endless reprints

[rodney-selfhelpbikeco@juno.com]

>Second, those letters in the letters columns have been *selected* by 
>the comic's editorial staff themselves. So, as a matter of fact, it's 
>highly debatable if such letter columns provide a neutral source of 
>information.

Honestly, I can't argue this fact, as I suspect it myself.  But, it does prove that there are at least some newer readers.  Regardless of the book that it's printed in, I do think that it's important for there to be an *affordable* source for young/new readers to gain access to these stories.  From what I've seen, the easiest reprint of Only a Poor Old Man that I've seen is the one in US 195, and anyone who's seen that knows that it's so muddy and unattractive that it buries the charm of the story.  Personaly, I think I've got about 6 different copies of that story, and I could live without another one, but knowing that a few readers (at least) will read it for the first time makes it worthwhile to me.


>What bothers me is that re-reprints are published as fillers in 
>an expensive prestige format comic. For me, it makes both the stories 
>and the $6,95 prestige format look *very* cheap. 

I agree to a certain extent (the new WDCS issues are lacking Murray, which I'd love to see), and I think it's just a matter of the Gemstone staff getting the photo-stats from Western for some of these lesser seen gems.  Still, I was worried that the first few prestige issues were so full of new material (much of it that I'm not particularly fond of, though there has been some unsuspected non-Rosa, Barks, Van Horn gems).  

I think that the 32 page titles should contain an *occasional* Barks story, but I don't see that happening at the moment.  There's no better way to expose young audiences to classic material than by slipping it into the titles that are geared toward them once in awhile.

rodney.





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