It should be collected / It should be in print

those are the b&W ones...?

I keep an eye out on the Marvel Masterworks stuff I want (like Thor) and then buy them as soon as their available, that stuff does not stay in print

think marvel quite often reprint Essentials when there's a relevant movie coming out, so i wldn't be surprised if those Essential Thors came back into print when Thor2 is released

And like someone said above, looks like there won't be any new Shade the Changing Man TPBs either, since the last came out in 2010. Let's just hope they at least manage to get the full run of Milligan's Human Target collected this time, they're one measly book away from doing that.

― Tuomas, 3. tammikuuta 2012 9:59 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So, the third Human Target TPB never came out... :( I really don't understand DC, they've now collected the first two thirds of Human Target twice (first in the early 00s when the series was new, then again in 2010 and 2011), but the final third has never appeared. All it would've taken is one more TPB to finally collect the full series! I'm never gonna trust DC to reprint any series in full again. (Unless the series has the word "Batman", "Superman", or "Green Lantern" in the title, of course.)

I am guessing that was related to the Human Target TV series - which as cancelled after its second series in 2011.

Yeah, that's my guess too, but it's still hella irritating that they did the same thing twice.

Corto Maltese

― Fox Force Five Punchline (sexyDancer), Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:49 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Complete CORTO MALTESE To Be Published In English For The First Time

woah

Worst thing about that info is that I'd prefer the hardcovers - which means waiting a year and then hoping to get in early enough on a limited edition (assuming they even ship to the UK c.f. Peanuts).

Yeah, I'm conflicted about that - in a way, the paperbacks are 'truer' to the way the material was presented originally, and those IDW hardcovers tend to be pretty expensive. When they say the hardcovers will be 'original art size', I take it to mean the pages won't actually have been shot from the original artwork.

But I bet they will be very desirable festish objects.

I <gulp> have more than enough of the IDW hardcovers to have come to terms with the price. Plus the Don Lawrence Collection sets of both Trigan Empire and Storm redefined what that sort of pricing level meant, really.

I'm assuming they're going to be the size of the Prince Valiant reprints, or maybe the Popeye ones?

That's cool news! The link says the books will be the black & white versions, but they should at least publish The Secret Rose in colour, as colours play an important role in the story of that book. I think The Secret Rose was also the only Corto book to be in colour right from the start (since Pratt obviously realized this story couldn't be properly told in b&w), the other coloured books were originally black and white, so I guess reprinting is more faithful to the originals. (The added colouring, which is not by Pratt, looks really nice, though it also affects the composition of Pratt lines, so your opinion may vary whether it makes the books better or worse.)

The original Corto books are roughly in the Euro "comic album" size, i.e. the same as with Tintin, Asterix, etc (Wikipedia has a nice reference pic of different sized comics), so I guess "original art size" means that? Wouldn't make much sense to print them larger than that, since Pratt's line is quite thick to being with.

Original art is generally larger than the printed version, even with European albums - for example the Tintin originals I've seen are about twice the size of the printed pages. There are a few comics artists who have worked 'same size', but not many. Pratt may be one of them - his artwork isn't really about details or fine lines, obv - but I would be slightly surprised, even so (I've never seen a page of original Corto artwork.)

also, there would be no point in announcing that the hardcovers will be larger than the paperbacks if... they're going to be the same size.

Yeah, I know original art is usually bigger than what's printed, though like you say that may not be the case with Pratt, his line is pretty thick already in the printed book. But even if his original art is bigger, I don't see the point of releasing it in that size? Obviously Pratt (like any other comic artist drawing in larger size) would have meant for their comics to be published in a certain size, so it's not like printing them bigger is truer to the artist's vision or anything.

also, there would be no point in announcing that the hardcovers will be larger than the paperbacks if... they're going to be the same size.

I took the line about "original art-sized" to mean the hardbacks will be in the original Euro size, and the paperbacks will be shrunk to make them more US friendly. If Pratt's original art was, say, twice as big as how it was printed, publishing it in that "original" size would make the books ludicrously big.

The announcement says the paperbacks will be bigger than Asterix/Tintin by at 9 1/4" x 11 3/4" (as opposed to 8 1/2" x 11 1/4"). A bit of googling produces some production art sold a couple of years ago at 12" x 18" which is huge, bigger even than Popeye (10 1/2" x 14 1/2", give or take).

Also, having seen the original artwork for the cover of Destination Moon at full size (Bristol Board 12x18) I'd absolutely want to see these reprints at that size.

EuroComics is working closely with Patrizia Zanotti, Pratt’s long-time collaborator, to present the complete Corto Maltese in a series of twelve quality trade paperbacks in Pratt’s original oversized black and white format. I'm sure they mean the original European album format by this.

IDW already publish a number of large-sized 'artist's editions' exactly reproducing original artwork, and again, I would bet that the hardcover Cortos will closely resemble them, even if they're not directly shot from original pages.

I took the line about "original art-sized" to mean the hardbacks will be in the original Euro size

everything above and: it's Dean Mullaney doing these.

Who's Dean Mullaney?

Okay, I guess I was wrong about the size thing... Still don't understand why anyone would want to read Pratt's thick line in larger size than it was originally printed in, but I guess there's a market for that?

I mean, I understand publishing comics in bigger size if the artist has a fine line and some of the details were lost in the original printings, but that's hardly the case with Pratt.

See my comment on Destination Moon.

Just for example, I think aspiring comic book artists often learn things from studying original artwork - and I'm sure Pratt's mastery of the brush, of black and white contrast, of reduction and subtraction, would be even more evident printed at a larger size.

Mullaney is the creative director of IDW's Library of American Comics line, and was formerly the owner/publisher of Eclipse Comics. He's got a (deserved) reputation for delivering a high quality product (see for example the Noel Sickles and Alex Toth volumes that he edited for IDW).

I didn't know mullaney was with IDW now. Names to conjure with.

Okay, glad to hear the Corto reprints are in good hands. Wasn't the previous English printing of Ballad of the Salt Sea horribly cropped or something? I remember it being discussed on ILC.

The recent American color edition was printed at a small size and inappropriately coloured, yes.

There's an earlier edition published by Collins Harvill that was at the correct size, and with a much better translation than the NBM Corto volumes.

Wasn't Mullaney a creator too?

Nope

I must have been thinking of Dean Motter.

Yep

Wasn't the previous English printing of Ballad of the Salt Sea horribly cropped or something?

see upthread.

So, with volume 8 of the Suicide Squad TPBs coming out this May, DC has *finally* collected the entire Ostrander/Yale run, only 17 years after it finished. Too bad they've never managed the same with Milligan's Shade or Human Target, nor does it seem like they ever will.

It's frankly shocking that they managed, as DC tends to prematurely abandon their reprint projects more often than not (the most recent example I'm aware of being a proposed two-volume collection of Sleeper, for which the second volume was recently solicited and then cancelled).

Yeah, I mentioned Human Target because they've started collecting it and then abandoned it *twice*, which is ridiculous. And it's not like it's a long, multi-volume series, the last time they would've needed to release just one more TPB, and it would've all been reprinted.

I guess I should keep my finger crossed with SS vol. 8, there's still time to cancel it...

Did those English editions of Corto Maltese we talked about upthread ever happen, btw?

Yes, and they're still happening. I think another one of the volumes was just solicited last month.

Like the current Barks reprints, though, they're being released out of order for some reason.

The Barks ones is for a good reason, at least

entire Ostrander/Yale run, only 17 years after it finished.

calling for a recount on this

Oops, yeah, I guess it's 27 actually.

With the Corto Maltese books, the reading order isn't really that important, since they're all stand-alone stories, and some of them are in anachronic order to begin with. You should read Ballad of the Salt Seas first and finish with the last two (Secret Rose and Mu) though, in order to make sense of certain supporting characters reappearing.

And the ultimate fate of Corto is sorta revealed in a piece of dialogue in "The Scorpions of the Desert", another series by Pratt that's set in the WWII and is otherwise unrelated to CM.

IDW haven't got round to Ballad of the Salt Seas yet, I think partly because there have already been two previous English language editions of it - a perfectly fine translation from Collins Harvill published in 1996, and more recently a reduced size, colour version from a company called Universe Publishing in 2012, that should probably be avoided (I don't know who did the translation, or how good it is).

Yeah, that reduced-sized book and the way it was altered from the original comic was discussed upthread.

It's too bad if they haven't published Ballad yet, it really makes to read that one first, as it establishes the relationship between Corto and Rasputin, and it also features an important supporting character who never appears again, but who gets alluded to several times in the following stories. OTOH, I didn't read Ballad first as a kid either (because the Finnish publisher also published the books out of order in the '80s), and I understood most of it just fine.

Awww man, the second volume of Sleeper was cancelled?! DC are beginning to turn this into an art form! What about the 90s Books of Magic?

And it is a shame that Shade, Sandman Mystery Theatre and Human Target are unlikely to ever be collected in full. Ostrander Spectre and Hawkworld, too.

I am happy to see an attempt at collecting the early post-Crisis Batman years in paperback editions (titled The Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective, for Batman and Detective Comics issues respectively). I hope they at least make it up to the point before Knightfall starts up, even if that does mean including the Louise Simonson arc about the kid who can make reality into a giant video game (or as I like to call it, the worst Batman story of all time).

I started buying those new Batman collections but I'm thoroughly expecting DC to shit the bed before they get very far with them. I had been excitedly buying the Batman/Superman Adventures reprints buuuuuut it's been nothing crickets for a while now. And yet I just keep holding out my hand so they can burn me again.

Hasn't Sleeper been collected a few times?

Didn't realise they stalled at Gotham Adventures, too bad as I've never read those. The first two Batman Adventures runs are fantastic. There was a pretty good issue of Back Issue magazine all about B:TAS not too long ago, went into the spin-off comics in good detail.

I would definitely recommend the associated comics to anyone who's a fan of the DCAU. I would definitely not recommend holding your breath for DC to finish collecting all of those comics.