Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Things Were Different In Those Days, You See...

Back in his early 90s run, Deathlok had a two-part fight/team-up with the Punisher (#6-7) as well as a two-part fight/team-up with Ghost Rider (#9-10) (not to mention an earlier 4-part team-up with Misty Knight, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Avengers...you think Marvel was trying to push Deathlok, or what??).

Which lead, in the letters page of Deathlok #19 (1993), to a question from Thomas Cregan of Staten Island, New York:

The response, which proves that the 1990s were indeed a very different era:

Yup. Here we had crossover stories with the Punisher and Ghost Rider, and had absolutely no plans for a trade. It apparently hadn't even occurred to them. You see, young ones, back in those days even storyline in every comic wasn't automatically put out in a trade, even ones with hyper-popular characters.

In 2009, of course, not only would Marvel have had a trade for those stories, but the trade would have been solicited before the stories in the single issues were even published, "readers' requests" be damned.

Not to go all Nostradamus here, but the next big implosion in the comics industry? At some point libraries, Barnes & Noble & your local comic shoppe are going to stop automatically buying this deluge of trades...beware...

Oh, FYI, Deathlok #19 had a chromium cover. No reason...it wasn't an anniversary, it was part 3 of a 5 part story...they just wanted to do a chromium cover. Bless you, 1990s...bless you.

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