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Doug Centers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 February 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 5591
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 8:39am | IP Logged | 1
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"Marvel Tales. I didn't know they were reprints until I was much older..."
...
I have a vivid memory of the first time I found out Marvel Tales were reprints. While at the spinner rack of my local drug store my ten year old self was browsing thru a Marvel Tales issue when a grizzled looking twenty-something guy told me "You don't want that, those are all reprints!". I sheepishly returned the comic to the rack . After he left I picked it back out and bought it. I had no clue what a reprint was, they were all new stories to me.
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Charles Valderrama
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4830
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 10:01am | IP Logged | 2
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Marvel Tales, Marvel's Greatest Comics & Marvel Triple Action where reprint titles that I appreciated since it presented me with stories I had missed out on as a young reader. Of course to the older readers they'd be worthless but at the time Marvel was interested in getting the best of their product to ALL of their readership.
Good memories.
-C!
Edited by Charles Valderrama on 31 January 2016 at 10:03am
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Bill Guerra
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 March 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 1072
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 10:26am | IP Logged | 3
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I loved Marvel Tales! I knew they were reprints, but I still enjoyed reading the stories and they came with a new cover drawn by someone like Mike Zeck or Todd McFarlane. Heck, sometimes they even included a short back-up story about a lesser known character!
I wish Marvel still put out stuff like that.
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 11:16am | IP Logged | 4
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Well, one writer put it in so many words, saying anyone who was not familiar with the backstory had no business reading his current work. Completely forgetting, of course, that there was a time when even he was new to reading comics -- and when they were completely accessible to everyone!!
***
Sounds absurd. Are we all expected to be ancient, eternal beings who have been reading forever?
Someone once suggested to me that comics should have a page (inside front cover) with backstory/text. Oh great, there's a fantastic-looking Spider-Man comic on the shelves, but I must read a page of text first.
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Steve De Young
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 April 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 3507
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | 5
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How about the better old days when a "bold new direction" wasn't needed, because the audience turned over often enough that the material was alway "new" to most of them? When I started reading Superman and Batman adventures in the late Fifties the characters were so little changed from what they had been ten or fifteen years before that "Annuals" could be produced entirely from reprints of those past years and I -- as well as most readers, I suspect -- was none the wiser. ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Sesame Street has been on for decades, and every now and then they still use old vignettes from years and years ago, which they can get away with, since pretty much nobody who was watching Sesame Street 40 years ago is still watching it now (except a few parents).
Imagine if a bunch of 40 year old Sesame Street viewers started demanding continuity, and on screen explanations for what happened to old human characters, and insisted on an explanation as to why the puppet characters aged at a different rate?
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2364
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 6
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Of late, Marvel has been restarting series using different adjectives in the titles, like ASTONISHING THOR after it was ASTONISHING X-MEN for a while, UNCANNY AVENGERS after it was UNCANNY X-MEN forever, SUPERIOR went from SPIDER-MAN to IRON MAN, and now it's TOTALLY AWESOME HULK after being INVINCIBLE HULK for a while, even though INCREDIBLE HULK always seemed like his full name.
You'd think this would make the restarts a little bit easier to keep track of, but it doesn't.
I missed a few years there, but I would like to buy the collected editions and catch up on all the DAREDEVILs from the last ten years or so, but I have no idea how many there are, what they're called, or what order to read them in.
How in the world the Big Two think that fostering confusion will help their sales is beyond me.
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17699
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | 7
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Sesame Street has been on for decades, and every now and then they still use
old vignettes from years and years ago, which they can get away with, since
pretty much nobody who was watching Sesame Street 40 years ago is still
watching it now (except a few parents).
—
Archie was able to do something similar with their comics for many years.
Now...
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Conrad Teves
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 2230
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | 8
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Eric>>TOTALLY AWESOME HULK <<
I though you were joking, but then Google...
What an abysmal name...
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133316
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | 9
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Someone once suggested to me that comics should have a page (inside front cover) with backstory/text. Oh great, there's a fantastic-looking Spider-Man comic on the shelves, but I must read a page of text first.••• One of the good things Shooter did was getting rid of the top copy on the splash pages. He insisted that all that information should be IN the issue, EVERY issue. He was right. Of course, that can make reading the stories in trade paperback collections seem a bit "lumpy," but this is where we need to remember that the trades are not the original form, and should not be the INTENDED form. Yet even Hollywood plays this game, and for much the same reasons: the fans have taken over, and are giving themselves what they want. TV survived for decades without the need of a "Peviously on..." recap EVERY WEEK. Not any more.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | 10
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TOTALLY AWESOME HULK••• You know what Stan Lee didn't do? He didn't write for the lowest common denominator.
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Brad Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 December 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1714
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | 11
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I fear there are no "better alternatives" anymore. They are all dead.
Everything the major comic companies do just depresses me.
All I can do is read the old stuff, before the dark times, before the Direct Sales Market, and enjoy what once brought me happiness and excitement.
To me, my "golden era" of comics is from the Marvel Age (1962) to about 1983-4. A few things in 1985 still bring me joy, but not much after that, if I am being honest with myself.
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Darin Henry
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Joined: 30 September 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 61
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| Posted: 31 January 2016 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | 12
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Brad, I absolutely agree with you about the Golden Era though I did find the late 90s enjoyable until Jemas and Quesada took over. And Marvel Tales and Marvel Super Action were crucial to making me a dedicated fan of Spider-Man and the Avengers. Obviously, the direct market had no use for reprint titles since they lowered demand for the original (higher-priced) back issues.
I don't see how anyone starts reading comics as a kid anymore. The only way 8 year old me could have ever seen comics was because they were sold in places that most parents were already going to at least once a month (like department stores, drug stores or convenience stores). So if I liked the current issue of Fantastic Four, I had a decent chance of finding the next issue when my mom went back to the drug store a week or three later.
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