I missed this story in April but that makes it even more interesting since last November I pointed out that the indications were that Di$ney were unhappy and wanted to make more money from reprints.
I was told that, back in April the freebie comics newsletter Comic Shop News confirmed this. The end of the Marvel Comics Essential line the phone book-sized volumes that reprinted classic Marvel comics in black and white.
These books reproduced the old series and in black and white many looked far better than when coloured. I used the phrase "exquisite black and white work" many times.
According to the CSN item:
“Marvel has confirmed the end of their Essentials program of black and white reprints of classic material. Marvel has sold off almost all remaining inventory of older in-print volumes and will not be adding further books. ‘This material needs to be in color,’ Marvel Senior VP of Sales David Gabriel said. ‘So we’ll be replacing our Essentials program with more full-color Epic Collections.’”Epic Collections are around $40 for 20 issues and an Essential volume might give you 25-30 or so issues for $20.
Pity but there you go. "**** the fans!"
Colour? . . ugh . . . obscures the drawing. David Gabriel's brain obviously needs an extensive rewrite. There is just something so basically honest about a black and white drawing, whilst there is just too much sickly gloss and over-saturated colour and the unfortunate thing is sickly gloss and over saturated colour in their opinion is a seller. I bought only one copy of the Thor Omnibus, saw the colour and never again.
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