It sounds like a good idea but personally I feel some of the essays and feature articles in past editions have been superseded by the Internet. For instance, I recall a retrospective on cyborg comic characters in one of the old Overstreets. It wasn't comprehensive, not bad either, and you could probably find as much if not more info on wikipedia.

But there might be some value in several of the essays as they provide a snapshot of the comic medium at those periods.

We'd have to look at all of the essays to get a good glimpse of what's important.