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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 15775
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 10:29am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Re: "Phoenix: the Untold Story," Greg, compare the original dialogue and thought balloons of the characters as they prepare for battle with those in the original issue. That doesn't read like restored dialogue. It sounds like Claremont taking another swing at the material, in much the same way he did with so much of "Classic X-Men." How would changing the final few pages in the original issue necessitate going back and rewriting Peter's thoughts from whatever is shown in "Untold Story" to reminiscences about his brother? Would there have been time back then for such things?
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As Dave notes, Angel was swapped out for Gladiator in one panel. If you look at the original issue, the Angel art looks like it was a quick-and-dirty modification. Since the original art was apparently modified to replace Gladiator with Angel, it seems that THE UNTOLD STORY version again had to be modified to put Gladiator back in.

As for the dialogue, it seems very clear to me that THE UNTOLD STORY features the original scripting. In each scene featuring the X-Men preparing for the battle, they all think about themselves and the possibility that they may not survive. In the final version of # 137, they are instead thinking about whether or not they actually should be fighting to save Jean. This seems like a logical change to make, in terms of stepping up the drama, given the revised ending where Jean commits suicide. Having each X-Man question if Jean deserves to live and then choosing to fight for her heightens the tragedy when she later makes the choice to end her own life for the sake of the universe. 

The UNTOLD STORY dialogue in those scenes feels like a step backwards. It’s less impactful, less on-point. Like watching the rough cut of a movie, compared to the refined final product. An interesting look at a reconstruction of the story’s original intent.

I could be wrong, of course, but that’s the impression I get.
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Eric Sofer
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Joined: 31 January 2014
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Posted: 06 March 2018 at 10:35am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

ITEM: Brian H., I have the original DC Comics Presents issues, and the God text is light red letters on a yellow background. It's legible in the original comic. But in one color reprint I have (and I don't remember which TPB), the text cannot be read. In a third reprint - DC Comics Showcase Presents DC Comics Present (yeah, try saying THAT three times fast! :), the text is clearly visible. An editor would probably help to proofread the story... but I don't know if there's anyone intelligent enough to go over reprints and catch misspellings or such.

ITEM: Let's tread lightly with DCCP #s 26 - 29. All written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Jim Starlin, these were, in a very realistic sense, horrible stories about how Superman is so overconfident that he thinks he can beat anything by himself... which, it turns out, he can't. The Spectre team-up, in particular, is pretty heavy handed.

ITEM: Brian H., regarding "Phoenix: The Untold Story", I agree with you 100% about the dialogue being replaced by Claremont. And it did not improve the story. It feels like the Cyclops/Storm scene in the Savage Land... it got all twisted up.

ITEM: A few of the Marvel Essentials (especially Avengers and Fantastic Four) were far from consistent in the tone, resolution, etc. of the originals. Hell, some of the original product was double printed, as if there were a millimeter or two difference  I know these were cheap collections... but why not make them as quality as possible? Again, an editor reading the final copy to print could have fixed this.

ITEM: The biggest revisions to reprints that I can recall are the DC reprints - especially those titles in Mort Weisinger's stable. I can remember easily a dozen cases where "x-ray vision" was whited out, to be replaced with "heat vision." There were a lot of other replacements, depending on how much the mythos had changed since the original story was printed. And the lettering was so very obviously redone, it looked as if someone hadn't even tried (E. Nelson Bridewell?)

Further, I have several reprints of Superboy #147 - "The Legion of Super-Heroes." I have seen this with the last page removed, with the coloring of the Legionnaires' costumes changed, and even with the names removed from the front of their costumes.


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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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Posted: 06 March 2018 at 10:36am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Why not? If there's time to draw whole new pages, there's time to rewicker some word balloons. (And swap out Gladiator for Angel in one panel.) And it's easy to see how converting an issue from "the wrap up of the Phoenix plotline (for now)" to "The Death of Jean Grey" would lead to them revisiting the "night before" scenes.
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If I read this right, you seem to indicate that the last few pages in UNTOLD STORY were newly-drawn for that issue, when the’re actually the original art that was discarded in favor of what we got in #137. The penciled and lettered pages only needed to be inked and colored before they were discarded, originally. 

The changes to #137 for UNTOLD STORY seem to boil down to putting the original last few pages back in, revising/removing/replacing certain word balloons and captions to reflect the original scripted version, and replacing Angel with Gladiator in that one panel.


Edited by Greg Kirkman on 06 March 2018 at 10:36am
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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Posted: 06 March 2018 at 11:36am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

 Greg Kirkman wrote:
If I read this right, you seem to indicate that the last few pages in UNTOLD STORY were newly-drawn for that issue, when the’re actually the original art that was discarded in favor of what we got in #137. The penciled and lettered pages only needed to be inked and colored before they were discarded, originally.


You didn't read that right. :-)

I wasn't talking about the UNTOLD pages. I was arguing that, if JB and Terry Austin had time to draw the new "Phoenix dies" ending, there was time for Claremont to revisit the dialogue/thoughts earlier in the story and that the new ending gave Claremont an obvious motivation to do so (for reasons you've summarized nicely above).
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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
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Posted: 06 March 2018 at 11:39am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Ah!
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Jason Czeskleba
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Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4548
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

 Dave Phelps wrote:
The one change that did bother me was him retroactively establishing that Jean reciprocated Wolverine's feelings for her. As near as I can tell, before then it was all one-sided. He loved her, but she loved Scott and that was the end of it. Now, she's leaving the team because Wolverine makes her all tingly inside. Bleh.

Yeah, that is an exceptionally egregious retcon.  In the original stories, there is absolutely no indication that Jean feels any emotion towards Wolverine except mild annoyance.  To suggest that she's attracted to him at that point is silly, and to suggest it's an attraction so powerful she has to remove herself from his proximity to resist it is downright ridiculous.  At that point she's had no significant interactions with him, so what is the attraction based upon?  Pheromones?  That elusive "bad boy" charm that no woman can resist?  That's a surprisingly sexist concept from a writer who's supposed to be known for his strong female characters.

On the flipside, we probably would all agree that Roger Stern's rewrite of the reprinted origin of Doctor Droom was a good thing ("My eyes... becoming slanted" was not Stan's finest hour). 

Here's one I just came across the other day on the Stupid Comics blog... Dan DeCarlo's name being purged from a reprint after he was fired from Archie Comics:



Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 06 March 2018 at 2:00pm
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Jason Czeskleba
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Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4548
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

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Colin Ian Campbell
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Joined: 24 April 2015
Location: England
Posts: 177
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

The epilogue isn't directly credited but the title page of the reprint volume itself lists Bill Mantlo among the writers and Tom Morgan is listed as one of the artists. I don't believe either was involved in the original run of issues.
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Bill Mantlo scripted Avengers #174 over Jim Shooter's plot. The Grand Comics Database credits the epilogue to Mark Gruenwald and Tom Morgan.

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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4178
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

 Jason Czeskleba[/quote wrote:
On the flipside, we probably would all agree that Roger Stern's rewrite of the reprinted origin of Doctor Droom was a good thing ("My eyes... becoming slanted" was not Stan's finest hour).
On the flipside, we probably would all agree that Roger Stern's rewrite of the reprinted origin of Doctor Droom was a good thing ("My eyes... becoming slanted" was not Stan's finest hour). [/quote]

Yeah, but I did appreciate them reprinting the original as-it-was (presumably) in the Amazing Fantasy Omnibus. :-)

(Note for posterity - Stern's change was applied to all of the Dr. Droom (now Dr. Druid) reprints in Weird Wonder Tales.)
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Colin Ian Campbell
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Joined: 24 April 2015
Location: England
Posts: 177
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Marvel Treasury Edition #15's reprint of the Song of Red Sonja restored the artwork for the scene in which Conan and Sonja go for a swim, which had been censored in Conan the Barbarian #24.
link

When Marvel UK reprinted the story in the 1978 Avengers Annual, most of the scene was cut and the notorious line "I'm a Brythunian, you worthless wank" was amended.

The 1973 Marvel Annual reprinted Zukala's Daughher from Conan the Barbarian #5 with some clumsily lettered amendments to the dialogue to censor allusions to prostitution in Shadizar the wicked..
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4178
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Fantastic Four #11 has two stories in it - A Visit with the Fantastic Four and the first Impossible Man story, in that order.

In the Marvel Masterworks reprinting that issue, they put the Impossible Man story first (originally, anyway).
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Greg Kirkman
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Joined: 12 May 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 15775
Posted: 06 March 2018 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

There's also that whole enlarging/reducing gas dialogue change in reprints of FF # 7 so as to fix the error at the end of the story.
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