Tuesday, May 15, 2007

New TPBs later this year?

From a poster on the ComicBloc message boards who attended the Bristol comic convention in England this past weekend (boldface added by me):

I attended the Bristol comics expo this weekend and upon spotting Bob Wayne I rushed over to ask him some burning questions. I asked Bob if there was a chance that any of the O'Neil/Cowen QUESTION sries would be collected, would Ostrander Suicide Squad be collected and would any more of the Levitz era legion would be collected. Bob was very kind and told me that I should be very happy towards the end of the year in realtion to the O'Neil/Cowen Question. He said that theres a very strong possibility of the Ostrander Suicide Squad but in a showcase format and he hinted that there will be futher trades of the levitz legion probably starting with when Giffen ame on-board.

I'd make that a six-issue TPB reprinting 284-289 (Nullport, Dr. Regulus, Queen Projectra), which would start with Levitz's first issue as writer, and you'd have three issues of Pat Broderick and three of Giffen. That would dovetail nicely with a reissue of the Great Darkness Saga (bring it back in print), which already reprints 290-294. A third volume might reprint 295-299 or 300. Then a fourth volume would bring us up to issue 306, which might be a good point to stop at since issue 307 was the first of Giffen's new art style (Omen & Prophet). Here's the GCD page with all of the v2 covers under discussion.

6 comments:

Eric TF Bat said...

I was rereading my TPB of The Great Darkness Saga a couple of nights ago, and I was struck by how bad the colouring was. Colours were bleeding all over the place, and there were serious errors on just about every page. The artist who did most of it was dreadfully muddy too -- Giffen's one short section was the only one I liked. It really let the story down, I thought. Is the colouring just a side effect of the rushed job of putting it into the TPB format, do you think? Or was it genuinely bad and I've just forgotten?

Michael said...

Most of the older stuff that's reprinted in trades these days is, I believe, recolored (the Showcase volumes excepted, of course). The problem is that the coloring for newsprint doesn't work the same when coloring for higher-quality paper, so it sounds like they might have kept the old coloring instead of getting it redone for the trade. I'm sure that a new version of the Great Darkness would be recolored.

I just checked my copy and it doesn't appear too bad.

Mr. Kayak said...

planeta deagostini, who publishes dc comics in italy, just announced that their previously solicited reprint of levitz's legion is postponed indefinitly.
planeta is a very bad publishing house that use to reprint a lot of old dc stuff not even ever reprinted by dc by scanning the very floppies. so, could it mean they heard an official voice from dc of an official reprint of those old stories?
anyway, more than those tps (i've already got those stories) i'd like to see the archives series continue... where's vol.13? :-(

Terence Chua said...

Being old enough to remember flexographic printing (AGH! MY EYES!), the coloring on the GDC trade definitely isn't that bad.

Matthew E said...

I'd make that a six-issue TPB reprinting 284-289 (Nullport, Dr. Regulus, Queen Projectra), which would start with Levitz's first issue as writer, and you'd have three issues of Pat Broderick and three of Giffen. That would dovetail nicely with a reissue of the Great Darkness Saga (bring it back in print), which already reprints 290-294. A third volume might reprint 295-299 or 300. Then a fourth volume would bring us up to issue 306, which might be a good point to stop at since issue 307 was the first of Giffen's new art style (Omen & Prophet).

You'd have to have the first Annual in there somewhere too. Where would that fit chronologically... with your first six?

Michael said...

It would have to fit in with the first set, since it introduces Invisible Kid, who appears in the Great Darkness storyline and TPB. That book had five issues plus an Annual, so putting 284-289 plus the Annual makes sense.