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Post by Batflunkie on May 17, 2022 8:39:36 GMT -5
All reprint books should be either scanned from the original comics or done by a colorist to look as close to the original printed book as possible. Agreed! I think DC did that with their Golden Age Wonder Woman reprints. But the problem is that when they did the Archive Editions, they used some kind of chemical to remove the colors from the pages, then added it back in. Unless they have a huge warehouse full of older comic books, that's kind of a devastating practice
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Post by tonebone on May 17, 2022 8:50:31 GMT -5
All reprint books should be either scanned from the original comics or done by a colorist to look as close to the original printed book as possible. This should be tattooed on every collection editor's forehead.
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Post by tonebone on May 17, 2022 9:00:11 GMT -5
All reprint books should be either scanned from the original comics or done by a colorist to look as close to the original printed book as possible. My first exposure to the "scanned from original" presentation was the Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics. I had other reprints by that time, but the photos in this volume really ruined everything else for me. It's my preferred reprint format for Silver/Golden age material, yellowed pages and all. The early Marvel reprint Trade Paperbacks appeared to use the same separations as the newsprint versions... I remember having a Dark Phoenix collection that did this. The colors were garrish on the whiter paper, and the dot patterns were so coarse, you could drive a VW Bus between them.
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Post by impulse on May 17, 2022 9:03:01 GMT -5
I could see an argument for offering both a "legacy" version and a "remaster" to try and offer different things to different people.
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Post by MDG on May 17, 2022 9:39:49 GMT -5
I could see an argument for offering both a "legacy" version and a "remaster" to try and offer different things to different people. You must be in marketing
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Post by impulse on May 17, 2022 10:12:20 GMT -5
I could see an argument for offering both a "legacy" version and a "remaster" to try and offer different things to different people. You must be in marketing I've been clean on that front for over a decade, actually. But seriously, preservationists and folks like us who would appreciate the original experience would probably flock to faithful scans or photos of the originals, but I can certainly understand people interested in reading the stories with a more modern or at least "cleaner" presentation. Dusting off the marketing hat for a moment, now I am imagining a "Deluxe Remastered Creators' Edition" of a book including super crisp refreshed art, notes and interviews from the creators still living, copies of original scans or pencil pages in the back where applicable, etc. They could charge $200 for it, stick it in an oversized hardcover binding and all.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 17, 2022 11:12:01 GMT -5
All reprint books should be either scanned from the original comics or done by a colorist to look as close to the original printed book as possible. Agreed! I think DC did that with their Golden Age Wonder Woman reprints. But the problem is that when they did the Archive Editions, they used some kind of chemical to remove the colors from the pages, then added it back in. Unless they have a huge warehouse full of older comic books, that's kind of a devastating practice That was pre-Photoshop and other digital graphic technologies. Greg Theakston did the early work, using a chemical solution that bleached out the color, so they could have clean artwork to shoot and then recolor. Once digital technologies had evolved enough to do the process without damaging original materials, they switched to it. It was the best solution to reprinting old works they had, at the time and the results were pretty good, in most cases. DC maintained file copies of every comic they ever published, going back to the beginning (Michael Fleischer used them for his research for the DC encyclopedias, in the 70s); but, I don't believe that Theakston used them for the Archive projects. I can't swear to it; but, I believe I read that they used other comics to do that, rather than the file copies. I could be wrong.
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Post by tonebone on May 17, 2022 12:12:15 GMT -5
A lot of the Archive and Masterwork editions are straight up traced from published copies of the comics.
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Post by kirby101 on May 19, 2022 6:05:31 GMT -5
All reprint books should be either scanned from the original comics or done by a colorist to look as close to the original printed book as possible. My first exposure to the "scanned from original" presentation was the Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics. I had other reprints by that time, but the photos in this volume really ruined everything else for me. It's my preferred reprint format for Silver/Golden age material, yellowed pages and all. I have that as well, and the comic strip collection. Both are excellent.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 20, 2022 12:26:14 GMT -5
My first exposure to the "scanned from original" presentation was the Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics. I had other reprints by that time, but the photos in this volume really ruined everything else for me. It's my preferred reprint format for Silver/Golden age material, yellowed pages and all. I have that as well, and the comic strip collection. Both are excellent. I had the comic book one, though it was from a run that had printing errors. There were misaligned plates, and every other page had ghosting going on, for a large part of the book. We later got a run of it, at Barnes & Noble, after we picked up publishing rights and it had the same problem, as it looked like they shot it from the same run (which was still better than some of the goofs they had, because of Chinese printers, like misspelled words on covers, and vegetarian cookbooks with meat recipes, or the Major League ballpark book, with replica park models, that gave off a foul odor).
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2022 14:14:55 GMT -5
Never expected to see a Ghost Rider cover like this...
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on May 22, 2022 16:06:07 GMT -5
Nothing me surprises me anymore with comic covers. They’re no different than perfume/cologne, makeup, clothes, car advertisements; they are there to visually appease a targeted demographic.
There I said it.
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2022 17:07:38 GMT -5
Nothing me surprises me anymore with comic covers. They’re no different than perfume/cologne, makeup, clothes, car advertisements; they are there to visually appease a targeted demographic. There I said it. Covers have always been about selling the book. That hasn't changed. What has changed is what works to sell a book to a contemporary audience rather than an audience in the 60'-80's, which is where most of us first encountered comics on the racks and had imprinted what we think a cover should be. In the 90s gimmick covers were what sold books, in the 21st century, covers have changed to reflect what catches the eye and opens the wallet of 21st century customers. The purpose of the cover though, has never changed, it's always been to catch the potential customers' eye and open their wallets. If covers today looked the way they did in 1982, they would fail miserably at that task because customer sensibilities have changed. -M
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Post by tonebone on May 23, 2022 9:16:33 GMT -5
Nothing me surprises me anymore with comic covers. They’re no different than perfume/cologne, makeup, clothes, car advertisements; they are there to visually appease a targeted demographic. There I said it. Covers have always been about selling the book. That hasn't changed. What has changed is what works to sell a book to a contemporary audience rather than an audience in the 60'-80's, which is where most of us first encountered comics on the racks and had imprinted what we think a cover should be. In the 90s gimmick covers were what sold books, in the 21st century, covers have changed to reflect what catches the eye and opens the wallet of 21st century customers. The purpose of the cover though, has never changed, it's always been to catch the potential customers' eye and open their wallets. If covers today looked the way they did in 1982, they would fail miserably at that task because customer sensibilities have changed. -M You are operating from a premise that comics, modern cover sensibilities and all, are, in fact, selling today. They aren't. The thing that would help "modern" covers sell comics, is if they were cheaper, and if they were in places people could find them. Also, I'm afraid the "customer sensibilities" you mention don't include reading comics, at all... no matter what the cover looks like.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 23, 2022 9:28:01 GMT -5
Covers have always been about selling the book. That hasn't changed. What has changed is what works to sell a book to a contemporary audience rather than an audience in the 60'-80's, which is where most of us first encountered comics on the racks and had imprinted what we think a cover should be. In the 90s gimmick covers were what sold books, in the 21st century, covers have changed to reflect what catches the eye and opens the wallet of 21st century customers. The purpose of the cover though, has never changed, it's always been to catch the potential customers' eye and open their wallets. If covers today looked the way they did in 1982, they would fail miserably at that task because customer sensibilities have changed. -M You are operating from a premise that comics, modern cover sensibilities and all, are, in fact, selling today. They aren't. The thing that would help "modern" covers sell comics, is if they were cheaper, and if they were in places people could find them. Also, I'm afraid the "customer sensibilities" you mention don't include reading comics, at all... no matter what the cover looks like. Except that comics are selling perfectly well. Just not what old geezers think of as "comics." Tillie Walden's Clementine OGN Has A 100,000 Print Run. But kids don't read comics.
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