Reissue Wishlist

[redstatecap]

If you could have something from Marvel's past reissued in TPB/HC format (i.e. not a black&white "Essentials") what would it be?
The only criteria is that it should to be at least 4-6 issues long.
My top wish is for a nice HC of "The Invaders." The whole run plus Annuals, GS, and What Ifs.
My second vote would be for a reissue of Stern&Byrne's CA run #247-255.

RSC

[Doctor Bong]

I would really like them to reissue the graphic novel "Emperor Doom".

[dlw66]

Either on the Groovy 70's thread or the Avengers ROM thread, several of us were pining for a DVD-ROM of some of Marvel's 70's titles, like Amazing Adventure/Inhumans, Super-Villain Team-Up, Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-In-One, Defenders...

I think a hardcover collection of the FF vs. Galactus would be a nice keepsake -- there would be a couple of Lee/Kirby stories, a Thomas/Buscema story, the next one I believe was by Englehart/Buscema, and a few more.

[redstatecap]

I've got Emperor Doom. Great one-shot.

RSC

[ozbot]

This is a hard question because I already have most everything I could want. So it would probably be more for the principle of the thing, I guess. One of the miniseries that I really enjoyed that seems forgotton is the Mephisto Vs. limited series in the mid 80's. It had Mephsito engaging with various marvel heroes, but each issue featured a different cast but still managed to build upon the previous. In the end, you finally realize what Mephisto's long and twisted road of a plan it was. Nothing earth-shattering or "everything you know is wrong" event, but a solid story with some interesting character interaction moments.

[The Night Phantom]

I’m not sure this counts as “trade paperback” format, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some treasury-sized reprints of originally standard-size comics. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on the Marvel Treasury Edition reprinting the introduction of the Silver Surfer and Galactus in FF #48–50 (plus #s 6 & 11), but a newly produced edition would be just fine. I also wouldn’t mind seeing the original Secret Wars collected in this format (even if split among 2–3 issues). I don’t have any other specific treasury-sized-reprint suggestions, but…think big. More cosmic stories (from Thor, Avengers, ’60s and ’80s Silver Surfer, et al.)…power-packing artists like Jack Kirby and John Buscema…maybe even some ’70s horror. (Now that I’m thinking big and thinking Kirby…maybe Devil Dinosaur…?!?)

[The Night Phantom]

It looks like I killed the thread (maybe I should blame Devil Dinosaur)…or maybe a lot of people (myself included) feel the way Ozbot does: either we already have the stories we would want and therefore don’t need them newly collected; or else the stories we would consider buying in a new collection are stories we’re not terribly familiar with, and therefore we hesitate to say in advance that we would indeed buy such collections.

Case in point: I already own the originals of Emperor Doom (suggested by Ua2) and Mephisto Vs.… (suggested by Ozbot). I think both are great suggestions, in the sense that I feel these are entertaining stories worth making available to today’s comics-buying public…but I personally have no interest in buying such hypothetical volumes since I’m already satisfied by the copies I own.

That reissue quandary is what led me to the idea of treasury editions, since they represent a means of presenting already familiar stories with enough additional value to prompt me to buy again. Doug’s suggestion of DVD-ROM editions is in a similar vein.

Not long after my earlier post, I put my money where my mouth is and hunted down some old treasury-sized comics. I didn’t get that FF–Galactus–Silver Surfer story I want, but among others I did manage to pick up Marvel Treasury Edition #s 3 & 14: the first re-presents a Thor–Hercules saga from Thor #125–130 (by Lee, Kirby, and Colletta); the second, Amazing Spider-Man #100–102, featuring the Lizard, the debut of Morbius, and a Spider-Man with four extra arms (by Lee, Kane, and Giacoia). I’d never read the Thor stories before, whereas I was already familiar with the Spidey tales. I felt that the treasury size really did lend power to the stories, even though they were not originally conceived for this format.

What are the essential criteria for comics being successfuly upsized to treasury size? In my opinion:

• The artwork must be rather eye-pleasing (merely so-so artwork might even suffer in the translation).
  
• The notion of large size must already be present within the artwork—not necessarily pictures of large people, places, and things, but artwork that makes use of large panels, wide vista shots, and other devices that would enhance and be enhanced by the larger page size.
  
• The best candidates are stories in which both the writing and the artwork invoke “big” emotion. I initially thought of cosmic stories for this format, and I suppose they fit this criterion to the extent that they evince great awe—but other emotions, such as horror, excitement, and love, can serve this same purpose, so long as they are present in great quantity.
  
• The writing should be good—not necessarily great, but good enough to shepherd the reader through the difficulties of the oversized format (it’s a little harder to page through, depending on your comics-reading habits—it can pose problems in storage—and it can be a lot harder to pay for, too!). Ideally the writing should be superlative, but the enjoyability of “merely” good stories might be greatly enhanced by the format if the other criteria are strong enough.

[dlw66]

A nice way to collect reprints based on a given creator is Marvel's hardcover series "Marvel Visionaries: XXXXX". So far, I believe there are editions honoring Lee, Kirby (2 volumes), Ditko (?), Thomas, Romita, and a January John Buscema book. There are also softcover books in a similar vein for Kane and Steranko.

[The Night Phantom]

I don’t follow the Visionaries line, but I know there are also several volumes for Byrne’s FF. All the ones I know of are softcover.

I gave a stab at establishing criteria for good candidates for treasury-sized reprints. What about regular-size reprint volumes (softcover or hard-)? What kind of works do you think is best suited for reprint collections? If you would seriously consider buying volumes that solely reprint material you already own, what criteria would lead you to “double-dip”?

[dlw66]

I will "double dip" on a story or run that I particularly love. My main motivation to buy twice is that I just don't want to take the time (or risk injury to) the original issues. Byrne's FF run is worth mentioning here, as is the 3-volume Miller DD run. Of course, Dark Knight, Marvels, Kingdom Come fall into this category as well.

[Shiryu]

There is also a Perez visionaires... I have it ;D
It contains stories from his first Avengers run, like Taskmaster 1°app