Monthly Magic The Gathering Tutorial:
A Planeswalker's Primer for Magic 2011: Shroud

Last time, we focused on the great reading that many current comic book titles offer, but great reading doesn’t end with new releases. The modern comic book has existed for 75 years and there have been plenty of good stories told over the last three quarters of a century. Of course, prior to the advent of the direct market distribution system and the emergence of the modern comic book shop; finding older comic books sometimes presented a significant challenge. Readers would have to comb through the often-limited selection to be found at the local used book store or convention.

Times have changed.

Many comic book shops, in addition to carrying a wide selection of new comics, usually have an extensive inventory of back issues. Most are also fairly well stocked in one other product line that makes sourcing out older stories very easy… the trade paperback. You can’t beat the trade paperback when it comes to finding stories that were originally published in what are now, sometimes, very hard-to-find back issue comics or magazines. 

Robert E. Howard’s 16^th century Puritan adventurer, Solomon Kane, provides us with a great example. Longtime fans of this classic character, as well as newcomers, are currently enjoying new comic book stories produced by Dark Horse Comics as well as a (hopefully) soon-to-be-released-in-the-U.S. movie. But Solomon Kane isn’t new; he’s been around for over 80 years, appearing first in pulp magazines and only much later as a comic book character.

Marvel produced some excellent Solomon Kane stories in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. One of the earliest, Castle of the Undead, was published in the third issue of the black & white Dracula Lives magazine back in 1973. Written by Roy Thomas, with art by Alan Weiss and the Crusty Bunkers, the story chronicles the first meeting between Howard’s Solomon Kane and Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula in 16^th century Transylvania. A confrontation between two classic characters, a story well worth reading and you don’t have to track down a copy of Dracula Lives #3 to do so.  We’re not frowning on anyone hunting down any of the old Marvel black & white magazines. There were some great stories produced in those books and they’d make a great addition to anyone’s collection, but we’re talking about reading here, not collecting.

In addition to producing new Solomon Kane stories, Dark Horse has also compiled The Chronicles of Solomon Kane, which reprints all of the color Marvel stories, while The Saga of Solomon Kane contains the stories from the black & white magazines.

Of course, Solomon Kane is just one example of a character whose comic book adventures were once difficult to find, but are now readily available in trade paperback format.  Most comic book publishers routinely reprint both classic older stories as well as current story arcs in the trade paperback format.  The selection of trade paperbacks available is so huge that most comic book shops would need to be the size of a warehouse to stock everything issued.  Fortunately, most of the larger publishers (and some of the smaller ones) keep many of their better-selling trade paperbacks in print and in stock.  If you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask. If what you want is in print, it can easily be special-ordered. 

Now you can both collect and read classic comic stories without having to take those hard-to-find and sometimes expensive comic books out of their bags-and-boards. Truly the best of both worlds!

 

(Webmaster's Note: We will eventually have an archive page where all previous columns will be available)