The reason they had to reletter the first 7 or 8 volumes is because they were produced from foreign translations.
Don't ask me why.
I remember Marvel reprinting a lot of this stuff in b&w in Conan Saga.
What did they use at the time to print from?


You'd be amazed at how easily film negatives can be lost -- particularly if they're misfiled. (They're fairly durable, but damage has been known to happen.) It could also have been that Marvel was less than completely willing to provide Dark Horse with the materials they needed.

A Week Ago Tuesday: My blog, where I never, ever write about comics (though I think I did, once or twice).