Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, DC goes the extra mile, plus check out the new cover art!

Aug 9th, 2005 - DC Comics has lowered prices on the first two SHOWCASE collected editions, providing readers with over 500 pages of classic SUPERMAN and GREEN LANTERN stories for the incredible price of just $9.99!

Originally offered at $16.99 each, SHOWCASE PRESENTS SUPERMAN VOL. 1 and SHOWCASE PRESENTS GREEN LANTERN VOL. 1 paperbacks are scheduled to arrive in stores on September 14.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS SUPERMAN VOL. 1 collects stories from SUPERMAN #122-133 and ACTION COMICS #241-257, written by Jerry Siegel, Bill Finger and others, with art by Curt Swan, Dick Sprang and others.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS GREEN LANTERN VOL. 1 collects stories from SHOWCASE #22-24 and GREEN LANTERN #1-17, written by John Broome and Gardner Fox with art by Gil Kane, Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson.

Don't miss out — these titles are available at this special price for a limited time only!

(http://dccomics.com/news/images/showcase_sm_400x600.jpg)

This is great news! That's one nice cover, too.

Even though the Showcase Presents series will be just black-and-white inkwork (with no added graytones), this is an excellent value at less than two cents a page.  And as mentioned in other topic posts, this does spotlight the work of the penciler and inker.  I'll definitely look for both, and I'm not exactly a Green Lantern fan.   :)

Black and white?!! Hey for 9.99 Im not complain' - reminds me of the old Superman 30s-70s book.

And this can make GL affordable to me rather than the great E-Bay chase for ratty issues. I love the pseudo-scientific stuff in these yarns!

Even at black and white I think that it sounds great.

I understand the concern of purists who want color, but the important thing is that this price point puts the books in the hands, potentially, of young readers.  And considering that's the audience they were intended for, that can't be a bad thing.

I'll probably get two of everthing.  One for my library and one for my kids to read to pieces.  :D

Heck, Ill read em to pieces! :)

This is how I prefer the comics, so I would really enjoy these books. I like early Green Lantern, but I'm covered here by the few Archives I own. However, I'll go to a comic book store this weekend and see if they have the Superman one in stock.

I may have missed an earlier thread on these books, but are they basically DC's answer to the "Essentials"? (I'm all for it.) Super Monkey's post says, "Originally offered..." I must have missed them the first time around (??) - Were they in hardcover before?



Don't tell me those kiddies are reading comic books already!! Your eldest prodigy must be all of two years old by now!  :read:

I think you missed this part: paperbacks are scheduled to arrive in stores on September 14



Yes, they are DC's answer to Marvel's Essentials. DC will only do the Sliver Age and up. When they were originally announce they were suppose to cost $16.95, but now they will be offered at $9.95, however it may only be the 1st run then it might go back to $16.95  :?  There never were any plans to make hardcover versions, these are cheapo reprints and that's the whole point  :mrgreen:

I did. Thanks.



Yes! Quite. I grew up on "cheapo reprints" so I'm happy with more of what I know and love!

Good call, Aldous.  Yep, my oldest is two and 4 months.  And while he is, believe it or not, reading (! -- and writing words and simple sentences), he's not ready for comics yet.

But when the day comes, I'd like to be ready with some good material.  Not to mention heading off his messing with my Archives!  :D

Showcase Presents Superman Vol. 1 is now on store shelves, and I took a quick look through it today.  (I’ll purchase my copy this weekend – I prefer supporting my local retailer.)  At $9.99 for over 500 pages it’s an EXCEPTIONAL value and I highly recommend this, even for those who already have the color archives – this is the copy you thumb through and lend to fellow fans while the hardbound archive editions remain locked away.   :wink:

The black and white artwork is sharp and nicely printed, which brings up an interesting question.  I’ve tried scanning old comics before, and I’ve despaired over cleaning up all the yellowed pages, washed out inks, off-registered color runs and other flaws.   :cry:   Would it be easier to simply scan these black and white pages and simply add color via “ye olde Photoshop paint bucket”?  Sure, it might be tedious for longer stories, but you don’t have to worry about trying to digitally fix old scans with checkerboard Moiré patterns in the colors and uneven fading.

Why would you want to scan them when they're already available in such a cheap format?  Reading books beats reading a computer screen anyway...

Agreed.  What I'd really like to see is for DC to scan the actual old comics and do high-quality color reprints of those.  Eclipse did a few Spirit reprints that way and they were fantastic.  This would be a vast improvement over DC's current Archive "restoration" mess, and probably a lot simpler for them to do.

They can ask me for help if they want, I've done a lot of work like along those lines. :wink:

:s:

Actually I was thinking about scanned stories for this site.  I had a miserable time dealing with DC Comics Presents Annual #1, and that was  only 23 years old.  (And my mail server kept choking on the attachments -- I still don't know if Rao got all my pages.)  Trying to eliminate the yellow overcast due to deteriorating paper without further throwing the already-washed-out colors off is difficult, especially when complicated by faded black artwork and printing that requires more contrast and saturation.  Also, when scanning comics at high dpi you frequently have the four-color printing break up into "polka dots", but smoothing out these dots into an uniform color is tedious work and tends to further blur the image.

If you're sending pages in, don't bother to clean them up, I can do that if it's required.  But I don't have a strong interest in stories that are available in current reprints, time would probably be better spent hunting down good stories that are difficult to find.  That's one of the things that makes the reprints here valuable resources.

As far as the DCCP Annual goes, I probably won't add it to the site because, in spite of the great idea of having the E-2 Superman and the E-1 Superman together, it's a Marv Wolfman story and I really didn't like it that much.

:s:

Well, some of the stories on this site have been reprinted countless times.
For me it is the rare gems that make this site special, IMHO.

Yeah, I always valued the scans here of stuff that's hard to find otherwise.  I use this site to supplement my collection of back-issues and reprints.  Scanning in the Showcase stories and spending all that time coloring them, when they're already out there for 9 bucks a volume (6 if you look in the right places!) seems a waste.



As far as getting out that yellow, I've had some luck with it in Photoshop.  I start by using the "Adjustments...Levels" control to establish a ballpark black and white, then I use the "Adjustments...Selective Color" and select "Whites".  From there, you can bleed out all the black, magenta, cyan, etc so the white is true white.



Before: (http://batfan.superman.nu/images/secrets/bat-scan1.jpg)



After: (http://batfan.superman.nu/images/secrets/bat-scan2.jpg)



It's amazing, really, that pages that seem to be still pretty crisp to the naked eye come out so muted and yellow when scanned.



And I kind of like the dots, sometimes.

That's completely different from what I do, but I'm not revealing my process because I want to be hired by DC.  :)

:s:

Well Rao, maybe I should scan in Jimmy Olsen's Monster Movie so you can more 'samples'.  :wink:

I just picked up my copy today and it is indeed a treat!

Great stories including obscure gems and classic tales.

I treasure it!  A beautiful jumbo collection.  Review forthcoming.