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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 2, 2024 12:28:13 GMT -5
Sometimes, for sure! I LOVE Tomb of Dracula in black and white, as well as some Savage Sword of Conan collections (some of that was probably black and white originally, of course). Jonah Hex is pretty great too. Even some of the client Marvel silver age stuff is pretty good, like Spidey. Kirby in black and white is OK, but definitely not as good.
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rich
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Post by rich on Oct 2, 2024 12:35:29 GMT -5
Sometimes, for sure! I LOVE Tomb of Dracula in black and white, as well as some Savage Sword of Conan collections (some of that was probably black and white originally, of course). Jonah Hex is pretty great too. Even some of the client Marvel silver age stuff is pretty good, like Spidey. Kirby in black and white is OK, but definitely not as good. I'm glad someone mentioned Tomb of Dracula- even though I own the originals I still purchased the Essential B&W trades. I love Colan and Palmer's art- Colan never looked better than inked by the masterful Palmer, and I think he knew this and upped his game because of it. I discovered he disliked Palmer's use of zip-a-tone, but I loved that. Overall I probably like ToD even better in the original colouring, but still, it had to be seen in original line art form too... now THAT book I'd hate to see in a garish reprint!! Fully agree Kirby looks better in colour, by the way. Edit: I should have mentioned they're the only Essential trades I own, as usually I like colour on books intended to be coloured.
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rich
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Post by rich on Oct 2, 2024 13:29:43 GMT -5
Ok, now in the spirit of keeping this topic fun, anybody want to "confess" if they initially noticed the coloring differences when they first started buying stuff like the Masterworks? I first started picking them up probably in the late 90's along with DC Archives. And NO, I did not haha. But when I first read something online about it and started to compare myself, it was like "oh (censored), yeah, I can totally see that". So in fairness, it didn't "blind me" to start reading them, but it became more of now that I'm aware, I can't help but notice. Yeah, totally, I had no idea the colour was different to the originals, but I always disliked the colour, even as a young teen! I still bought and enjoyed a bunch of old trades, but the colour always really put me off. I was obsessed with colouring as a child and contemplated trying to do it professionally when I was a teen. I think I was always sensitive to colouring as I grew up with Marvel UK comics on better paper and a more advanced printing process than their US counterparts. Even at about 6 years old I would choose Marvel UK comics over the US ones I could buy from a shop that opened up next to my school. (Plus the US ones cost more). When Marvel UK reprinted Marvel US strips the colour was always sooo much uglier on the glossier UK paper.
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rich
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Post by rich on Oct 2, 2024 13:41:04 GMT -5
That's probably very much a personal choice for old, long-term readers like us. But for newer readers, I think the brighter colours of modern reprints look more like the comics that they've been reading since the late '90s or thereabouts. Anyway, one thing is for sure, the colouring of the Marvel reprints since the '90s doesn't seem to have hurt sales, so you have to assume that most readers or collectors like it. I suspect a number of us older readers "take what we can get", the fact that the Masterworks coloring has been complained about so many times on the Internet for years and years suggests it's not a trivial issue. But at the same time, what are we going to do, not read absolutely classic material that we can't easily access in other ways because the coloring is "off"? I own 135 Masterworks at present, along with about 100 Epic Collections and 65 DC Archive Editions. They are not "perfect", but they are an absolute joy still since when I was a kid I couldn't have remotely imagined having access to this much classic material. But if you could make them look like that Taschen Spidey volume I mentioned? Oh heck yes, that would be the icing on the cake. I've still enjoyed loads of collected editions- maybe not quite as many as you, but a lot- despite the faults. Yes, many have crap colouring, many have cheap crappy binding and don't lie flat, every Omnibus is annoyingly heavy, etc, but I can get enjoyment from them. For 20 years I've been at a point where I own so much that I've not yet read that I can now be pickier and focus on well bound premium books. DC's Absolutes, for example. I have lots of Taschen books at this point, most not comics related. Have you also seen the Folio Society's Marvel reprint books, supercat ? You'd like them I suspect!!
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Post by supercat on Oct 2, 2024 13:53:11 GMT -5
Have you also seen the Folio Society's Marvel reprint books, supercat ? You'd like them I suspect!! In truth I have been eyeing them (love the Folio Society though I've only bought literature titles from them), there is temptation there haha! Good reminder to give them another look, thanks!
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Post by driver1980 on Oct 2, 2024 15:03:17 GMT -5
On black and white reprints, quite a few Marvel UK comics I read as a kid only had partial colour. And then I discovered the 70s titles like Mighty World of Marvel which were almost entirely colour (covers aside). So I got used to it. However, most of the DC stuff I read as a kid was in colour, such as the annuals published by Egmont. I found b/w really suited bleak strips featuring the likes of the Hulk, Doctor Strange, Punisher, and Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. However, b/w didn’t quite work for me when it came to the likes of Superman and The Flash. That said, I did buy as many “Essential” and “Showcase” volumes as I could due to their affordability. I believe b/w worked better for Marvel than DC because I always found DC to be more fantastical when opposed to the “fantastical but world outside your window nature” of Marvel. So, I’m thinking about how great pages like this looked:
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