Two thirds of the comics I got on a recent new release day featured George Pérez art, and considering we lost the big fella a few years ago, that's not a bad ratio.
I get on average about one American monthly comic book every week - gotta keep that fix under control somehow - and I could never go cold turkey on new comics. But a sizable proportion of the ones I have been buying in the past couple of years are comics that were originally published years ago, and I've never been able to find them in any form until now.
They call them facsimiles, and I love them so very, very much. I don't think of them as artificial copies, they're just the latest printing of a comic that has not been in print for a very long time.
I've been unable to resist the new editions of Treasury comics from the 1970s that I only ever saw in the house ads of the time, and never in the flesh, and now I can feast on the Batman art has never looked bigger or brighter, and watch Superman race the Flash in the largest format possible.
These reissues are also wonderful for plugging those annoying holes in the collection. I've had the first and fourth issues of the wonderful JLA/Avengers crossover since they came out, but could never find copies of the middle two issues due to reprint problems, and then they were just available at the local comic store to pick up.
And I always wanted the 200th issue of Justice League of America, especially with pages of Bolland's Batman taking on Black Canary and Green Arrow and the facsimile copy of that I just snapped up was even in that Treasury format.
These blasts from the past still have just as many thrills as they did when they were first published, and I still grab random issues when I'm at the comic shop. Why not get the first Sgt Rock comic, or a very special issue of the X-Men? They still count as something new to me.
Posts
