Please Explain Appeal of Reprint Books

[dan bailey]

I doubt it was ever in a mag first.

Once upon a time I was pretty conversant with Golden Age sf, & indeed ...

Foundation was originally a series of eight short stories published in Astounding Magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. According to Asimov, the premise was based on ideas set forth in Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was invented spontaneously on his way to meet with editor John W. Campbell, with whom he developed the concept.

The first four stories were collected, along with a new story taking place before the others, in a single volume published by Gnome Press in 1951 as Foundation. The remainder of the stories were published in pairs by Gnome as Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953), resulting in the "Foundation Trilogy", as the series was known for decades.

(From Wikipedia -- not necessarily definitive, of course, but since it squares 100 percent with my own recollections, not to mention the old library discard copy I own of, IIRC, the Gnome Press edition of Foundation & Earth, I'm going with it.)

With precious few exceptions, there was simply no commercial market for original, book-length sf until well after the '40s. If you own or have read any volumes of same, novels included, odds are that the contents was at the very least originally serialized in a newsstand pulp or digest.

For me the most important thing about a com is the cover, 50% of it, on average, less if it's a Marvel.

Then apparently you're less interested in it as a story, as a creative work produced by diverse hands, than you are as an artifact. Nothing wrong with that, but IMHO you're preferring apples & those of us who like reprints just fine are fond of oranges.

It's almost as if you're a heavy metal fan going onto a rock music forum & starting a thread titled Please Explain Appeal of Synth Punk.

[pinkfloydsound17]

I don't even like reprint comics (Marvel Tales, Marvel's Greatest, etc.) Its the original or nothing for me. That being said, I would pick up those pocket books from the late 70's. And one day I may have to resort to a reprint but right now, I have to have original comics.

[dan bailey]

I don't even like reprint comics (Marvel Tales, Marvel's Greatest, etc.) Its the original or nothing for me. That being said, I would pick up those pocket books from the late 70's. And one day I may have to resort to a reprint but right now, I have to have original comics.

You're either very, very wealthy or you own very, very few vintage comics, I gather.

[dan bailey]

How do you intersperse answers? I had to manually nest every one of your passages; no way I'll ever do that again.

It can definitely be a hassle. It's even more of a hassle if you're having (mouse-generated?) highlighting problems that are driving you crazy, as is the case with me here at work.

[Slam_Bradley]

Once upon a time I was pretty conversant with Golden Age sf, & indeed ...

I'm still pretty conversant in Golden Age SF...so...

(From Wikipedia -- not necessarily definitive, of course, but since it squares 100 percent with my own recollections, not to mention the old library discard copy I own of, IIRC, the Gnome Press edition of Foundation & Earth, I'm going with it.)

In this case it's definitive. And absolutely correct.

With precious few exceptions, there was simply no commercial market for original, book-length sf until well after the '40s. If you own or have read any volumes of same, novels included, odds are that the contents was at the very least originally serialized in a newsstand pulp or digest.

Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) was the first Heinlein novel that wasn't previously serialized in a magazine. Asimov was The Robots of Dawn (1982) controlling for his novelization of The Fantastic Voyage. Arthur Clarke The Fall of Moondust (1961).

Before the early 60s virtually everything in science fiction and fantasy was first published in serialized magazine form.

[dan bailey]

I could be dead wrong, & it certainly doesn't invalidate anything you or I said above, but I recall Star Science Fiction No. 1 from 1953 as being the first all-original paperback sf anthology. It's an excellent assemblage, with one story in particular -- Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" -- that's deservedly achieved lasting fame.

[Slam_Bradley]

Because I'm interested in the story and to a lesser degree the art.

Because I could give a hairy rat's ass about what the trappings of them are, because the story remains the same.

Because, while house ads have a bit of nostalgic appeal, it only takes one or two instances before ads for Charles Atlas and X-Ray Specs become repetitive and simply serve to break up the flow of the story.

Because, with very limited exceptions (Sandman, Criminal), I never read letters pages and found them boring as hell. I find them less relevant now.

Because I'm cheap as hell and see no reason to pay $150 for a single-issue fetish item when the same amount of money can buy me 15 trades with 75+ funnybooks in them.

Because the cover is the least important part of the comic book story (to the extent you can consider it part of the story. It does beat out the ads and letters page. So there's that.

[Slam_Bradley]

I could be dead wrong, & it certainly doesn't invalidate anything you or I said above, but I recall Star Science Fiction No. 1 from 1953 as being the first all-original paperback sf anthology. It's an excellent assemblage, with one story in particular -- Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" -- that's deservedly achieved lasting fame.

I was talking novels.

Yeah there were sporadic original anthologies, and Star Science Fiction was one of the first.

But original SF novels didn't become a thing until the early 60s.

Those Star Science Fiction anthologies are damn cool books though.

[dan bailey]

Because, while house ads have a bit of nostalgic appeal, it only takes one or two instances before ads for Charles Atlas and X-Ray Specs become repetitive and simply serve to break up the flow of the story.

I will say that I sort of wish the Showcase Presents volumes would include the house ads & maybe the Direct Currents columns from relevant issues. As a kid reading the relative handful of DCs I was able to buy, some of the covers appearing in those venues just intrigued the hell out of me. They'd make better bottom-of-the-page filler than the corporate logos & occasional blank pages that we get now.

Same goes for Essentials, I suppose, except that for some reason Marvel's house ads & Stan's Soapbox didn't have quite the same effect on my youthful imagination, possibly because I didn't start making my first regular Marvel purchase (Sgt. Fury, of course) till a few months later, when I just a few weeks short of becoming a wizened 8-year-old.

[Polar Bear]

Because I'm cheap as hell and see no reason to pay $150 for a single-issue fetish item when the same amount of money can buy me 15 trades with 75+ funnybooks in them.

You got it, Slam. Me, too. In fact, I'm getting rid of my Claremont/Byrne Marvel Team-Ups because I've decided the printing on the 1990s issues of Marvel Tales that reprinted these stories have stood up to the test of time far better, as I can look at art instead of at mud.

Plus, if the reprint is high-quality, it shows the linework in a nice, dark black on especially-white pages so that I can appreciate the artist's work better. I've compared some newsprint Carl Barks stories I have to the current Fantagraphics hardcovers, and I'm able to enjoy the stories far more in the high-quality book.

In the interest of full disclosure, there are some stapled comics that are so intricately connected to my childhood that I can't imagine parting with them, even if there were a high-quality reprint available, but these are relatively few and far between.

[MWGallaher]

And obviously Dan realizes this, but it's worth making the observation that those ads that filled the occasional (or sometimes frequent, depending on the era) half pages would probably not have been preserved with the archived films of the art that they appeared with (since they would not have anticipated reusing the same ads when the comic content was reused for, say, foreign editions or reprints to occur years later). And of course, the comics publisher would probably not have the rights to reprint anything other than their own house ads, and sometimes might not even be safe publishing those, since they might have been for licensed titles that they no longer retain rights to (like Bob Hope, Captain Action, etc.)
There have been some reprint projects from Marvel that included letters pages (or so I've heard), and some from DC that retained all the original advertisements (Superman Archives Volume 1), but it's easy to see that this could be a risky policy and would increase the labor involved without wide increase in appeal (for every reader that would appreciate seeing, for example, the full-page ads reprinted as they appeared in early issues of, say, Iron Man, I suspect there would be far more who'd feel cheated because another complete Iron Man story could have taken the place of those pages).

[dan bailey]

Would you accept a perfect reproduction of an old comic (packaged with others in a plastic bag) as being as good as an original? I would. Why do you suppose companies never marketed such? You could discern the difference from the age of the paper, so they couldn't be passed as counterfeits. Weren't there EC's like this years ago? I never touched EC comics, but these reprints looked unappealing on this white paper with bright colors, especially considering the tone of the stories.

The occasional historically significant comic has been reprinted in this fashion; I've got a couple of "Millennium Edition" DCs from back in 2000, though offhand I can't recall whether they were direct page-for-page reprints (i.e. including ads -- I'm guessing not -- & letters). They ranged from Golden Age classics like Action #1 to stuff as recent as an Alan Moore Swamp Thing, Watchmen #1 & even, for chrissakes, the first Byrne Man of Steel.

If they'd sold like hotcakes, I'm sure DC would still be flogging the equivalent even as I type.

Not sure how dead-on the EC reprints you mention were, either. Seems to me the lettercols, at least, were of modern vintage, though I could certainly be wrong.

Finally, if you want to experience the old issues, aren't they available somewhere on-line to read? The noted fan Joe Siclari was working on that years ago. Why wouldn't the companies offer this for a price? Perhaps because they're making too much from these reprint books?

Like certain others here, I have zero interest in reading comics online.

And I think certain back issues are offered online; again, though, having no interest in such, I'm not sure if I'm correct.

[dan bailey]

And obviously Dan realizes this, but it's worth making the observation that those ads that filled the occasional (or sometimes frequent, depending on the era) half pages would probably not have been preserved with the archived films of the art that they appeared with (since they would not have anticipated reusing the same ads when the comic content was reused for, say, foreign editions or reprints to occur years later). And of course, the comics publisher would probably not have the rights to reprint anything other than their own house ads, and sometimes might not even be safe publishing those, since they might have been for licensed titles that they no longer retain rights to (like Bob Hope, Captain Action, etc.)

Good points. Though at least in Marvel's case, it would appear -- judging from the quality of imagery -- that certain Essentials have been reprinted from the actual published comics than archived film or art.

There have been some reprint projects from Marvel that included letters pages (or so I've heard),

My understanding is that the oversized Omnibus editions do this, though I don't own any.

[MDG]

And obviously Dan realizes this, but it's worth making the observation that those ads that filled the occasional (or sometimes frequent, depending on the era) half pages would probably not have been preserved with the archived films of the art that they appeared with (since they would not have anticipated reusing the same ads when the comic content was reused for, say, foreign editions or reprints to occur years later). And of course, the comics publisher would probably not have the rights to reprint anything other than their own house ads, and sometimes might not even be safe publishing those, since they might have been for licensed titles that they no longer retain rights to (like Bob Hope, Captain Action, etc.)

They could use super-turtle. (I wonder if the Cap's Hobby Hints that featured specific products counted as advertising?)

Not sure how dead-on the EC reprints you mention were, either. Seems to me the lettercols, at least, were of modern vintage, though I could certainly be wrong.

I think some of the first comic book format EC reprints (from East Coast Comics) reprinted original letters pages. And i think all the EC reprint series (I've lost count of them) used artwork from original house ads (often by Jack Davis) for the new product.

[Dizzy D]

Price and availability are obviously the big reasons. In some cases I even prefer the Black&White art to early colouring (Essential Moon Knight for instance).