It's begging for the Omnibus treatment. A-holes@marvel.com

And I've never seen Adams' four issues of THE SPECTRE.

And Captain Marvel and the Monster Society of Evil was collected and reprinted; I just bought the oversized softback reprint by Classic Comics Library. I got it on Amazon. It is fun nostalgia, but it tends to draw a little tedious... Cap helps out American forces during the war and "Yay for America", and Billy goes all over hell, and gets caught, gagged, miraculously gets ungagged just in the nick... and SHAZAM!

It likely read better as a serial issue every three weeks instead of all at one reading. Especially for the patriotic notes. It was a very different time, and I don't think I can fully appreciate the sentiment of the time.

But for a (relatively) poor support tech, I was never going to see or own it in any other venue. It was only around thirty bucks... well worth it to me.

Back on topic... are we discussing affordable collections, and are we indicating color collections over B&W collections? Y'know that some comic art shows even BETTER without coloring. Some of those Spectre stories are pretty good black and white... and some have "mystical" art that just looks messy and confusing without color, so caveat emptor.

Since DC's SHOWCASE and Marvel's ESSENTIALS reprints seemed more like dumping just to get it out there cheap ("Here's 500 pages--read it, don't read it--we don't care.") and I would never buy those, I personally am not considering them here.  Likewise, on the other end of the scale, the $60 ARCHIVES or MASTERWORKS also just seem useless to me.  Buying ten hardcovers for $600 is just too much for me--or most people.  I bought most of the softcover MASTERWORKS for half price of $25--or about $120 for ten.  The hardcovers cost five times that!

B&W doesn't seem to bother me if the material was originally INTENDED for B&W.  I love Miller's SIN CITY editions, and I never had any problem with the old SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN or some other magazines.  But super-heroes especially, for the most part, really seem to need color and any reprint without it does not seem "real" to me.

But thanks for the info.  I might have to track down that SPECTRE edition just to finally read the Adams issues.  For the PHANTOM STRANGER, I've just been buying the original comics for about $2 a pop!  (Another reason not to buy the hardcovers--the reprinted issues work out to be about $4 each!)

E-man

Yang

House of Yang

Doomsday

***

A most profound comment!

I grew up (1970s) with black-and-white Marvel UK reprints. MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL and SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY featured black-and-white reprints of Marvel US tales. So I was "conditioned" to expect it. And for some characters it worked. The likes of Captain Mar-Vell, Punisher and Hulk had gritty stories that worked well in b/w.

Not so much with DC. Maybe it was because DC was more "fantasy-based" (in a sense) than Marvel, but there was a DC UK title called THE SUPER HEROES - and the likes of Superman and Flash just were not served well, in my view, by b/w. It worked for the gritty aspects of Mar-Vell or Punisher, but not the bright exploits of Superman or Green Lantern.

It was at a young age that the b/w and colour reprints showed me just how different in tone DC and Marvel were (I am oversimplifying a tad).

A lot of DC UK reprints were vibrant and colourful. In fact, I thought some were better than the DC US stories because the reprints were A4 in size and on glossy paper. Marvel UK reprints did go colour in the 80s.

But as far as SHOWCASE is concerned, yes it became a cost-effective way of buying the volumes - my wallet isn't bottomless - but it didn't always work for me. Some 50s Batman stories, featuring a lot of gangsters, did work in b/w, but the colourful exploits of Superman, Flash and Green Lantern didn't work in b/w.

If a new B&W series failed to follow one of these procedures (and sometimes they don't), it just wouldn't look right.  Same thing with these reprints of material originally intended for color.

It seems that the Essentials/Showcase books aren't acceptable for reprints because they lack color and seem cheap; and the Masterworks/Archives aren't acceptable because they're too pricey. So the desired product is not merely reprints of series, but a book that's an exact copy of the original book in a TPB, somewhat affordable package.

I'm really happy with the B&W work; in some cases, it is absolutely excellent to me. For examples, the Atom, Hawkman, Superfriends, and Batman and the Outsiders* are all swell; and I don't need the color to discern what's going on for the most part (as opposed to a lot of recent comic books.)

I've recently reread my Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Iron Man, and Marvel Team-Up books and they hold up pretty well B&W too.

But with so many of those, I read the original color books; so I'm seeing them sort of through a remove. That might be the difference.

*Okay, in BATO, Halo sorely lacks in B&W. You'll get that on occasion. Kryptonite falls into that same hole... :)

However, it does remind me of these other problematic series...

TARZAN--What about all those DC Kubert and Marvel Buscema issues?  JOHN CARTER seems to get reprinted, but I haven't seen any pre-Dark Horse TARZAN available.

MICRONAUTS--Somebody mentioned this earlier, but it would be a shame if those amazing Michael Golden issues were never seen again.  These tiny fellows deserve an oversize edition.

LOGAN'S RUN--I'm repeating myself, but the Kraft/Perez adaptation also deserves an oversize edition.

THE SHADOW--All the Kaluta issues!  (Though I liked the Robbins issues too.)

OUTLAND--And there's a Steranko adaptation of the OUTLAND movie that I would kill for!

Marvel: The Lost Generation

OMAC

Batman Beyond Animated style series