[Yoc]

http://tinyurl.com/chemfq
(Preview page links are included)

Ok guys, I just heard about this PHONE BOOK collection of Marvel GA material.
Includes their restored (redrawn by unknown artists printed on Super Bright white paper).

832 Pages!   

Art inspired from originals by Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, Paul Gustavson, Ben Thompson, Steve Dahlman, Bob Oksner, Al Anders, Irwin Hasen, Paul Lauretta and more.  (My italics)

It Reprints: Marvel Comics #1 and Marvel Mystery Comics #2-12

Is anyone thinking of buying the $125 US book?
You need a forklift to get it home. 

If only they'd release a 'manga' format collection printed on Newsprint with an eye on reproducing the artwork as close as possible to a pulp comic book and sell it for half the price.

[OtherEric]

I'm tempted, but I want to see the preview first.  I still feel badly burnt by the first Marvel Mystery Masterworks and the horrible reproduction therein.

I love the few Marvel Omnibuses I've been able to afford, unlike some others I don't necessarly feel meticulous recreation of the art is necessarly wrong.  We want optimally restored art in some- not all- contexts; and if the human eye and hand tracing is the best way to get a clean copy of the line art so be it.

[JVJ]

I'm tempted, but I want to see the preview first.  I still feel badly burnt by the first Marvel Mystery Masterworks and the horrible reproduction therein.

I was literally STUNNED by the horrendous reproduction in the first volume, too, Eric. I mentioned that to Roy Thomas when I saw him at WonderCon and he said that Marvel had plans to reissue some of the first volumes with higher resolution scans of the black plates, the crudeness of which was totally inexplicable in those early versions. Makes me wonder just who they think the audience will be for the revised edition. I can't see ME extracting $60 worth of added enjoyment out of revisiting those issues. Can you?

(|:{>

[bchat]

I don't care if it's 800 or 8000 pages, unless Stan Lee himself comes to my house to read it to me, I'm not paying $125 for anything.

I'ld be thrilled if Marvel spent more time making reprints of their Golden Age material affordable.  I was happy with the two TPBs they did years ago because it included more than just Captain America, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner.  I wish they would publish more books like that which included a nice variety of their heroes rather than keep producing big books with big price tags.

[OtherEric]

The big problem with a book like that is that you need to figure the cost per issue.  Call each 68 page issue equal to 3 current issues (23 pages of story.)  Multiply that by 12 issues, you've got 36 issues of content.  Figure I'll be buying this one off amazon so it's probably closer to 80-90 dollars.  The per page cost then becomes less than a new issue at my LCS, in a nice hardcover with oversized pages to better show off the art.

But YES, it's a heck of a lot of money to spend in one place, even if the per page cost is pretty good.  I think what it will come down to is I was willing to spend 50 on the first MM Masterwork.  This will give me 2&3, in an improved format, with a collected #1 as well, for less than what the 2nd and third would have cost me had I been willing to buy them after the first one burnt me.

Like I said, I enjoy the few omnibuses I have.  Even if they are slightly unwieldy to read.  The Amazing Fantasy in particular is wonderful to have.  But they represent a big investment at one time.  (Luckily two of the ones I have I've grabbed used and cheap.)

If this was $100 like most of the other omnibuses I would be all over it; I do want to see the Sub-Mariner material in particular.  We'll see how I feel; the real answer is likely to be does amazon still have it in stock after I get my inevitable Amazon gift cards for Christmas.

[Yoc]

I don't care if it's 800 or 8000 pages, unless Stan Lee himself comes to my house to read it to me, I'm not paying $125 for anything.

Hahahahaha!  I love that bchat!

Eric is right about price per page but both Marvel and DC continue to insist on using that insanely bright paper and HORRIBLE colouring.  When you add in the art 'recreations' it just pisses me off so much I don't want them!  They've always been overpriced IMO and I wonder why they don't follow the old 'Hard-cover' for hardcore fans and soft-cover down the road for price conscious collectors?  I bought the soft-cover 'Goldenage Marvel' TPB at a reasonable price and was able to forgive the colouring, etc easier.

-Yoc

[bchat]

The only Timely Golden Age material I've ever seen has been from reprint books: Fantasy Masterpieces, the Masterworks editions, the Golden Age of Marvel tpbs, various reprints including the Milestone Edition of Captain America 1, the odd 70's comic here and there, so I am unable to compare the original printings to any of the reprints.  Any lack of quality in the printing of the material is something I'm oblivious to other than saying to myself "that looks kind of cheesy or dark or weird ... but at least I can read these stories".  If all Marvel did was scan the books into a computer and then print the stories from that, it would be good enough for me.

I wonder why they don't follow the old 'Hard-cover' for hardcore fans and soft-cover down the road for price conscious collectors?

Maybe the demand just isn't there to publish the material in mutliple high-priced volumes.  I would prefer to see something along the lines of "Fantasy Masterpices" where there was a mix of features in every book.  Hey, if AC Comics can make a decent amount of money reprinting Golden Age comics in B&W, there has to be enough support for Marvel's "Big Three" (and friends) to be reprinted in their own monthly title ... in color.

The big problem with a book like that is that you need to figure the cost per issue.  Call each 68 page issue equal to 3 current issues (23 pages of story.)  Multiply that by 12 issues, you've got 36 issues of content.

The only problem with that line of thinking is that you're ommitting the fact that the stories were, aside from any "art recreations", bought and paid for over 60 years ago.  Unless Marvel will be sending-out royalty checks to all of those creators' families, I can't see where it's justifiable to charge almost the same amount of money per page as they do for new comics.  It should easily be half that since, using today's pay scale, they're not paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a writer and/or an artist to produce that amount of work (assuming a writer and artist could actually stay on one book long enough to produce 36 issues of material). What are they paying for then?  A hard cover?  Shiny paper?  Use newsprint, it's cheaper (if it wasn't, newspapers wouldn't be using it, would they?) and the stories read exactly the same way as they would on the fancy paper.  And who the heck wants to handle an 800 page comic?  Comics are meant to be "light reading material", not something that becomes the equivalent of decent upper-body work-out.

[OtherEric]

The only problem with that line of thinking is that you're ommitting the fact that the stories were, aside from any "art recreations", bought and paid for over 60 years ago.  Unless Marvel will be sending-out royalty checks to all of those creators' families, I can't see where it's justifiable to charge almost the same amount of money per page as they do for new comics. 

They do send out payments to the creators or their estates; I don't think they're technically 'royalties' since Marvel is not required to do so.

[John C]

I was going to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt, but apart from the fact that each page of the book is going to cost more than the original comic did (I get fifteen cents per page, right?), any modern book that big is going to fall apart as you read it, since they just glue the pages to the spine.  It's complete nonsense and shows that the companies are just trying to drag every penny they can from their diminishing fanbase.

Especially when you're competing with free-but-illegal downloads, it might be nice to put out a quality product at a reasonable price so that potential customers see the value in paying you.

I know people who have never read comic books before who buy the DC Showcase volumes--even stuff that's not mainstream.  That's how you gain marketshare.  You take your bought-and-paid-for library, and you push it onto the market as cheaply as possible to get it in front of eyeballs.  OK, so maybe not Batman and the Outsiders (which I think you can still find cheaper as individual back issues...), but some of them are good ideas!

[OtherEric]

I was going to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt, but apart from the fact that each page of the book is going to cost more than the original comic did (I get fifteen cents per page, right?), any modern book that big is going to fall apart as you read it, since they just glue the pages to the spine.  It's complete nonsense and shows that the companies are just trying to drag every penny they can from their diminishing fanbase.

Especially when you're competing with free-but-illegal downloads, it might be nice to put out a quality product at a reasonable price so that potential customers see the value in paying you.

Not sure how I wound up being the defender of the omnibuses, but since I am...

The signatures are sewn in, not glued to the spine.  I have not had the slightest problem with the books holding together.  Even the Amazing Spider Man book- which is over 1000 pages!- has held up just fine.

I'm happy to agree that the total cost they wind up with is probably way too high in many ways.   But, assuming you're happy with the actual content you're paying for, I think the value of the books- both in production value and per page cost- is quite good. 

[John C]

The signatures are sewn in, not glued to the spine.  I have not had the slightest problem with the books holding together.  Even the Amazing Spider Man book- which is over 1000 pages!- has held up just fine.

That's actually astonishing.  I didn't think anybody was set up to do that anymore.

...Which, actually, probably explains the cost.

[JVJ]

The signatures are sewn in, not glued to the spine.  I have not had the slightest problem with the books holding together.  Even the Amazing Spider Man book- which is over 1000 pages!- has held up just fine.

That's actually astonishing.  I didn't think anybody was set up to do that anymore.

...Which, actually, probably explains the cost.

When I published the Kinstler book, JC, the sewn binding and the use of cloth instead of paper for the cover were simply artistic choices I made. Had a "real" publisher been making the decisions, I'm certain that "glued" and "paper" would have won out over my choices of sewn and cloth, simply for economic reasons. Yes, it's adds SOMEWHAT to the cost, but it's not a significant amount when printing more than 5000 copies. No, I think that the cost is probably an attempt to restrain the public from rising up and revolting over the excessive costs of the entire Masterworks volumes. Take it from someone who recently paid a far eastern printer, $59.95 for the MW series is a rip-off of grand proportions.

For comparison, look at the recent Norman Saunders book, EASILY TWO Masterworks volumes worth of paper, yet it is $39.95 retail. My friend John Fleskes is a publisher and he prices his books in the same range - $25-$40 - and they (see the Steve Rude "Artist in Motion", Gary Gianni "The Prince Valiant Page", "James Bama", William Stout "Prehistoric Murals", etc.) are equally (or in most cases MORE) complex and larger than the Masterworks volumes. Marvel is charging what the market will bear. If I wasn't a die-hard comic artist historian and if I didn't get a deep discount from my friend Bud Plant, I guarantee you that I'd not be buying them. Even with both of those factors, I still grit my teeth every time one comes out because I know I'm being overcharged for, IMHO, an inferior product.

C'est la vie.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Mr. Izaj]

 Personally, I'll stick to the Masterworks. Since I allready have volumes 1 & 2 of the Marvel Mystery Comics Masterworks, I'll just get volume 3.