The point I'm making (without sarcasm intended) is that there may be a small part of the audience buying these paticular books that has come to expect that each and every one of them is going to be some significant improvement over whatever-the-last-version-was -- but Marvel does not use this as a selling point, does not promote this in any way, and certainly makes no promises. Even here in this community, where we tend to be more preoccupied with this stuff than most, nobody knows what's different 'till the books are in stores and someone takes the time to note "what's different."

I think it's swell that a last-chance effort is being put into making the material better (and these paperbacks, though far from perfect, are my preferred format for the material). But the only promise that this will happen with every new volume is implied, and implied mostly only to, you know, us.

In terms of "tarnishing the brand," I just don't see that this book could be so terrible that it would somehow damage the prospects for the series going forward. I doubt it's even going to make too many people here especially weary of prospects for another volume in the series. (It's certainly no worse than the previous version was, it's a damn sight better than some of Marvel's Golden Age reprints have been, and none of those missteps seem to have done much in the way of damage.)

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Last Edited By: Fin Fang Foom Apr 3 13 12:52 PM. Edited 1 times.