Over the past few months there have been several new collected editions featuring Golden Age reprints. These would make great Christmas gifts for your favorite Golden Age fan!
Marvel has continued with their popular Masterworks series featuring Atlas Comics reprints. Their latest offering is Marvel Masterworks Atlas Era Menace, volume 1. This “ghastly” volume features reprints of the Atlas horror title, Menace. In this edition, you’ll find reprints of Menace #1 (March 1953) through #11 (May 1954), featuring classic art by Bill Everett, George Tuska, Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, John Romita, Gene Colon and many others. Many of the scripts in the volume are credited to Stan Lee. How can you resist such titles as “One Head Too Many!”, “A Vampire is Born!”, “Kill Me a Monster!” and others? If you like pre-code horror, this volume is for you! This book retails for $59.99.
Dark Horse continues to reprint some classic Tarzan comics from the Golden Age with The Jesse Marsh Years Tarzan, volume 4. This volume reprints the popular early 1950’s Dell Tarzan run, featuring Tarzan #17 (September-October 1950) through Tarzan #21 (May-June 1951). As in the first three volumes of this title, this edition continues reprinting the great art on Tarzan by Jesse Marsh. The retail price on this volume is $49.99.
DC Comics really made my day with two Golden Age reprints featuring their two most popular characters. First, I was very pleased to see that DC has continued to publish the Batman Chronicles series with volume 8. This edition features reprints of the Batman & Robin stories from Detective Comics #71 (Jan. 1943) through #74 (Apr. 1943), Batman #14 (Dec. 1942-Jan. 1943) and #15 (Feb.-Mar. 1943) and World’s Finest Comics #8 (Winter 1942) and #9 (Spring 1943). If you want to read every Batman story in order as published in the Golden Age of Comics, and don’t want to break the bank, the Chronicles series is the way to go. This volume contains classic WWII era stories. I hope DC continues to print these volumes until they reach the late 1950’s Batman adventures. This volume is very affordable at $14.99.
Last, and certanily not least, DC has finally published volume 2 of Superman: The World’s Finest Comics Archives. The first volume of this series was published way back in 2004, so it’s great to see the next volume in print. In this book you will find all of the Superman stories as they appeared in World’s Finest Comics #16 (Winter 1945) through #32 (January-February 1948). This is a great volume for the Golden Age Superman fan as it reprints a number of Superman stories that have not seen print since being originally published in the 1940’s. This volume has a retail price of $59.99.
As Christmas approaches and you aren’t quite sure what to give your favorite Golden Age fan, rest assured that any of these volumes will bring a smile to his or her face!