Wow. DC just announced that they're finally going to emulate Marvel's ESSENTIAL line of reprints with their own DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS line, monthly 500 page black and white volumes starting with some 1960s and later material (Superman, Green Lantern, Jonah Hex, Justice League and oddly Metamorpho being the first five scheduled). The article on them doesn't explicitly say, but it looks like they won't be doing that greyscale toning that (for me) detracted from the Jack Kirby Fourth World volumes a few years ago. I'll probably be picking up most of these initial ones (especially seeing how Marvel's upcoming ESSENTIALS are mostly 1970s and 1980s books I'm less interested in), and hope DC can be convinced to dig into their vaults for some of their long-neglected books (some volumes of war comics would be great, some humour stuff, especially Sheldon Mayer's work, maybe some of the sci-fi/fantasy books. Any Kirby would be nice, of course, especially if they go to the Golden Age stuff).
Also of interest, Russ Cochran has been talking about making another go at reprinting the EC books. He's talking about reaching a mainstream market, but is oddly also talking about emulating the DC ARCHIVES and Marvel MASTERWORKS formats, which seem to me to be formats that appeal more to the collector market. Anyway, whether I pick these up will depend on the final format he chooses (as I've said before, my ideal format for EC reprints would be artist based "best of" volumes, although I'd take "best of" for each book if those are more commercial. I doubt I'd pick up many volumes of a "complete" set, especially if they're priced like the DC/Marvel books. For other matters, softcover perferable to hardcover, matte paper preferable to glossy, either black and white or colour, but simpler as-close-to-the-original-but-better-printed colour preferable to modern colouring). Still good to see that they might be made available again.
No comments:
Post a Comment