So I was taking a Previews order from one of our customers today, and this customer, who gets every, and I mean every, DC Archives that’s published, is skipping the Kamandi Archives. I hope that’s not an ill omen for this particular release.
Just on a whim, I thought I’d see how much it would cost to buy issues 1 through 10 of Kamandi, which are reprinted in the Archive edition. I pulled the cheapest copies we had of each issue out of our back issue bins…the most expensive was #1, in VG+ for about thirteen bucks. The cheapest was a Fr/G copy of #5 for $1.20. Altogether…our copies of #1 – #10 came to $49.95, exactly four cents cheaper than the cost of the Archives.
If you can find a run of issues all in Good condition, and priced strictly by Overstreet, it would run about $36.00. Then again, if they were all in Near Mint, it would cost you a cool $375, so the Archives definitely looks like a bargain then.
I would have liked to have seen this in DC’s new $10 manga-sized reprint format, but it looks like that’s reserved for material that the general public may recognize, while Kamandi is almost exclusively for the comic-collector, Kirby-fan crowd.
The black and white Showcase volumes would have been okay, I guess, but previous black and white Kirby reprints (from both Marvel and DC) have failed to impress. There needs to be some color on that Kirby, gosh darn it!
