Superman Chronicles.....Over??

[Xon-Ur]

They probably don't want people to see good Superman and realize what a mess the current version is.

I think it's less that and more a case of waiting for a media tie in. I have a feeling there will be a glut of product tying in to Batman V Superman, and while I have zero interest in that movie, it's good for reprints and collections.

Yeah, that conspiracy theory really stands up to scrutiny when right now they're actually publishing an older incarnation of Superman. Ye gads.

It remains to be seen just what's going to be done with that Iconic version of Superman. However, I agree there's no conspiracy.

[Ishmael]

In order for the Chronicles to go forward, the Archives have to go forward. That's how it's been thusfar--since the Archives make it cheaper to do Chronicles..

Yeah, they really need to jump start the Archives again. I loved those books more than Marvel's masterworks series (which is also good). They were really close to some meaty stuff for Batman, Superman, and the JLA.

[Jim Kelly]

Yeah, that conspiracy theory really stands up to scrutiny when right now they're actually publishing an older incarnation of Superman. Ye gads.

Explain, please.

[JBatmanFan05]

People should write letters & emails to get these TPB series running again. I do.

[Kuwagaton]

I've been trying to get to DC about reprints of the Bronze Age Superman and Shazam comics. They don't necessarily have the same audience as Golden Age at all (the Bates/Maggin stuff would slay the Adult Swim generation), and I think it's fair to represent. If you don't go back far enough in age or don't have the help from older family/friends, getting say... 1969-1975 is a total pain in the ass and none of the hundreds of dollars I'll inevitably spend will go to DC. I don't want collector copies, I just want to have the stories and have them not crumble to dust if I show my kids or grandkids.

[Jim Kelly]

DC is rather backward in getting to their reprints. Seems to me they're about ten to twenty years off. Ideally they want to have books out there for people when they hit their twenties and thirties. This seems to be the prime buying time, because young adults have jobs and money and want to get stuff they were denied as kids. So for people from my generation--growing up in the '60s and '70s--the time to do those collections was in the '80s and '90s. The '40s and '50s should have been done in the '70s. Now that people who were kids in the '80s and '90s are young adults, all of this should be collected, so they can buy it.

As that's not going to happen, younger adults should try making friends with the 50 and 60 year olds. Some of us don't have anybody to give our collections to and we would rather give them (or sell them for reasonable prices) to people we know will get something out of these comics rather than people who are just in it to make a profit.

Myself, I never buy the slabbed comics. Now that I'm starting to look for older comics, I might relent and buy a few just because that's the only way to get some comics in good or better condition. But I don't buy comics to keep them slabbed, never to be read or looked at. I have a feeling, though, that speculators buy up all the good condition comics, get them slabbed, and then sell them for inflated prices on eBay.

[superduperman]

In order for the Chronicles to go forward, the Archives have to go forward. That's how it's been thusfar--since the Archives make it cheaper to do Chronicles.

But because the Archives go title by title, while the Chronicles go in chronological order across titles, there are certain comics that need to reprinted in the Archives first, before more Chronicles become possible. However, the Archives seem to be well enough ahead at this this point for a few more Chronicles to come out. I'm not sure what's the hold up.

There's always been this gulf where very few Superman stories have been reprinted because they're neither seen as the classic "Golden Age" or as the classic "Silver Age." Years ago, I labelled this period as the Lost Decade--the period between 1947 and 1958--and I did an incomplete list at that time of what stories had been reprinted. The theory being that the more a story is reprinted the more likely it will be reprinted again--as it becomes progressively cheaper to reprint reprints.

In the meantime, since I made the Lost Decade list, there have been many more reprints--so some of the Lost Decade has been filled in, but it still remains a period in Superman history that has been overlooked.

There hasn't been that much of Superman from between 1967 and 1986 that's been reprinted either. Certain specific stories get reprinted a lot, but much hasn't. I never gave that a lot of thought, because these issues seemed relatively recent and easy to obtain as back issues. But as the years go by, this period is also in danger of being overlooked.

I'd love to see the "in-between" years of the late forties and early fifties. That's why I was so happy to hear about the Chronicles. I finally get to read them. Then they stop about the end of WW2. Just like they always do with these things. I think part of the problem is that so many of these stories have been retold a gajillion times that they don't need yet another reprinting. Like someone else said, we don't need another "Super-Special-Edition" version of the Death of Superman or whatever. It's not even canon anymore! What I'd really like to see is a collection of Superboy stories. I know they put out one volume a few years ago but nothing else came after.

[Uncanny Mutie]

Younger adults should try making friends with the 50 and 60 year olds. Some of us don't have anybody to give our collections to and we would rather give them (or sell them for reasonable prices) to people we know will get something out of these comics rather than people who are just in it to make a profit.

I wholeheartedly agree!!! Will you be my friend, Jim Kelly? Pleeeease?

[andersonh1]

Superduperman, IDW is reprinting the Superman newspaper strips and have hit the 1950s. Between them and the old Kitchen Sink edition, all the Sunday strips from the 40s are in print, and the first 50s volume (the Atomic Age) is out. They're well worth checking out, especially since the comic reprints haven't progressed that far.