May 21, 2007

New Ditko - Action Heroes Archives v2

Out this week, ACTION HEROES ARCHIVES v2, collecting Ditko's Blue Beetle and Question stories, plus some Captain Atom. With the still available v1, this should mean that every page of work for Charlton that DC acquired the rights to will now be in print.

v1 and v2 both also available from Tales of Wonder.



THE ACTION HEROES ARCHIVES VOL. 2

Written by David Kaler, Roger Stern, Michael Uslan and various; Art by Steve Ditko, Alex Toth and various; Cover by Ditko

Collecting classic stories by master artist Steve Ditko from the pages of CAPTAIN ATOM #83-89, BLUE BEETLE #1-5, MYSTERIOUS SUSPENSE #1 and CHARLTON BULLSEYE #1, 2 and 5, plus the title story intended for BLUE BEETLE #6 (published in CHARLTON PORTFOLIO #9-10) as well as an 8-page Question story by Alex Toth and a foreword by Charlton's then-editor Dick Giordano.

384pg. Colour Hardcover $75.00
On Sale May 23, 2007

4 comments:

  1. I have yet to obtain any DC Archives, but the 2 Action Heroes Archives are at the top of the list, mainly as we'll probably never see these in trade paperback.

    I wish they had included the Nightshade backup from Captain Atom so I could get rid of those issues.

    Too bad we probably won't see a third volume that might deal with Judomaster, Nighshade (see above), Peacemaker (including the stuff intended for #6), Sarge Steel, Son of Vulcan, Thunderbolt (plus the unpublished stuff done for DC, but we'll probably never see it due to the rights issues), and the one-off and later stuff with the Action Heroes that saw print in the Charlton Bullseye comic or AC Comics (really just publishing stuff done for Charlton).

    But one can dream...

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  2. Just testing something on the commenting here. Anyone picked up ACTION HEROES v2 yet? What do you think?

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  3. I finally got my copy yesterday. Despite some disappointments (the exclusion of the Aparo Nightshade stories, the black and white reproductions of the Bullseye stories), I loved it. I started collecting Ditko's Charlton work twenty years ago, and it was great to finally read Captain Atom and Nightshade's final encounter with the Ghost, and to have quality reproductions of the stories I already own. The Blue Beetle stories are particularly fascinating, giving us a glimpse of how Ditko might have written Spider-Man. And the Alex Toth Question story is wonderful. Please buy it, and perhaps DC will be persuaded to publish Action Heroes Volume 3! (Preferably reprinting the aforementioned Nightshade stories, Dick Giordano's Sarge Steel, and Pete Morisi's Thunderbolt, if they can get the rights.)

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  4. While I would prefer all color on the stories, as the material in Charlton Bullseye/Porfolio was originally published in B/W, I can understand why they reprinted this in b/w. I would think that adding color might have have been a bit cost-prohibitive.

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