American Update: Fabulous Facsimile Editions, Dollar Comics and True Believers with the debuts of Annihilus, Absorbing Man, Black Mask, Purple Man, Mandarin and many more!
*Modern Reprints: In addition to their facsimiles, both DC and Marvel are also producing economy editions of classic issues, DC as ‘Dollar Comics’ and Marvel as ‘True Believers’. While the facsimile editions, as noted earlier, are cover-to-cover reproductions of the original comics with minimal legally necessary changes, the ‘Dollar Comics’ and ‘True Believers’ just reproduce the story and the cover, without any of the original text or advertising matter, giving people a very affordable look at significant stories. In the ‘full facsimiles’, DC brings us this week Green Lantern #1, a complete reproduction of the Emerald Gladiator’s premiere edition, while from DC’s Dollar Comics line, we have Batman #386, with the debut of Black Mask, one of the latter day breakout villains of the 1980s. Marvel brings us full-on facsimiles of Fantastic Four Annual #6, which saw the debut of Annihilus and the birth of Franklin Richards, plus Amazing Spider-Man #347, a classic cover featuring everybody’s favourite symbiote, Venom. In Marvel’s ‘True Believers’ line, we have Absorbing Man, with Crusher Creel’s first appearance from Journey Into Mystery #114; Mandarin, with Tales of Suspense #50’s debut of Iron Man’s nemesis; Purple Man, with Killgrave’s premiere from Daredevil #4: and – the big one – Tales of Suspense, reprinting the first Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan from #45! All this, plus the paperback collection of Thomas, Adams and Buscema’s epic Kree-Skrull War!