Fin Fang Foom wrote:
That new work by Giffen was done -- what was it, close to 20 years ago, by now? -- probably in an attempt to smooth out an Editorial rough edge to the collection at that time, rather than out of cost concerns.
That seems to me to be unlikely for two reasons. For one thing the clash of Giffen's new style with his old style is much more of a rough edge than the original Bender/Rodriguez art with Giffen's old style. But more importantly the 7 page "Prologue to Darkness" story had art by Pat Broderick which was left unchanged in both the trade and the deluxe version and there is still more non Giffen art in both the trade and the deluxe version that was left as is.

What really irritates is that the folks responsible for the deluxe edition seem completely unaware that there were two versions of this story. I have been reliably informed that there is no hint in the deluxe version that they knew of a previous version. Surely they could have explained why the story was redrawn for the trade in the first place and why they decided to go with the Giffen version for the deluxe edition?

As it stands it just seems that DC was completely oblivious to what was in the original comics and relied on the trade.