By today's standards, they were weak sauce.
That's because the printing was small - generally reprinting only two panels, turned sideways, on each page. Some panels were right-side-up. There's no color on the interior pages. The paper quality is very poor.
So why was it so exciting? It seemed so prestigious for the comics I loved so much to be printed in a "real" book. And at the time, reprints were very rare - mostly limited to the back pages of each year's annuals.
It was tough going for 10-year-old Chuck to buy these books, because they cost the princely sum of 50 cents - the equivalent of four comic books!
But I somehow managed to scrape together the change and picked up each copy (though sadly the first FF volume has vanished into the mists of time).
What made them especially wonderful was the selection of stories included - this volume of Thor holds four great stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (including battles with the Lava Man, the Absorbing Man and Surtur).
Compared to today's reprints, these books were mighty crude - we're now in a golden age with full-color Omnibus reprints, digital copies, and on and on. But this is one of the first steps that led us to this bounty.
Grade: B
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2 comments:
Sheesh. There goes the neighborhood.
Pete again
You sure this was the post you were aiming at, Pete?
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