It should be collected / It should be in print

Noncenti and Romita Jr's Daredevil.

All-Star Squadron. Man, did I love that series - it was my entry point for JSA and the 40s heroes.

R.F. Outcault's Buster Brown

TEH COMPLEAT EYEBEAM!

A big Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle Batman collection would be good.

I have to assume that the royalties issues that have stymied a few Showcase volumes (most likely including a theoretical All-Star Squadron collection, which would seem like a no-brainer given the current popularity of the JSA) are the reason a lot of DC's 80s/90s stuff isn't in print. I'd snap up collections of triangle-era Superman in a heartbeat.

Triangle era Superman collections exist!
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=superman+chronicles&x=0&y=0

I would totally buy the Nocenti/JRJR Daredevil trades!

My #1 most desired trade set is the entire five-year gap era Legion of Super Heroes. It's very unlikely to ever happen. Sad.

These things should be out in big affordable phone books.

Wolfman/Perez New Titans
Levitz/Giffen Legion
Stern/Romita Jr. Amazing Spider-man (Heck they should reprint big swaths of 80s Spider-man including more by Peter David & JM DeMatteis)
Stern's run on Avengers
The 70s/80s What If (it would pretty much be two Marvel Essentials)

I think a whole lot more 70s & 80s Batman and Superman should be compiled.

I'll second the Grant/Breyfogle Batman run, particularly the Detective Comics portion. Will never give up my floppies, but I'd love to be able to share.

five-year gap LoSH would be ace too.

Lots of good stuff mentioned so far.

I also think Mike Grell's Warlord could be popular and look really cool printed in a big black and white phone book book.

The thing about stuff like Warlord or the New Teen Titans is that you really appreciate the book after you read a big stack of them. DC has reprinted a couple of story lines, but really does the story with Terra really work unless you read it from the start and see how Deathstroke has been screwing with them over the issues. It just isn't the same.

Stern's run on both Avengers and Spider-man are pretty iconic for Marvel. Criminy the reset they did on Spider-man is just to directly take him back to living in the shitty apartment with the skylight when he was getting some coochy from the Black Cat and playing the field.

DC is also goofball for not getting out a big collection of 80s Green Lantern editing together the best stuff of the Len Wein/Dave Gibbons stuff with the later run by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton. Pretty much Johns reset on the book is basically taking it to the status quo of the Englehart run which brought the Corps to the front with Kilowog and made Guy Gardiner a popular character.

Ostrander's Suicide Squad was supposed to come out in Showcase and it should.

I'm just waving the flag for a Showcase Presents Sugar & Spike or four.

While we're at it: My Greatest Adventure from the pre-Doom Patrol era?

And I would totally buy a giant black-and-white (or color) omnibus of romance comics from the '60s and '70s.

Legion fans: DC has started releasing collections of Levitz LOSH more or less on the sly (2 out so far). Although they inexplicably started with the beginning of the Baxter series.

Gosh, I've got a whole mental queue in my head of titles but none of them are coming to mind. Beto's GIRL CRAZY, probably.

Is the Englehart/Rogers run on Detective in print? If not, then that.

Woodring's non-Frank stuff from "Tantalizing Stories" and "Jim."

cosine; he needs a 'complete' edition.
I'd also like to see a complete work of Seth Fisher book.

THE PUMA BLUES by Stephen Murphy/Michael Zulli

CASANOVA'S LAST STAND by Hunt Emerson - Hungering for it since Eddie Campbell heaped great praise.

The absence of quality Milligan outside of ENIGMA (LONDON, GIRL, various et ceteras, and (oh dear god) the McCarthy collaborations) is a damn near palpable in my day-to-day existence. I've been itching for quite awhile to read the rest of his Hewlett story that began in A1 #2.

Beto's GIRL CRAZY, probably.

Was collected on August 13, 1997, has not gone out of print yet.

Is American Flagg in print? I would like to read it, so that I could decide once and for all whether Howard Chaykin ever wrote anything of consequence.

American Flagg: The first ardcover reprint came out last fall. I believe that a TPB is coming out this spring.

I'm not a fan of his (read Flagg in the 80s and wasn't that impressed; his Shadow stories are better), but your mileage may very.

Imagine there is an "H" or at least an ' (maybe I've got a cool accent I don't know about!) before ardcover.

Noooo! Cockney is better.

aardcover
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bARoomE7L._SS500_.jpg

I would like to read it, so that I could decide once and for all whether Howard Chaykin ever wrote anything of consequence.

Issues 1 through 12 are max thrillpower but it gets boring after that and Chaykin's art gets sloppier as it goes along. Probably starts dropping off a bit before issue 12 TBH, more like issue 10 or so. And to hear Steven Grant tell it, AF! is like the most consequential mainstream series to come out in the Eighties... No Dark Knight/Watchmen without it.

Englehart/Rogers run is already collected. Haven't read it -- it's pretty short for a "definitive" run, though!

I third the Grant/Wagner/Breyfogle run -- especially in COLOUR! -- and 5YL. And what happened to that Suicide Squad reprint?

I know it's been (over)collected, but I'd love to have JLI (at least the first two years) collected in one big book. I'd probably never read it (again), but it's something I'd certainly buy, if only for (predictably) nostalgic reasons.

Corto Maltese

Oh yeah, Zenith. It is one of my big gripes that this is out of print.

I saw the American Flagg reprints in a shop the other day. amazing.

you thought the restoration was good?

well, to be honest I wouldn't really know, I didn't read it back in the day. It looks fairly impressive, art-wise, and not just thanks to all the semi-naked ladies.

I've been moving through various Marvel Essentials and I think the biggest holes out there is the fact that they have not done one for Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD or Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos. I know they have the Steranko issues in print, but the series ran for a good while before he started and a little while after he left. I figure they could do the whole Agent of SHIELD in two volumes and maybe fill it out with that 4 issue mini-series from the 80s. In reading the Captain America Volume 1, which guest stars Fury and has AIM and Hydra popping up a couple of times it made me want to read the SHIELD series from the start. The Howling Commandos also has a bunch of Kirby and Severin artwork, so I would figure that would make it something people would want to check out. I figure if Marvel is ever going to do these, right now with the new Secret Warriors series is probably the best time to make it happen.

David Chelsea's Welcome To The Zone - I wanna spoil that last page so badly. Stop me, indie publishers!

Re: earlnash's post, the Nick Fury stuff titles are literally the only Marvel silver age thing that hasn't been Essential-ized at this point. But there are rumors that it's coming soon. Agent of Shield, anyway. Don't know about Sgt. Fury.

Marvel could also some Essentials with Black Panther and The Inhumans that would be cool, but both of those start a bit later.

I figure the Fury/SHIELD stuff is coming soon as they have done 2 hardcovers and there can't be more than 1 or 2 more volumes to compile.

I guess part of it has been reprinted, but I would like to read Yummy Fur twenty years later. That shit (literally) tripped me out when I was a teenager. I guess Lloyd Llewellen and some of Dan Clowes early stuff that I read is not all in print either. Staying in the 80s indie stuff, someone could also do Puma Blues too. These kind of things seem pretty hard to find now as back issues.

Peter Milligan's short run of Batman and Detective stories. They're some of the best ever IMO.

That includes "Dark Knight, Dark City" right? Good stuff.

How about more than one trade of Milligan's Shade? I keep thinking dude's gonna get his props (especially now, given that he's currently writing two ongoing Vertigo series), but it just never happens.

He definitely got some notice for that goofball "X-Force" run with Allred, I don't remember much else, though...

Yeah, Milligan started his Batman run with the brilliant "Dark Knight, Dark City", then followed up with a string of really neat, twisted done-in-one stories: "The Hungry Grass", "Library of Souls", "The Bomb", "And the Executioner Wore Stiletto Heels"; best of all was the disturbing "Identity Crisis" which was adapted, loosely, into an animated series episode with several story elements changed.

I've read somewhere recently that DC have finally decided to release a second volume of Shade, maybe later this year.

Yeah, they announced more Shade volumes starting in Nov or Dec, I think.

Speaking of Milligan, I don't think DC ever collected his full run on Human Target. That's a shame, because most of it was top notch. Apparently there's a new tv series based on Human Target starting next year, maybe that will prompt DC to collect the rest of the series.

rock music legend Rick Springfield

Oh:

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN VOL. 2: THE EDGE OF VISION TP
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Chris Bachalo, Bill Jaaska and Mark Pennington
Cover by Brendan McCarthy
This new, second volume collects SHADE THE CHANGING MAN #7-13 for the first time ever, as Shade and Kathy George continue their epic, mind-bending journey into the heartland of a nation on the trail of The American Scream.
Advance-solicited; on sale November 25 • 192 pg, FC, $19.99 US • MATURE READERS

Your screen name is zarjaz.

Peter Milligan is working on a pretty good Batman story in the current issues of Batman Confidential with Andy Clarke doing the artwork. It is a Batman versus the Russian mob story, which is pretty classic and refreshing considering the state of the Batman.

Shade is one of those things I'd stick in a "glad I bought a nearly-complete run on ebay" thread.

Was it three bucks altogether?

nah, considerably more, but it was well worth it.

Eerie/Creepy. Maybe the first few Vampirella issues, but just for prurience's sake.

There are a few stories/serials from the Skywald horror mags that I'd like to see again -- they had a rough energy. I remember "The Saga of the Victims" and "The Human Gargoyles" being pretty intense.

And like someone said above, looks like there won't be any new Shade the Changing Man TPBs either, since the last came out in 2010. Let's just hope they at least manage to get the full run of Milligan's Human Target collected this time, they're one measly book away from doing that.

― Tuomas, 3. tammikuuta 2012 9:59 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So, the third Human Target TPB never came out... :( I really don't understand DC, they've now collected the first two thirds of Human Target twice (first in the early 00s when the series was new, then again in 2010 and 2011), but the final third has never appeared. All it would've taken is one more TPB to finally collect the full series! I'm never gonna trust DC to reprint any series in full again. (Unless the series has the word "Batman", "Superman", or "Green Lantern" in the title, of course.)

I am guessing that was related to the Human Target TV series - which as cancelled after its second series in 2011.

Yeah, that's my guess too, but it's still hella irritating that they did the same thing twice.

Corto Maltese

― Fox Force Five Punchline (sexyDancer), Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:49 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Complete CORTO MALTESE To Be Published In English For The First Time

woah

Worst thing about that info is that I'd prefer the hardcovers - which means waiting a year and then hoping to get in early enough on a limited edition (assuming they even ship to the UK c.f. Peanuts).

Yeah, I'm conflicted about that - in a way, the paperbacks are 'truer' to the way the material was presented originally, and those IDW hardcovers tend to be pretty expensive. When they say the hardcovers will be 'original art size', I take it to mean the pages won't actually have been shot from the original artwork.

But I bet they will be very desirable festish objects.

I <gulp> have more than enough of the IDW hardcovers to have come to terms with the price. Plus the Don Lawrence Collection sets of both Trigan Empire and Storm redefined what that sort of pricing level meant, really.

I'm assuming they're going to be the size of the Prince Valiant reprints, or maybe the Popeye ones?

That's cool news! The link says the books will be the black & white versions, but they should at least publish The Secret Rose in colour, as colours play an important role in the story of that book. I think The Secret Rose was also the only Corto book to be in colour right from the start (since Pratt obviously realized this story couldn't be properly told in b&w), the other coloured books were originally black and white, so I guess reprinting is more faithful to the originals. (The added colouring, which is not by Pratt, looks really nice, though it also affects the composition of Pratt lines, so your opinion may vary whether it makes the books better or worse.)

The original Corto books are roughly in the Euro "comic album" size, i.e. the same as with Tintin, Asterix, etc (Wikipedia has a nice reference pic of different sized comics), so I guess "original art size" means that? Wouldn't make much sense to print them larger than that, since Pratt's line is quite thick to being with.

Original art is generally larger than the printed version, even with European albums - for example the Tintin originals I've seen are about twice the size of the printed pages. There are a few comics artists who have worked 'same size', but not many. Pratt may be one of them - his artwork isn't really about details or fine lines, obv - but I would be slightly surprised, even so (I've never seen a page of original Corto artwork.)

also, there would be no point in announcing that the hardcovers will be larger than the paperbacks if... they're going to be the same size.

Yeah, I know original art is usually bigger than what's printed, though like you say that may not be the case with Pratt, his line is pretty thick already in the printed book. But even if his original art is bigger, I don't see the point of releasing it in that size? Obviously Pratt (like any other comic artist drawing in larger size) would have meant for their comics to be published in a certain size, so it's not like printing them bigger is truer to the artist's vision or anything.

also, there would be no point in announcing that the hardcovers will be larger than the paperbacks if... they're going to be the same size.

I took the line about "original art-sized" to mean the hardbacks will be in the original Euro size, and the paperbacks will be shrunk to make them more US friendly. If Pratt's original art was, say, twice as big as how it was printed, publishing it in that "original" size would make the books ludicrously big.

The announcement says the paperbacks will be bigger than Asterix/Tintin by at 9 1/4" x 11 3/4" (as opposed to 8 1/2" x 11 1/4"). A bit of googling produces some production art sold a couple of years ago at 12" x 18" which is huge, bigger even than Popeye (10 1/2" x 14 1/2", give or take).

Also, having seen the original artwork for the cover of Destination Moon at full size (Bristol Board 12x18) I'd absolutely want to see these reprints at that size.

EuroComics is working closely with Patrizia Zanotti, Pratt’s long-time collaborator, to present the complete Corto Maltese in a series of twelve quality trade paperbacks in Pratt’s original oversized black and white format. I'm sure they mean the original European album format by this.

IDW already publish a number of large-sized 'artist's editions' exactly reproducing original artwork, and again, I would bet that the hardcover Cortos will closely resemble them, even if they're not directly shot from original pages.

I took the line about "original art-sized" to mean the hardbacks will be in the original Euro size

everything above and: it's Dean Mullaney doing these.

Who's Dean Mullaney?

Okay, I guess I was wrong about the size thing... Still don't understand why anyone would want to read Pratt's thick line in larger size than it was originally printed in, but I guess there's a market for that?

I mean, I understand publishing comics in bigger size if the artist has a fine line and some of the details were lost in the original printings, but that's hardly the case with Pratt.

See my comment on Destination Moon.

Just for example, I think aspiring comic book artists often learn things from studying original artwork - and I'm sure Pratt's mastery of the brush, of black and white contrast, of reduction and subtraction, would be even more evident printed at a larger size.

Mullaney is the creative director of IDW's Library of American Comics line, and was formerly the owner/publisher of Eclipse Comics. He's got a (deserved) reputation for delivering a high quality product (see for example the Noel Sickles and Alex Toth volumes that he edited for IDW).

I didn't know mullaney was with IDW now. Names to conjure with.

Okay, glad to hear the Corto reprints are in good hands. Wasn't the previous English printing of Ballad of the Salt Sea horribly cropped or something? I remember it being discussed on ILC.

The recent American color edition was printed at a small size and inappropriately coloured, yes.

There's an earlier edition published by Collins Harvill that was at the correct size, and with a much better translation than the NBM Corto volumes.

Wasn't Mullaney a creator too?

Nope

I must have been thinking of Dean Motter.

Yep

Wasn't the previous English printing of Ballad of the Salt Sea horribly cropped or something?

see upthread.

So, with volume 8 of the Suicide Squad TPBs coming out this May, DC has *finally* collected the entire Ostrander/Yale run, only 17 years after it finished. Too bad they've never managed the same with Milligan's Shade or Human Target, nor does it seem like they ever will.

It's frankly shocking that they managed, as DC tends to prematurely abandon their reprint projects more often than not (the most recent example I'm aware of being a proposed two-volume collection of Sleeper, for which the second volume was recently solicited and then cancelled).

Yeah, I mentioned Human Target because they've started collecting it and then abandoned it *twice*, which is ridiculous. And it's not like it's a long, multi-volume series, the last time they would've needed to release just one more TPB, and it would've all been reprinted.

I guess I should keep my finger crossed with SS vol. 8, there's still time to cancel it...

Did those English editions of Corto Maltese we talked about upthread ever happen, btw?

Yes, and they're still happening. I think another one of the volumes was just solicited last month.

Like the current Barks reprints, though, they're being released out of order for some reason.

The Barks ones is for a good reason, at least

entire Ostrander/Yale run, only 17 years after it finished.

calling for a recount on this

Oops, yeah, I guess it's 27 actually.

With the Corto Maltese books, the reading order isn't really that important, since they're all stand-alone stories, and some of them are in anachronic order to begin with. You should read Ballad of the Salt Seas first and finish with the last two (Secret Rose and Mu) though, in order to make sense of certain supporting characters reappearing.

And the ultimate fate of Corto is sorta revealed in a piece of dialogue in "The Scorpions of the Desert", another series by Pratt that's set in the WWII and is otherwise unrelated to CM.

IDW haven't got round to Ballad of the Salt Seas yet, I think partly because there have already been two previous English language editions of it - a perfectly fine translation from Collins Harvill published in 1996, and more recently a reduced size, colour version from a company called Universe Publishing in 2012, that should probably be avoided (I don't know who did the translation, or how good it is).

Yeah, that reduced-sized book and the way it was altered from the original comic was discussed upthread.

It's too bad if they haven't published Ballad yet, it really makes to read that one first, as it establishes the relationship between Corto and Rasputin, and it also features an important supporting character who never appears again, but who gets alluded to several times in the following stories. OTOH, I didn't read Ballad first as a kid either (because the Finnish publisher also published the books out of order in the '80s), and I understood most of it just fine.

Awww man, the second volume of Sleeper was cancelled?! DC are beginning to turn this into an art form! What about the 90s Books of Magic?

And it is a shame that Shade, Sandman Mystery Theatre and Human Target are unlikely to ever be collected in full. Ostrander Spectre and Hawkworld, too.

I am happy to see an attempt at collecting the early post-Crisis Batman years in paperback editions (titled The Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective, for Batman and Detective Comics issues respectively). I hope they at least make it up to the point before Knightfall starts up, even if that does mean including the Louise Simonson arc about the kid who can make reality into a giant video game (or as I like to call it, the worst Batman story of all time).

I started buying those new Batman collections but I'm thoroughly expecting DC to shit the bed before they get very far with them. I had been excitedly buying the Batman/Superman Adventures reprints buuuuuut it's been nothing crickets for a while now. And yet I just keep holding out my hand so they can burn me again.

Hasn't Sleeper been collected a few times?

Didn't realise they stalled at Gotham Adventures, too bad as I've never read those. The first two Batman Adventures runs are fantastic. There was a pretty good issue of Back Issue magazine all about B:TAS not too long ago, went into the spin-off comics in good detail.

I would definitely recommend the associated comics to anyone who's a fan of the DCAU. I would definitely not recommend holding your breath for DC to finish collecting all of those comics.

So, with volume 8 of the Suicide Squad TPBs coming out this May, DC has *finally* collected the entire Ostrander/Yale run, only 17 years after it finished. Too bad they've never managed the same with Milligan's Shade or Human Target, nor does it seem like they ever will.

― Tuomas, 7. tammikuuta 2019 16:53

This one did actually come out, so they did manage to collect the entire run, and the Ostrander/Yale Deadshot mini too. Now if they would only do the same with Ostranders' runs on Firestorm, Spectre, or the Martian Manhunter. Or with those Milligans books, etc.