne products... the Chinese repros that came with figures have ads for the figures. When Gladstone started I loved their Disney comics made up of reprints with new cover art. Those are just gorgeous to me! I fianlly got to read 'Finds Pirate Gold' with a nice text piece about it's creation. Later I bought a couple of the E.C. reprint comics they did but they weren't up to the '70s Russ Cochran standard that looked more like the '50s originals (wide).
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Post by berkley on Nov 29, 2019 18:17:36 GMT -5
When I was young, they were a great way to read some of the older comics that came out before my time or that I had missed for some other reason. And now, they're a good, relatively cheap alternative to buying back-issues of the originals.
Downsides: re-colouring, or no colour at all, dropping pages, inappropriate paper, ...
So I prefer the old Marvel reprint titles of the later 60s, because they used the same kind of paper and colouring, and didn't cut any pages from the original story. All the same, I'm very glad I had the opportunity to read things like the Ditko Doctor Strange, reprinted in Strange Tales in the 70s, even though they did cut pages.
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Post by tarkintino on Nov 29, 2019 18:47:35 GMT -5
Why would ANYONE want to see ads in reprints? I spent decades recording TV shows off the air and REMOVING the commercials as I did so!! Because ads are a marker of the era that produced the comic, and a general sense of cultural interests overall--what manufacturers believed was appealing to the comic reader. For example, removing Aurora Plastics' ads from DC and Marvel from say, 1964-1969 wipes away just how significant plastic model kit building was in the 60s, and the popularity of tie-in merchandise from the publishers (as well as studios behind notable TV series and movies). That's a part of history that the reprint alone will never cover or represent, so in order to get a full picture of the era, ads should be a welcome bit of retained history.
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Post by Duragizer on Nov 29, 2019 19:00:28 GMT -5
They're a good thing, for all the reasons already delineated.
Have to admit, I didn't buy all that many as a kid, though, 'cause I hated the Ben-Day dots.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,533
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Post by Confessor on Nov 30, 2019 9:42:07 GMT -5
I love Marvel Tales and have a pretty big collection of them in my long boxes. To answer your question, yeah, for Marvel Comics they were definitely a cheap cash-in, but for a young reader like myself -- who was too young to have been alive during the Silver Age -- they were a great way to check out classic stories. Actually, I have to be honest, but when I first encountered Marvel Tales in the early '80s, I didn't even realise they were reprints! I was buying Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man at the time too, and just assumed that Marvel Tales was yet another modern Spidey title. It was reprinting the classic Stan Lee/Steve Ditko run at the time, so it's little wonder that I thought that Marvel Tales was usually the best Spider-Man comic on the stands. Later on, of course, I realised that these were old 1960s stories. Marvel Tales was how I first encountered both the Lee/Ditko and Lee/Romita runs on Spider-Man. For that reason alone, the series will always have a special place in my heart.
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