–EC reprints are hellaciously expensive. The Amazon discount takes the edge off it quite a bit, but I still feel it’s pretty steep. Part of the magic of EC Comics (and this extends to a great deal more classic comics material) is that they were delivered in cheap, disposal packaging, but the content itself transcended those limitations and expectations. Magazines that got rolled up and stuffed in childrens’ back pockets are still fondly remembered 50 years after the fact. Maybe I’m being starry-eyed, but a $50 hardcover doesn’t seem in keeping. C’mon, Gemstone, I will make a deal with you: Put that material in $20 softcovers and I buy the whole run of Haunt of Fear JUST FOR STARTERS.
-No Miracleman reprints. This is an obvious one, but this may or may not be in the process of being rectified. I AM KEEPING MY EYE ON IT.
-No Flex Mentallo trade. Another obvious one, but it still stings whenever someone mentions it. Look, DC Comics: Do not be afraid of the Charles Atlas people. THEY ARE NOT REALLY GOING TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE ON THE BEACH.
–The live-action Spider-Man TV show from the late seventies is not available on DVD. This one needs some justification. When I was a child, growing up in the early nineties, we didn’t have Tobey Maguire and millions of dollars of special effects. If you wanted to see a flesh-and-blood Spider-Man, you went down to the video store and rented episodes of this on VHS. Sometimes they played it on the Sci-Fi Channel as well. Look, I know this is not actually very good, but it is interesting. There’s a surreal brilliance to it because for the most part, it looks and sounds like any other cheesy hourlong crime/action drama from the seventies. You could walk in on the middle of the civilian bits having no idea that what you’re watching is any different from every other show from that time period until Spider-Man shows up out of the blue with his awkward-looking webshooters and belt. It would blow your little mind. Okay, maybe my interest in this is mostly nostalgic. But c’mon: DON’T TELL ME THE MARKET CAN SUPPORT DOZENS AND DOZENS OF JAPANESE CATGIRL STATUES AND NOT THIS.
-Also: Real-life injustices and atrocities at home and abroad, even the least of which dwarfs my complaints about pricey reprints and bad television lost to time. Still: FIFTY BUCKS?
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Maybe that Spidey show will be included as a bonus feature when they release the EPICALLY AWESOME JAPANESE SPIDERMAN TV SHOW. Or a DVD of ITALIAN SPIDERMAN.Or one of the TURKISH COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT SPIDERMAN MOVIES. Point is- there’s a lot of truly mind-boggling Spidey stuff needs to get out there before I waste my money on THAT thing.(What with EC reprints being so expensive and all).
Didn’t Spidey have little sieves on his eyes?
I remember the clone episode they did being sorta creepy. Also, the “Chinese Web” used to play on a local UHF station all the time.
Maybe the reason that the old Spider-Man show isn’t on DVD is because it thoroughly sucked donkey balls.
They had almost no villains form the comic (if any) and the effects were worse than the 60’s Batman series and the Batman Series actually made fun of their campiness, Spider-Man has no such excuse.
Miracleman is really profoundly mediocre, though. That’s not really an injustice.
Hitman trades, on the other hand …
I fondly remember the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man, but maybe it should stay in those hazy childhood memories.
Count me among those that regard the live action Spider-man show fondly; which is weird, because I really don’t have many specific memories of the show. In the late seventies, I was younger than 10, so I was probably easily amused and the very idea of a comic book hero coming to life was probably cool enough on its own to gloss over its many flaws. I don’t think snark was so widely taught back then; if I watched it now, the spell would probably be broken, and I’d probably pick it apart. Still, I don’t seem to remember it being as horrible as people seem to think it is (but I’d probably lose that bet).
See, I don’t think I’m likely to be disappointed because I don’t even remember the show particularly fondly. Even as a kid I knew “These special effects suck, why’s he wearing that big metal belt on the outside of his costume, where’s Doctor Octopus?”
But it’s such an intriguing *artifact*. Like if you owned, say, one of those goofy failed pre-Wright Brothers flying machines you see in old film footage. Yeah, it doesn’t actually work, but it’s intriguing to ponder how they thought it actually might.
The thing is, ten years ago, I’d never expect this to be widely commercially available, but with DVD on TV being the phenomenon it is, it’s spoiled me as a consumer to expect any old thing I might possibly want to watch should be on DVD. There’s just SO MUCH CRAP out there, so I just wish the *specific* crap I wanted was among it.
Surely we all feel that about something nobody else cares about? *Somebody* out there has got to be thinking, “Man, if only Dino-Riders was on DVD…”
Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys is the one I most want on DVD.
I found a set for sale, and bought it, but the problem with pirates is that they can only record what actually aired; in Capt Simian’s case, that included an episode with the right sound but the wrong visuals. Luckily, their copy of Space Rangers was pirated off the British DVD release, and didn’t have such problems.
Anyway, I would give a shout-out to the pirates–because if you requested 70’s Spider-Man, it’s very possible they could get it for you–but I lost their address when MSN dumped my favorites.
Justin Zyduck: Don’t you dare compare that crappy Spider-Man show to DinoRiders. DinoRiders was fucking awesome. Where else am I gonna see a Brontosaurs used as an artillery platform? It should be on DVD. I’ve still got a couple of the old VHS tapes somewhere. Fuck, I can’t believe that with the 80s revival we had a few years ago that we didn’t get to see a new DinoRiders series.
Still, I too would like to see this Spider-Man show on DVD. I don’t know if I’d run out and buy it, but if I was given it as a gift I won’t be in a rush to return it either. And to those that say “None of Spider-Man’s villains were in the show.” Well neither were the Incredible Hulk’s, but I don’t see anyone bitching about that show. Shit, people talk about that show as if it was God’s gift to the 70s and I just don’t see it. Spider-Man fought a lot of gangsters in the comics and he fought a lot of gangsters in the show. I also remember the very attractive female co-star was forced to were a white bikini when she was taken prisoner by one of said gangsters. And that’s my fondest memory of the show.
Wait, it’s not on DVD yet? Then what did I very nearly buy for $70 at Wal-mart back when the second movie came out? I know it wasn’t the cartoon because I saw that one, too, and decided against it. Right until reading this post, I would have told anyone it was the live action Spider-Man from the ’70s.
I should be able to get “Sifl & Olly” on something other than bootlegs and YouTube clips. C’mon MTV whats the friggin’ hold-up! I need my sock puppet fix!
Wrath: As far as I can tell from searches, it’s not officially available. A quick Google search will turn up quite a few bootleg DVD sets (the kind where the listing says “AV quality = 8/10” and all that), but it seems weird that Wal-Mart would be selling bootleg merchandise. Is the Japanese Spider-Man TV show available on DVD in the US?
The 90s animated Spidey show needs a complete DVD release. Sure, the CGI was obvious and not very good, but the actual storytelling was FANTASTIC and they still have the best Venom origin to date.
TA: Hitman is now getting traded in it’s entirety, according to Bob Wayne. First new printings of the existing trades, then totally new ones.
Every time the debate on digital downloading of comics strays into illegal d/ls, the pro-camp only need to mention Flex Mentallo.
Dude, there are softcover EC reprints. They are old but they can be found with a little digging and are usually priced cheap. At San Diego comic con this year Mile High had a large table devoted to them. He must have had virtually everything EC.
If we’re REALLY going to get into a debate about putting out old TV on DVD: THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN. You know I’m right.
marvinmartian: I would throw Miracle/Marvelman onto that list, not for being uncollected, but for being out of print. Anything not in print (or whatever you would call it for DVDs) you are probably ethically in the clear for piracy.
We’ll see what Marvel does with it.
I did some research and found that Charles Atlas settled out of course with DC on that case. I would say I would highly doubt that any flex mentallo comics will be reissued.
$50 for the EC reprints isn’t too bad- at least they’re in color. I spent 20+ years, and lord knows how much money, acquiring the complete B&W Cochran collection. Those things cost about $80-$100 apiece in the early 80s. I don’t know what that is in today’s dollars.