Redartz: Good day, comics fans! Today we are discussing the 'leftovers' of the comics world: the reprint books. For as long as comic books have been around, there have been reprints. Indeed, among the very first comics was "Famous Funnies", which reprinted newspaper comic strips in comic book form. So our hobby owes much to these re-tellings.
Of course, they haven't gotten as much respect as 'first run' titles. Listings in price guides and online are always lower for reprints. And such books tend to be found languishing in those "quarter boxes" and "dollar bins", collecting bends from being rifled over and past. I am guilty of this disrespect, as well: as a young collector, I avoided reprint books like the plague; only first printings for this fanboy. However, that viewpoint changed over the years. As original printings of many silver and bronze age books are now prohibitively expensive, and earlier books just plain scarce, reprints are a wise alternative. And today's editions are truly deluxe: I love those Omnibus editions...
Anyway, for years the earlier tales of our favorite characters have been available from the publishers as reprints. Dell, DC and Gold Key often included reprinted tales in current comics alongside the new stories. And DC would publish periodic "80 page giants" which were all reprint. Then, still later, were the 100-page Spectaculars; with Golden age as well as Silver age stories.
Marvel jumped on the reprint wagon early: "Marvel Tales", originally an annual, was reprinting the first stories of Spider-Man, Thor and others just a few short years after they originally appeared (Marvel Tales, and it's sister "Marvel Collector's Item Classics" were very cool books featuring several stories in each issue, until the page count dropped in the early 70's). And over subsequent years, Marvel added many more reprint titles. One big negative, I must note, was the practice of shaving several pages of story from the original in order to fit the lower page count in Bronze age books. That was part of the reason I formerly avoided such books.
So...let's have a look at some of these reprint books, and see what they offered...
And let me offer a big "Thank You" to my pal Marti for his cover contributions and the accompanying comments!
 |
| Sometimes classics had modern cover re-imaginings! |
  |
| Sometimes originals (1972) were reprinted in prime comics just a few years later (1975)! |
  |
| Once in a while much older tales popped in: classic Silver Age and even some Golden Age stories! |
This one actually specialized in Golden age; while also containing some fun horror/monster stories from the 50's and early 60's...
While the second volume gave us the Silver Surfer...
I always had a fondness for the covers, such as the Marvel Tales below, which depicted several covers from the original stories...
  |
| Sometimes art was changed slightly or mirror images were created for the covers! |
This is an example of a cover which, I feel, was improved by the changes for the reprint issue...
And here are three DC reprint comics with some Silver Age stories. The DC Special saluting Carmine Infantino was one of my earliest comics purchases (when I had no idea who he was)...
What did you think of all those reprints? Tell us your 'marvel tales' regarding all your 'collector's item classics'...
