I've been noticing a drop in Silver Age reprints coming from Marvel and DC the past few months. A lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the good stuff has already been reprinted, especially in Marvel's case. But there is still a lot of prime stuff from DC that needs a new, permanent viewing.
Mining at Amazon, I find only these books coming up within the next year:
Superman: The Man of Tomorrow Archives Vol. 3
by Various (Author, Illustrator)
List Price: $75.00
408 pages
This title will be released on July 30, 2013.
In these tales from the 1960s, Superman sees what life might have been like had he grown up on Krypton! Plus, The Man of Tomorrow meets a super outlaw from Krypton, fights Titano the Super-Ape and battles Lex Luthor!
• Collects SUPERMAN #132-139 and stories from ACTION COMICS #255-266.
S.H.I.E.L.D. by Jim Steranko: The Complete Collection
by Jim Steranko (Author, Illustrator) , Stan Lee (Author) , Roy Thomas (Author) , Jack Kirby (Illustrator)
List Price: $34.99
352 pages
This title will be released on September 24, 2013.
Rarely before and rarely since has comics seen a talent as innovative as Jim Steranko. Blending together influences from Pop Art to Salvador Dali and Will Eisner to Wally Wood, Steranko's boundary-breaking style is an incomparable visual language that continues influence and inspire storytellers decades later. Now, for the first time ever, Marvel is proud to offer the complete Steranko Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in one volume!
COLLECTING: STRANGE TALES (1951) 151-168 & NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. (1968) 1-3, 5.
Inhumans: The Origin of the Inhumans
by Stan Lee (Author) , Jack Kirby (Illustrator)
List Price: $39.99
424 pages
This title will be released on October 1, 2013
In 1965, a strange family of outcasts made their debut in the pages of Fantastic Four. The uncanny Inhumans quickly became more than just another set of adversaries and they all but took over and made the magazine their own! The mysterious origins of Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Triton, Karnak, Crystal and Lockjaw were revealed month after month in FF until reader demand gave them their own feature in the back pages of Thor. Now, the story of the Inhumans and their wondrous, secret land Attilan is collected from the very beginning for the first time ever! From Medusa's
debut as a member of the Frightful Four to the battle to break the Great Barrier, it's all here in incomparable Stan and Jack fashion!
COLLECTING: FANTASTIC FOUR (1961) 36, 38-47, 62-65, ANNUAL 5 and material from 48, 50, 52, 54-61, THOR
The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives Vol. 2
by Bob Haney (Author) , Nick Cardy (Illustrator)
List Price: $75.00
400 pages
This title will be released on October 29, 2013.
The top teen heroes of the 1960s return in a new collection in DC's high-quality Archive Editions! Don't miss the action as the Titans -- Robin, Aqualad, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and more -- take on The Mad Mod, Captain Rumble and The Scorcher, and get wrapped up in "The Dimensional Caper" and "A Swingin' Christmas"
Collecting TEEN TITANS #6-20 and THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #83.
Showcase Presents: Strange Adventures Vol. 2
by Various (Author, Illustrator)
List Price: $19.99
520 pages
This title will be released on December 24, 2013.
A massive new collection of science fiction tales from the 1950s, none of which have ever been collected before.
• Collects STRANGE ADVENTURES #74-93.
Showcase Presents: The Great Disaster featuring the Atomic Knights
List Price: $19.99
576 pages
This title will be released on February 25, 2014.
In these stories, a variety of heroes including the Atomic Knights, Kamandi, Hercules and many others must face a post-apocalyptic future brought about by the mysterious "Great Disaster.
Collects stories from STRANGE ADVENTURES #117, 120, 123, 126, 129, 132, 135, 138, 141, 144, 147, 150, 153, 156 and 160, 1st ISSUE SPECIAL #1, HERCULES UNBOUND #1-10, KAMANDI #43-46, WEIRD WAR TALES #22, 23, 30, 32, 40, 42-44, 46-49, 51-53, 64, 68, 69 and 123, HOUSE OF MYSTERY #318, SUPERMAN #295, HOUSE OF SECRETS #86, 95 and 97, THE UNEXPECTED #215 and 221, and AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS #12.
The Aquaman Archives Vol. 2
by Various (Author, Illustrator)
List Price: $75.00
424 pages
This title will be released on March 4, 2014
In these stories from the start of the 1960s, the Silver Age of comics, Aquaman battles threats to his undersea kingdom including the Fire-Trolls, the deadly Captain Sykes, the elfin alien known as Quisp, and the returned King Neptune. These hard-to-find comics showcase one of DC's most popular heroes with lush artwork by Nick Cardy.
Collects SHOWCASE #32-33, ADVENTURE COMICS #284, DETECTIVE COMICS #293-300, WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #125-133 and AQUAMAN #1-9.
DC is putting out archives featuring material already available in the cheaper Showcase Presents format, but color is a big attraction. Still, these are steep prices, even with an Amazon discount.
Marvel is cranking out a color collection of Steranko's S.H.I.E.L.D. stories, but with the TV show this fall you'd think it would be the perfect time to publish the long-awaited Essential Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Of course, we're still waiting for reprints of Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis.
Hoy
Replies
All the Steranko episodes were reprtinted in a pair of TPBs over a decade ago.
The credits are completely wrong, of course... Stan & Roy only wrote dialogue. (Why does anyone think Roy got off the series so quickly? HE wanted to write!)
As you say, a lot of it is that the primo stuff has been reprinted already. Marvel's going to have to dip into its westerns and romance comics to do much more (except for the NBE reprint that is long overdue).
I assume DC is cutting back and putting out a few Archives of already reprinted stuff because sales are dropping on existing books, and they're risk-averse to continuing books that have dropping sales.
There are lots of Sugar & Spike books they could be doing, but sales must not have been good enough on the first. They held off on Plas books for many, many years, waiting for a movie that never came, and when they started, they produced seven in pretty short order because fans were waiting on them.
Considering there already are SP volumes for Sea Devils and Rip Hunter, it's hard to complain about DC's range. But they had such a variety of titles, they've still got more they could go for, including Showcase, Scooter, Captain Storm and Inferior Five. [Required mention of Superboy reprints here.]
One book every other month is quite a slowdown, but I can't say there's anything there I'm eagerly waiting for, either. And there's still time for them to add to the Christmas-and-beyond time period.
BTW, what ever happened to the Captain Comet Archives? There's virtually no record of it ever having been announced, much less published. If you search for it via Amazon, you get nothing. Search for it via Google, and you get virtually nothing.
But put "ISBN 1-40112-4108" (the book's original ISBN number) into Google and you get an Amazon page a few links down. When you go to that page, you get a listing with no due date. But if you try to LINK to that page by pasting it into this message, you are directed to a 404 Document Not Found notice!
So the question is: Why does the NSA not want us to know about the Captain Comet Archives?
-- MSA
I just found and added an Inhumans collection.
Hoy
Is a lot of the cost of production associated with getting the art into clean form for reprinting? If so, once they have a black-and-white printable version (Showcase Presents) does it decrease the overhead for producing the Archive books?
According to my records, a second volume of Metal Men Archives was solicited for March 6 release, but I don’t know if it was cancelled or postponed or what. As far as I know it wasn’t released.
Amazon lists both Metal Men Archives Vol. 2 and Wonder Woman: The Amazon Princess Vol. 1, both of which are Silver Age and released this year, in stock.
Hoy
Hmm... I pre-ordered both. Got the one but not the other. Thanks for the info.
Other than the SP collections of DC science fiction material, all of this stuff looks to be reprint collections of reprint collections. Didn't Marvel already collect all of the Steranko Nick Fury stuff in a TPB a few years ago? Maybe they only did the STRANGE TALES stories, but Steranko didn't do a whole lot of stuff for the Nick solo series, so it's hardly a major addition. Better to have just started from the beginning, as my pal Hoy suggests, with an ESSENTIAL collection of all the Nick Fury stuff dating back to the Stan and Jack days.
And why an INHUMANS collection that doesn't include the hard-to-find stuff from their solo series in AMAZING ADVENTURES as well as their eponymous title in the mid 1970s?
I've got or at least have read all the Superman, Teen Titans and Aquaman stuff to be ARCHIVEd, so no interest there. Still can't believe DC didn't put together another SP: SUPERMAN collection timed to coincide with the "Man of Steel" movie release. Talk about your missed opportunities!
I wonder if DC will ever decide to collect TOMAHAWK. Not a collection I would be interested in myself, but that thing ran forever (well, over 20 years).
I hope I'm not out-of-place here to say this, but I do have a b&w copy of the second Metal Men Showcase volume for sale. I find that I didn't read it, and so, have it available for resale. I'm pretty sure that it picks up about issue #19 to the end of the series, about issue #42, as I recall. If you're interested, PM me and you'll get a sweet price on it. End of commercial.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Dave, there have been at least two volumes of Marvel Masterworks that collect the first scattered appearances as a solo feature/featurette/backup story, the silver age Inhuman tales from Thor, Amazing Adventures, Marvel Superheroes and Not brand Echh. The second volume collects a second run of their title (possibly from the mid to late 70s) that I was completely unaware of until it was reprinted. I would think that anyone interested would be able to score either volume off Ebay or Tales of Wonder at a reduced price AND also in either gold frame variant dust jack or not. Maybe even find a copy on Amazon, though I find most are over-priced and only rarely can you find a UNDER-valued offer...but worth checking for.
As for the SHIELD tpbs, I picked up both volumes, and yes, the first one runs from the start through the end of the Strange Tales 10 page installments. The second volume (nowhere near as desirable, despite the striking Steranko black and white cover from #4 features the solo issues from #1 through the end#18?) [I still swear I saw a different swipe or tribute to that eponymous #6 space suit cover on a Ka-zar final issue 34 in the late 1980s that sported a shocked Ka-Zar face pasted over Fury's face as he discovers his lifeline has snapped out in space, and a cover blurb that read "Guess who's title won't have another issue?" or something pretty shocking that was slipped past the editor and onto the cover!]
Dave Blanchard said:
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