Monday, February 19, 2007

I Read It All In Black and White.


Ok they finally got me. For quite some time now Marvel and DC comics have been putting out reprints of classic material that was on cheap paper and in black and white. Having been raised on the originals that were in color I have never seen the wisdom nor the economics that would not allow them to publish them on the same paper but not in color. I would be willing to pay the few dollars more to have them in color. At present they are selling for around $17 a book in black and white. Wouldn’t most people be willing to spend $20 to $25 to see them in color? Recently I got tired of waiting. I bought one of the Essentials from Marvel and two of the Showcase from DC. Now those of you old enough to remember Marvel and some other companies did black and white magazines in the 1970’s. I had to keep this in mind while reading them and it helped me to enjoy them more. In some cases that was not necessary. Artist like Gene Colan and Wayne Boring actually looked better in black and white. Now with these reprints I still missed the same things that I missed in other paperback reprints. I miss the old advertisements and the letters pages as well as the color. However, I am hooked. The only other way to get every thing I miss is to buy the originals and most of the time I can’t afford that. So to help keep finances down I will buy these black and white books. I recently purchased the one you see above but have not yet read it. That is another thing that helped. The ones I have read so far are ones that I never read when they were first published. That way I was not reminded of what it looked like in color. Now I did read Aquaman in color but none of the stories that are published in this volume. Anyway for those of you who have resisted reading these books because they are in black and white you may want to keep some of this in mind. It may help you enjoy reading them more. For those of you who still want to wait till they are in color your wait may not be too long. Once I start joining the band wagon they usually start publishing exactly what I wanted in a few months. But for a different look at the classics I am starting to like the black and white editions.

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