DC, wait a few decades and we'll get it right...

I've had occasion in the past to talk about a few lapses in DC's production department for their reprints, from the never-ending "...and meet the sun." Swamp Thing saga (see here and here and here.  Update, latest softcover and digital versions still missing caption, while the recoloured version is its own thing), to the missing word balloon in reprints of The Question (see here, missing in the $100 hardcover as well) to the missing words of God (and some questionable redrawing) in the British reprint of an old DCCP issue (see here. The story was finally reprinted a few times by DC proper since that post, with all the words as far as I know (edit to add, spoke too soon, wrong in at least one panel of SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE SPECTRE #1 [2012]).  Those are just a few of probably at least a dozen examples, some of which they corrected via recalls or at least in subsequent reprints, others which they seem content to keep repeating.

So I thought I'd take a look at the opposite, a few examples of errors in the original printings which they belated corrected in reprints decades later.

Back in 1973, Jack Kirby was wrapping up THE DEMON, on the 15th and penultimate issue he and inker/letterer Mike Royer used what was then a not unheard of but not terribly common effect of some solid colour lettering, with no black border (like the aforementioned DCCP issue did for the Word of God). The New York offices apparently couldn't handle it any better than the Brits could in 1983.  So readers were left to wait the inexplicable 36 years it took DC to finally reprint the issue in 2009 before they found out what the Klarion was exclaiming.

You do have to deal with DC's odd choice to eliminate the cover price from cover reprints.  Don't like that on issues where the price is so large, throws off the balance of the cover.

Jumping ahead to 1983, and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #302 artist Keith Giffen decided to save a few minutes and achieve an interesting visual effect by asking the production department to copy and enlarge a panel from the previous page a few times.  His note to that effect might have been a bit too subtle, so we readers got a backstage look at comic production, sort of like a boom mike coming into frame on a TV show.  Only took 28 years for the first reprint of the story in 2011 to come out, allowing DC's crack production team to finish the job.

And apparently there might be a Curse of Etrigan, because in 1987 Matt Wagner and Art Nichols revived the Jack Kirby creation, and in THE DEMON #1 there was a plot point about an old book that Glenda Mark had with a drawing of a demon named Belial who resembles Etrigan.  But we're shown a blank book.  Never seemed quite right, but at the same time a plot point is that Jason Blood can't see the resemblance, so maybe it was meant to be blank?  Well, this took only 27 years, but goof was seemingly confirmed in the reprint.

Interestingly, they also corrected the amusing error on the cover to #2, which prematurely announced it was the last issue of the mini-series.

There are a few more examples, if I remember exactly where they were I'll update, or feel free to add any you know of in the comments. No need to limit it to DC.

But this one is from DC.  In 1975 DC published an ambitious tabloid sized volume of Old Testament biblical tales from Sheldon Mayer, Nestor Redondo and Joe Kubert.  The big mistake is that they never published another volume, despite considerable work being done a second book of "The Story of Jesus".  But in addition to that, there's something off about the cover:

Apparently whoever coloured it was under the impression that Moses was going to auditioning for the Blue Man Group right after coming down the mountain.  I'm sure Joe Kubert flipped at seeing that, exclaiming "The Blue Man Group won't even exist for another decade, so they're definitely an anachronism in a Bible story!  And they would never hire someone with that hair". Took 37 years, but that fatal error was corrected in the 2012 hardcover reprint.

Here's one not from DC.

LARRY MARDER'S BEANWORLD - HOKA HOKA BURB'L BURB'L [2017] was going along swimmingly when, on page 146, something happened that's strange even for a book called Beanworld, when Proffy vanishes for a panel while discovering something about Bean life.

Creator Larry Marder discusses the reason for the mistake over here, and it was subsequently fixed in digital versions and in LARRY MARDER'S BEANWORLD OMNIBUS #2 [2019].