Case in point: the cover to JLA #2 as printed in the DC Archives. Obviously redrawn, and not a good restoration, IMO. I would have rather they just scanned the original comic cover and used that.


Without meaning to back myself into a position where I'm trying to defend the indefensible -- because I think that cover, and many of the others in that volume, were indefensible -- that book was done at a point before digital reconstruction was being employed, so there were fewer options, particularly where covers were concerned. (I don't think the chemical bleaching process worked with coated stock.) If it were done today, it wouldn't have been redrawn.

(Actually, you know, I remember bringing one or two of those covers to the attention of my boss at the time, suggesting that they were so poorly redrawn as to be unacceptable. I think there were some minor corrections done as a result, though obviously not nearly enough.)

It's always been disappointing to me that those redrawn covers have never been replaced as the book has gone through however-many printings over the course of -- what -- almost 20 years?


I have no idea how the people doing the work in compiling this stuff must feel, getting it on both ends like this, but it just seems like a no-win scenario, since the more time they take to work on it, the less their profit margin is.


I'm certainly sympathetic -- I know what kind of work goes into these projects.

But there's a difference between requests that are, however well-intentioned, not really practical; and the suggestion that closer attention be paid to the fine details like proofreading, source materials, and whatnot. That sort of stuff don't come free, either, I know, and it only really pays off in good will -- but it's certainly less expensive to implement than, say, printing all of the Golden Age reprints in a different format.


So what was wrong with the Sugar and Spike reprint, anyway?

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Last Edited By: Fin Fang Foom May 5 10 12:56 PM. Edited 1 times.