Also it appears to leave out Swamp Thing’s appearance in Super Friends #28.

§ March 17th, 2017 § Filed under publishing, swamp thing § 7 Comments

There were some good comments regarding DC’s “hardcover/softcover” publishing move for their comics in the 1980s. I plan on returning to the topic soon, but, like I said in that post, I still want to ask my old boss Ralph a question or two about how they sold for him/what customer reaction was like to this program, since that was just before my comics retailin’ time. What I’m really curious about is if anyone pooh-poohed that newfangled New Teen Titans comic on the fancy Baxter paper and just stuck with the regular Tales of the Teen Titans series, figuring the stories will get reprinted there eventually anyway, for a cheaper cover price. Anyway, I’ll see if I can get any more info about customer buying patterns on these books from Ralph, and I don’t see why I wouldn’t, since it’s only been a little over 30 years and surely still fresh on his mind.

In other publishing news, I’ve been emailed and tweeted at regarding the Swamp Thing Bronze Age Omnibus, with plenty of details as to what said omnibus would contain at that link. Now, I’ve discussed this forthcoming volume before, about a year ago, at which point its Amazon listing described it (and still describes it) only as containing House of Secrets #92 and Swamp Thing (first series) #1 through the unpublished #25 (which was likely a typo).

The newer content listing contains a boatload of Swampy comics, much more than that older listing. It almost seems like it’s too much for one volume, but a quick comparison to what’s in my Man-Thing Omnibus shows it’d be about the same size. I forget how huge these volumes can be. Also, given what’s in the book means there won’t be a Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age Vol. 2 since we’ll be well into the 1980s with any follow-up material, which is the Copper Age or whatever name people are trying to saddle that particular period of comics with in order to make them sound more marketable.

Anyway, this will be the first time the majority of the post-Wrightson issues of the original series will be reprinted, I believe (after getting #11 – #13 reprinted a few years back in a hardcover), and the first comprehensive reprinting of the pre-Alan Moore Saga of the Swamp Thing, though leaving out #19, the conclusion of Marty Pasko’s run on the book. Maybe it’s seen as a…transitional issue, between Pasko’s run and the beginning of Moore’s run, though traditionally Moore’s first issue on the series, #20, has been seen as the transitional issue, left out of early trade paperback reprintings of his initial storyline. And #18 seems like a weird issue to stop on, as it was a reprint of #10 from the original series, with 4 pages of new wraparound by the then-current creative team, and something of a cliffhanger-y issue to boot. Does this mean Original Series #10 will appear twice in this book? Again, like the inclusion of issue #25 in the initial Amazon listing, maybe this too is just a typo and Saga of the Swamp Thing #19 will be in here. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

7 Responses to “Also it appears to leave out Swamp Thing’s appearance in Super Friends #28.”

  • BobH says:

    “What I’m really curious about is if anyone pooh-poohed that newfangled New Teen Titans comic on the fancy Baxter paper and just stuck with the regular Tales of the Teen Titans series, figuring the stories will get reprinted there eventually anyway, for a cheaper cover price.”

    That technically was my plan, but more since the fancy Baxter paper version wasn’t available to me (but don’t ignore the price issue. The jump from 75 cents to $1.25 is like a jump from $3 to $5 now, which even Marvel doesn’t do. Adding in that you’d still have to get the 75 cent one for a year to get the full story means buying Titans and Legion went from $1.50 to $4 a month, and at age 14 I didn’t even have a job to get a raise at to pay for that). That got derailed by the growing lack of availability of either version locally by the time the reprints started.

    Of course, if anyone was doing that, they suddenly had a year of back issues they had to track down when the reprints ended…

  • Bruce Baugh says:

    The other thing I remember about the early Baxter books is that coloring was kind of ghastly at first. It took them some issues to get the hang of coloring for printing on so much brighter, whiter paper. They did get that sorted out, but in the meantime here I was having missed some issues, filling in those the next year with the newsprint versions, and so the quality of my collection went up and down and up.

  • Chris G says:

    I was maybe 12 when I was first able to buy comics consistently at the same place on a somewhat regular basis using my own money, and figured that if I started with the reprint Legion book I’d save money and get more of the story. I wound up buying the entire Baxter run out of back issue boxes years later.

  • John says:

    I was pondering, was the Super Friends book omitted because it technically was a masquerade costume/costume-come-to-life, and not Swampy? …No idea

  • Mikester says:

    John – I’m sure that’s why they left it out, since it wasn’t really Swamp Thing. Mostly I was just being facetious with my post’s title. :)

  • Pete says:

    I was there for the start of the Teen Titans/LSH/Outsiders Baxter & newsprint editions, and I always went for the newsprint editions because with my limited allowance I could buy way more comics at 75 cents each than at the $1.25 price, and I didn’t see that big of an advantage to the Baxter paper. It’s so strange to be remembering when 75 cents was seen as much better value as opposed to something priced over a dollar, but that was only a little over 30 years ago!

  • Chris G says:

    Well, that 50 cents was 2/3 the cost of another 75 cent comic. When you’ve got maybe four or five bucks a week to spend on comics that’s a lot.