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Post by spoon on Dec 1, 2019 21:33:33 GMT -5
Many of the first comics I ever got as a kid, in the 1970s, were reprint titles. I don't know why anyone would object to their existence. It was a time when comic book stores were scarce, and reprint collections (except for the handful of "origin" books) were nonexistent. I didn't find out till years later that there could be pages missing, but in any case I never noticed. Classic X-Men was great; there still weren't many reprint collections and the original issues were pricey, if you could find them. I liked the backup stories drawn by Bolton which told a related side story or fleshed out the events in the main story. I did not like the retroactive inserts into the older stories, but that's a minor complaint. And I like the current reprints too, the True Believers and the facsimiles, ads and all. Cash grab maybe, but it benefits us. Yeah, the inserts were jarring because the art didn't match and even the scripting was different. Plus, I think it's better to let the original story stand on its own. If they wanted to add scenes, that could be done as a short backup.
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Post by brutalis on Dec 2, 2019 8:02:37 GMT -5
Reprints are wonderful gateways into the past and finding "new" old comics to read. If it weren't for reprints I wouldn't have so many spectacular Trade collections of treasures from before my time and oversea's goodness. Corto, Valerian, Rosa, Barks, Dredd, Lone Wolf and Son, Golgo 13 and other such European delights would never have found their way into my heart without reprinting. Much of my early Marvel readings were with Marvel reprints in Marvel Tales, Marvel Triple/Super Actiion, Marvel's Greatest Comics, Marvel Super-Heroes, Marvel Spectacular, all of the Marvel Western comics, Where Monsters Dwell, Monsters on the Prowl, Creatures on the Loose along with the Marvel Pocket book reprints.
In a time when there were no LCS around, collected TPB's/Omni's were only a dream and your only exposure was new comics on the spinner rack and trading with neighbor or friends, then having reprints was the ONLY way to see comics from before my current reading/collecting.
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Post by badwolf on Dec 2, 2019 11:00:24 GMT -5
Many of the first comics I ever got as a kid, in the 1970s, were reprint titles. I don't know why anyone would object to their existence. It was a time when comic book stores were scarce, and reprint collections (except for the handful of "origin" books) were nonexistent. I didn't find out till years later that there could be pages missing, but in any case I never noticed. Classic X-Men was great; there still weren't many reprint collections and the original issues were pricey, if you could find them. I liked the backup stories drawn by Bolton which told a related side story or fleshed out the events in the main story. I did not like the retroactive inserts into the older stories, but that's a minor complaint. And I like the current reprints too, the True Believers and the facsimiles, ads and all. Cash grab maybe, but it benefits us. Yeah, the inserts were jarring because the art didn't match and even the scripting was different. Plus, I think it's better to let the original story stand on its own. If they wanted to add scenes, that could be done as a short backup. That and I don't like the idea of retroactively altering those scenes, especially since I wasn't a fan of the things in the current continuity that they were referencing (X-Factor/the return of Jean, Apocalypse, etc.)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2019 13:16:27 GMT -5
Of course the question is on those reprint books-how many new readers buying them off the racks were aware of the edits/omissions. It was like seeing a movie for the first time that was edited for television, which was also pretty standard at the time. The version you experienced was the one you knew. Someone who had previously read/seen the story might recognize the omissions, but for the vast bulk of the audience, that was simply the version they encountered and enjoyed.
-M
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Post by brutalis on Dec 2, 2019 13:23:37 GMT -5
Of course the question is on those reprint books-how many new readers buying them off the racks were aware of the edits/omissions. It was like seeing a movie for the first time that was edited for television, which was also pretty standard at the time. The version you experienced was the one you knew. Someone who had previously read/seen the story might recognize the omissions, but for the vast bulk of the audience, that was simply the version they encountered and enjoyed. -M Correct sir! Never noticed any deleted/omission's until someone brings them up or later on when I finally managed to afford buying back issues through the LCS and eventually comparing page by page.
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 2, 2019 14:52:56 GMT -5
My favorite paper for comics generally would be 'mando'. It's like the quality newsprint '40s and Dell comics had (things really got cheap circa 1950-51, much lower grade paperstocks for many companies). I found a lot of the baxter paper comics too bright or garish, especially with reprints. I guess this is why many started being recolored as the old color wasn't meant for such a bright repro. I like what Marvel did in their 1999-2000 monster-sized issues. They did use the original coloring from the '60 and '70s reprints but somehow it doesn't look at all wrong but like a really nice copy of the original would! They also did that one Marvel Mystery one-shot with the Torch vs. The Parrot as well around the same time, but then a few years on have forgotten it as the one with Torch vs. Sub-Mariner is the worst thing I have seen.
Marvel Tales #100 had a new back-up story of Hawkeye and the Western heroes.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,531
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Post by Confessor on Dec 2, 2019 15:10:10 GMT -5
Of course the question is on those reprint books-how many new readers buying them off the racks were aware of the edits/omissions. It was like seeing a movie for the first time that was edited for television, which was also pretty standard at the time. The version you experienced was the one you knew. Someone who had previously read/seen the story might recognize the omissions, but for the vast bulk of the audience, that was simply the version they encountered and enjoyed. -M Correct sir! Never noticed any deleted/omission's until someone brings them up or later on when I finally managed to afford buying back issues through the LCS and eventually comparing page by page. Ditto. I was never aware of the edits to Amazing Spider-Man when I was picking up a load of reprints in Marvel Tales for cheap online some years back. I've also read that, most of the time, the ommissions in those '70s reprint comics were very skillfully handled. In order to get the page count down to fit the 17 page format, the editors (or whoever was doing it) utalized panel cropping, relocation of speech balloons, reduced panel size and other "tricks" to keep as much of the original issue as possible, rather than just chopping out whole pages of a comic. Which I guess is why I never noticed the ommissions when I read old '70s issues of Marvel Tales, until someone here mentioned it a couple of years back.
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 2, 2019 15:34:00 GMT -5
Of course the question is on those reprint books-how many new readers buying them off the racks were aware of the edits/omissions. It was like seeing a movie for the first time that was edited for television, which was also pretty standard at the time. The version you experienced was the one you knew. Someone who had previously read/seen the story might recognize the omissions, but for the vast bulk of the audience, that was simply the version they encountered and enjoyed. -M While this is true, it does not help future generations if they ever go back and buy original issues, only to discover their perceptions of a story or in some cases the art collectively tells a different story, especially in titles with long plot runs (e.g. The Amazing Spider-Man). In fact, this was a problem with titles such as Marvel Super Action (1977-81) which reprinted stories from Captain America and The Avengers, but I recall some issues removed panels and altered dialogue (notably issues #16-#17, reprinting The Avengers Annual #2 from 1968). Once you buy the original, or as time moved forward, you moved into the Marvel Masterworks period, you could not help but think you missed out on the creators' original intent to some degree.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2019 17:28:20 GMT -5
Of course the question is on those reprint books-how many new readers buying them off the racks were aware of the edits/omissions. It was like seeing a movie for the first time that was edited for television, which was also pretty standard at the time. The version you experienced was the one you knew. Someone who had previously read/seen the story might recognize the omissions, but for the vast bulk of the audience, that was simply the version they encountered and enjoyed. -M While this is true, it does not help future generations if they ever go back and buy original issues, only to discover their perceptions of a story or in some cases the art collectively tells a different story, especially in titles with long plot runs (e.g. The Amazing Spider-Man). In fact, this was a problem with titles such as Marvel Super Action (1977-81) which reprinted stories from Captain America and The Avengers, but I recall some issues removed panels and altered dialogue (notably issues #16-#17, reprinting The Avengers Annual #2 from 1968). Once you buy the original, or as time moved forward, you moved into the Marvel Masterworks period, you could not help but think you missed out on the creators' original intent to some degree. I never once thought I missed out on seeing an edited for television movie when I saw it, because it was the only version of it available at the time. Same with reprint comics. Hindsight is one thing, but being spoiled how things were years in the future does not affect the value of having something available in any format in the past where it was essentially the only way to see those stories at all (unless you were somehow tapped into the tiny back issue market which was not the case for about 90% of the customer base). If I am buying comics to read, I am concerned with what is available for me to read now, not what will hypothetically available to me 20-30 years in the future. If you don't buy something because hypothetically a better version would be available in 20-30 years, they you wouldn't buy anything not just comics. You buy and use what is available at the time, and companies are concerned with making a profit now, not will this be obsolete because a better version will be available in a couple of decades, and due to the production costs, thin margins due to returnability and meager cover prices at the time, the choice was print abridged versions or no versions, and which is going to make them more many a the time? Artistic integrity or some false notion of purity of the story/history of the original are irrelevant to the business of comics. Could the format have been better? Hypothetically sure, in reality due to the circumstances in the market at the time, no, so thinking about what reprint editions may have been available moving forward has no bearing on the decisions they made to do things the way they did, nor should it have. -M
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Post by berkley on Dec 2, 2019 17:57:54 GMT -5
I was old enough in the 70s to be aware that there were cuts made to the Marvel reprints in order to fit the lower page count but still was grateful to be able to read things like the Ditko Strange. And even though I didn't know what had been cut, I still would have preferred to read the entire story. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 2, 2019 19:18:36 GMT -5
This past Friday I re-watched STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, on a store-bought videotape ("full-screen" / alias "Pan-and-scan"). Funny thing-- there's about 15 minutes worth of film that was CUT by Paramount from the theatrical release, in order to be able to have theatres run an extra show a day of this over-priced turkey. They were seperate to make their money back as fast as they could. Watching it 40 years later, I can STILL remember which scenes were missing the first time around.
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Post by profh0011 on Dec 2, 2019 19:21:18 GMT -5
I noticed some years back while compiling my own index of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES that a bad habit they got into was re-running the HULK stories intact.. but CUTTING pages from the SUB-MARINER episodes. I swear to God-- there was one issue where they somehow cut 4 whole pages from the SUB-MARINER episode, and it was originally a 12-page episode. You wonder, how did it even make any sense that way?
For this reason, I really need to get a number of issues of TALES TO ASTONISH in the original printing... or, as intact "Masterworks" books. One of these years.......
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Post by berkley on Dec 2, 2019 20:51:48 GMT -5
A related question: I'm a great one for deleted scenes and so on but in some cases, there is a question as to what if anything should be considered the definitive version of a work. Usually this happens in film - I have no idea which of several 'director's cuts' of Blade Runner I'd want to choose next time I watch that film, so it'll probably be whatever is showing at the cinema at the time.
But it happens with books too: how many endings has Stephen King published for The Stand at this point? I've still read only the original but will probably try the 'complete edition' that came out in I believe the early 90s, if I ever read it again, though I think I heard about at least one further version published since then.
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Post by tartanphantom on Dec 2, 2019 21:02:49 GMT -5
My favorite paper for comics generally would be 'mando'. It's like the quality newsprint '40s and Dell comics had (things really got cheap circa 1950-51, much lower grade paperstocks for many companies). I found a lot of the baxter paper comics too bright or garish, especially with reprints. I guess this is why many started being recolored as the old color wasn't meant for such a bright repro. I like what Marvel did in their 1999-2000 monster-sized issues. They did use the original coloring from the '60 and '70s reprints but somehow it doesn't look at all wrong but like a really nice copy of the original would! They also did that one Marvel Mystery one-shot with the Torch vs. The Parrot as well around the same time, but then a few years on have forgotten it as the one with Torch vs. Sub-Mariner is the worst thing I have seen. Marvel Tales #100 had a new back-up story of Hawkeye and the Western heroes.
I agree about the mando paper. Baxter paper is indeed a bit too bright for reprints.
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 2, 2019 21:43:18 GMT -5
A related question: I'm a great one for deleted scenes and so on but in some cases, there is a question as to what if anything should be considered the definitive version of a work. Usually this happens in film - I have no idea which of several 'director's cuts' I's want to choose next time I watch that film, so it'll probably be whatever is showing at the cinema at the time. But it happens with books too: how many endings has Stephen King published for The Stand at this point? I've still read only the original but will probably try the 'complete edition' that came out in I believe the early 90s, if I ever read it again, though I think I heard about at least one further version published since then. I look at the '70s-'80s Marvel reprints as abridged versions, these are a Reader's Digest version of something that exists in full as part of 'history'. I think with movies like Blade Runner or Apocalypse Now I will take in the longest fullest Director-approved version as official, and any outtakes as curiosities. With books I suppose I see the newest author-approved edition would be the most correct which is a flip on the comics in a way, except for ret-cons if anyone still believes in an overall continuity that can make sense anymore. People who collect first editions (or even proof copies) of books are usually getting the most flawed editions. Then there sometimes two editions of one work, such as R. A. Heinlein's Puppet Masters; the thin young adult novel from the '60s, and the later unexpurgated more sexually explicit version with editorial interference removed. Also a lot of things published in Galaxy magazine were heavily re-worked by it's editor Horace Gold, so you might have a Phil Dick short story in a collected volume be quite different from the first publication in the digest magazine. Always side with the creator I suppose. Actually in music there are some single edits I prefer to the artist's intended longer version on the album. I like the Yes single/radio edit of Roundabout I heard more than the album version I heard a little later. A different example of two versions of a recording is Simon & Garfunkel's Sound Of Silence which producer Tom Wilson fooled with adding electric instrument overdubs when Simon was over in England, without his knowledge, and saw it was released (and become the hit over the all-acoustic original from the released album).
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