I can't believe I've never posted about this before...
So, cast your mind back to 1971. Jack Kirby, one year into his contract with DC, things still going well, unencumbered by the weight of some of his past employers/partners/editors, now for the most part having his work inked and lettered locally by Mike Royer, much more faithfully embellishing his work than many other prior inkers.
(this relative utopia wouldn't last, of course. Comics, kid, they'll break your heart)
So in that atmosphere, Kirby creates "The Pact" for NEW GODS #7, a bold flashback story which crystalizes some things from the past year of stories in this and the companion series in the Fourth World (MISTER MIRACLE, FOREVER PEOPLE and JIMMY OLSEN). Some respectable people would tell you that this is the best of over 2000 comic stories Kirby created in his 76 years on this world. I would tell you it's in the top five.
Kirby knew that he was on to something, and back in the early 1970s was already talking about re-packaging the material from the original disposable periodical format into more permanent editions. As with most things, it took a while for the publisher to catch on, and inexplicably it would take then 13 years to reprint "The Pact" the first time (albeit in another periodical format), and another 14 years to reprint it again (this time in a proper book, although black and white with unnecessary grey tones) and 10 more to finally get it right...
Well, hold on, let's qualify "right". Because if you've only read one of the reprints of the story DC has done (at least nine to date), you've never quite read it as intended. Let's take a look at one panel, first as it left Mike Royer's table in mid-1971 (courtesy of the 2014 "Artist's Edition" of the work), second as it appeared in stores just before Christmas of 1971 and finally as it has appeared in DC's reprints:
Okay, something's not right there. If you don't see it right away, look closely at every word. And punctuation mark.
Let's look at another panel later on:
There are a few more (including one sound effect missing completely), but obviously back in 1984 DC found their film library came up a bit short on some pages of "The Pact" and had to resort to using pages that had been touched up for a translation of the story, into a language which doesn't use the letter "W" as much as Kirby liked and used inverted exclamation points. I'm guessing Spanish.
Which, y'know, "by demons driven" and all that, if that's what they had to work with in 1984, okay. I'd still happily mock it, but, okay. But after a while, on a story they've thought was worth reprinting nine times, in some of their deluxiest formats for serious money? And when the original artwork is right there (the printed "Artist's Edition" is probably already better than their existing source material, I'm sure the editor of it can supply an even better copy, and can certainly point them to the current whereabouts of the artwork)?
And yes, it's minor, these examples aren't up to "..and meet the sun." territory or other egregious and inexplicably persistent reprint errors.
But...
Well, there's this:
And that I do not forgive. This bugs me. Every time I see it, it bugs me more. Presumably the finger wrote "La Fuente" or somesuch in 1984, and someone had to restore it to "The Source". And it's just not right. He is Izaya the Inheritor, and this should not be his inheritance in a pivotal moment in Jack Kirby's best story. And yes, I'm admitting it, his best story, I just said "top five" to be contrary.
Come on, fix this, make it look like Kirby intended, as it left Royer's hand. Royer never splotches up the trademark cosmic dots like that. This is a hand of flame writing, it should be bold and definitive, not that... thing. Leave the "W"s turned to "V"s, leave the inverted punctuation, the missing sound effect, but the 10th time you reprint this, DC, please look in your heart and fix this.
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Adenda Especial
here are some other panels in the issue that are affected by this error (not meant to be comprehensive)
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