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Messages - Hiram Lodge

#1
Reviews / Re: Some reviews.
June 26, 2017, 02:51:09 AM
OK. You've got me convinced. I had previously said that I would not buy the Sabrina book because it wasn't in color. I have just changed my mind. I will buy it.
#2
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 31, 2017, 04:52:19 AM
Quote from: Hiram Lodge on March 29, 2017, 08:48:20 PM
It says the Sabrina book is black and white. That's probably going to be a dealbreaker for me. It's a shame that they aren't printing it the way these comics were originally published.


The information contained in the solicitation is contradictory, but you are in error in believing that this book contains reprints of every story from the 77 issues of SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH published from 1971-1983. If that were true, this book would need to be close to 2000 pages.

QuoteComplete Sabrina The Teenage Witch 1962-1971 (TR)
It's back to the beginning with Sabrina in this first of a new series compiling the entire history of everyone's favorite Teenage Witch! This graphic novel chronologically collects all the stories starring Sabrina the Teenage Witch from 1962 to 1965.
Script: Various
Art: Various
Cover: Various
ISBN-13: 978-1-93697-594-5
$9.99 U.S./$10.99 CAN
TR
512 pp, black & white
Direct Market On-Sale Date: 6/7

The title of the book says "Complete ... 1962-1971", where the actual solicitation copy cites instead the years 1962-1965. The solicitation copy claims the book is 512 pages (and the cover image confirms that the book indeed contains "Over 500 Pages of Comics"). Since the years 1962-1965 would only account for Sabrina's earliest appearances within the pages of ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE, clearly that would not add up to over 500 pages of comics, so we can assume that solicitation copy to be the error, and the title's citation of the years 1962-1971 to be the accurate description of what the book actually contains. What that translates to is all of Sabrina's appearances in ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE and ARCHIE'S TV LAUGH-OUT (just the Sabrina stories from the first ten 52-page Giant-size issues, published from December 1969 through November 1971), plus the entire contents of the first four 52-page Giant-size issues of SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, published from April through December 1971. It's difficult to say accurately whether the number of Sabrina story pages in the relevant issues (especially as the MADHOUSE appearances are scattered and irregular) add up to "over 500 pages of comics".

Comparatively speaking, even though this is in black and white, it's a good buy at $10 for over 500 pages of comics. For comparison purposes, consider that ACP charges $7 for a Jumbo Comics Digest issue that contains only 256 pages of comics. It's also fair to compare this format to one that was used recently by both Marvel (for it's ESSENTIAL trade collections) and DC (for it's SHOWCASE PRESENTS trade collections). Both of those companies published those formats with slightly over 500 pages of comics reprinted in black and white. DC's original price for a volume in this series was $17 beginning in 2005 (which later went up to $20 before the series ended at the end of 2015). Marvel charged $15 when their series of Essential trade collections began in 1996, also later increasing the price to $20 per volume before the format was discontinued in 2013 (although Marvel's Essentials also sometimes ran as high as over 580 pages, depending on the individual volume in question). In comparison to that, $10 for 512 pages doesn't seem overpriced.

The sad economic fact is that there just isn't enough consumer demand for these type of non-Riverdale-centric series reprints to justify reprinting the stories in paperback in full color at a higher cover price. I can't force anyone to buy it if the black and white format is so disgusting to them that they'd rather go without reading these stories, but just to be realistic, you should realize that passing on this format isn't going to result in ACP reprinting the stories in some other cheap color format containing a lot of pages. The only other viable economic alternative to this for non-Archie stories would be about half the page-count in a hardcover collection priced somewhere in the $40-$60 price range.

Yes, you can always download pirated scans of the issues from someone else's comic book collection -- which, I guess, is the only alternative we'll all be left with when ACP goes out of business.


I know the upcoming book doesn't include all 77 issues of the 1971 series. I was just showing where you could read them in color.

I have several Archie comics trade paperbacks that are more than 400 pages each. The pages are a little bit bigger than the digests, and the paper is higher quality. And they were about $15 each.

I would gladly pay $20 for the Sabrina book if it was in color.

#3
It says the Sabrina book is black and white. That's probably going to be a dealbreaker for me. It's a shame that they aren't printing it the way these comics were originally published.

Here are scans of all 77 issues of the 1971 Sabrina comic book, and they are all in color. (You'll have to turn this into a proper link. I'm new on this board, so the software won't let me post the link in its proper form):

tinyurl dot com /ld7hyf5