Thread 149264971

>over $1000 to get Chester Gould's entire run of Dick Tracy

I hate the way this industry is set up. In Japan, you can get the entire run of One Piece for under $400. Yes, all 111 volumes. Old comics should not be expensive. It just makes it harder for them to survive in the culture because no one can afford to read them.

Market demands. More people will buy one piece so they can sell it cheap. Less will buy DT so they need to charge more to break even. Digital archives should be the equalizer.

>>149264971 (OP)
Dick Tracy hasn’t been relevant for thirty years. And that’s because there happened to be a movie back the

>>149264971 (OP)
Their business is making money.

>stealth west vs east thread
In Glorious Nippon, soundtrack albums are generally NEVER re-released, and you are left with paying 100USD sometimes for a rare volume.
t. soundtrackfag

>>149265106
It's not an East-vs-West thread. It just shows the viability of cheap collections. If the West were more aggressive and systematic about packaging its huge library of comics in cheap formats, it could revitalize comics history. Print-on-demand should make this more doable than ever.

>>149265132
Agree on the last one, but it's VERY dangerous. Dangerous because lost of print-on-demand services suck balls. I got the Kickstarter edition of Unico reboot, and they used some service like that. The printing is B grade, and compared to the mass market Scholastic print which is A+, it's an all around embarrassment. Most print-on-demand services are horrible.

>>149264971 (OP)
It's worth it, OP.

>>149265132
Manga is cheap because they’re selling so much the price can be lower
Nowhere near close to the same amount of people would buy reprints of 30s dick Tracy comics

Yes, intellectual property is fake and gay and holds humanity back.

You gotta remember that 90% of One Piss is just filler and modern. With old stuff like this people have to source good copies of the strips from newspapers that have survived, scan them, clean them up, and then publish a compilation of comics that are not Spiderman or Batman so the chance of them selling is wag lower.

>>149267254
Shut up commietard

>>149267362
>t. doesn't care about humanity
Sad.

>>149267567
>Dick Tracy on Nintendo?!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9-HIXg9uEI

>>149264971 (OP)
True. The west should put forth their best stuff, stop making shit, make it cheap, etc.

>>149264971 (OP)
Buy one and see if you like it. Then buy another
Those old newspaper comics are worth it and are the best value for comics you can get, it takes a long time to get through a volume, never once did I buy a book of them and think I didn't get my money's worth

>>149269005
Yeah, it seems overpriced but then when you're actually chipping away at the pages you realize how much content there is in there. I got the big Popeye books and I still haven't finished them.

>>149264971 (OP)
You can get Fearless Fosdick for $14 at Amazon

just pirate it
you buying it isnt going to lead to more dick tracy comics being made, so fuck it

>>149264971 (OP)
As a whole, newspaper comics are unfortunately hard to find. In the old days, newspaper comics were considered higher quality than comics printed in comic books, but those are all that gets reprinted nowadays. I can buy a million different collections of Batman's comics from the 30s and 40s, but if I want to read something like Dick Tracy, that will get expensive

>>149269616
>buying comics won't lead to other comics being made available
Based retard.

>>149264971 (OP)
Long live capitalism

>>149264971 (OP)
>I hate the way this industry is set up
Tell me about it. Meanwhile the French have reprinted DT entirely, just like forgotten classics like Scorchy Smith.

>>149264971 (OP)
>Volumes made for 40+ year old collectors are more expensive than mass produced volumes targeted towards teenagers
????

>>149270541
Move to North Korea and learn to love your internal parasites, Commie.

>>149264971 (OP)
The OG Man in the Yellow Hat

You can get your dick traced at a brothel for a quarter of that. Use your money wisely

>>149267938
>woah shit

>>149264971 (OP)
>he spends money on comics
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

>>149273519
even pirating these is kinda hard.

I started buying this a couple of years ago and it has easily cost me more than $2000 AUD, and I’m still missing 3 volumes! But it’s worth it, easily vaulted into my top 5 all time favourites. I’m sure that once I source the remaining volumes, a new reprint will be announced.

>>149264971 (OP)
It’s called supply and demand.

>>149274511
You can literally order copies of the relevant newspaper pages through the public library system, no?

>>149274991
That’s what poors do. What are you, a filthy poor?

>>149275012
Nuh-uh!
I dun took my yearly bath yesterday

Really? I saw some Tracy tpb the other week. Don't know shit about about it, are they good grabs for like $5 each? Looked like reprints of Tracy stuff but couldn't tell the era of the reprint.

>>149275998
Let me explain something. Most comic strips from the early 20th century did not age well. Dick Tracy not only aged well but in fact *surpasses* most modern comics in terms of pacing and story structure. If you read a comic like Tintin, you'll notice the plot is fairly simple. It moves from Event A to Event B to Event C in an orderly fashion. But Dick Tracy weaves many plots simultaneously, braiding them together in surprising ways. And it moves *fast*. Because readers expected something interesting to happen every day, the strip format forced a cinematic tempo on the story, to marvelous effect.

>>149276027
Doesn't Dick Tracy end up dealing with diplomatic disputes with the Martians?

>>149264971 (OP)
Alright, now talk about the differences in print quality. Enlighten me on the wet tissue paper manga is printed on, while American tomes are printed on glossy, colored behemoths.

>>149276149
Surely paper quality doesn't justify a 3x markup. What's next, a 5x markup for a glow-in-the-dark cover? Bells and whistles do not matter much.

>>149276203
It matters very much for longetivity. Japan has mastered the art of cheap printing: thin paper that only lasts a few cover to cover reads and weathers like crazy. So much so that they even have these terrible 3-in-1 mangas that prioritize being cheap over being readable. You can literally see the art on the next page bleed through on these things.

In ten tears people will be holding their early copies of Naruto together with rubber bands like old newspaper stand books. Meanwhile, a copy of "The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics" will outlive all of us, because it was bound and printed on quality materials that are meant to last. You may not see value in having the same book thirty or even forty years down the line, but believe it or not that used to be the standard.

Dick Tracy is the best.

>>149276149
You are thinking about Shonen Jump and all the multiseries monthly books. The individually published volues, basically trades, being printed on the same paper as a novel is printed on, with any color illustrations being on high gloss.

>>149276027
You better be right.

>>149276203
>>149276295
One thing I don't think people get for the shift out of newstands and from newsprint to better paper was that the quality of old paper meant comics didn't last long on the newstand
Along with the fact that many kids would shift through them or just handle them roughly while sifting through them, it meant product that just didn't last.
Between that, and the fact that you made less profit on them, it made them something that was hard to make good money on in newstands.
This is also why you see magazinges printed with nicer paper, and higher prices.
>You may not see value in having the same book thirty or even forty years down the line, but believe it or not that used to be the standard.
A good reason for that in general is that no one is planning on family heirlooms or staying at the same place for decades anymore. That sort of generational quality is dying as people don't really have family homes..or families anymore like they used to.

>>149278838
I do one day hope to give my kids my books of old newspaper strips the same way my grandpa got me interested in the strips he liked. I don't really have any heirlooms from my family but I cherish those memories and would like to pass them on

>>149276149
Why would I want godawful glossy paper for something that was originally in newsprint?

>>149278943
The paper the strip was drawn on was probably closer to a thick, better quality archival paper than newsprint.
Newsprint was more a matter of fact than the ideal form to reproduce them. It had a hard time replicating the crispness of lines(to the point that the style seen in comic strips and books from the newsprint era are specifically drawn for being reproduced on it)- so if you can get it in a better quality than newsprint it helps- especially since most people interested in very old collections like this would want the best quality.

>>149265041
90 year old Warren Beatty is hilariously sitting on the media rights with an expressed plan to make another movie starring himself. He's stopped at least 2 Dick Tracy productions from going through over the decades.
When the rights were finally about to lapse 2 years, Beatty did a zoom call interview with a YouTuber as Dick Tracy and that allows him to still keep the rights

>>149278838
Unsold books were destroyed at the end of the month, the newsstands would rip the covers off and send the covers back to the publisher for a refund. That why old comics are so rare, books on the direct market can't be returned unless there's a recall by the publisher.

>>149278838
>>149278927
I have 40 old comics at home that I bought from the shop.
Ain't worth much, but they're still fun to read.

>>149279575
SSCCCHHHHTTTTOOOOOPID COMPUTERS!!
40 year old comics.

>>149279220
He is a pretty huge fan, I think he’s also trying to prevent bad adaptations but it does suck that he’s not doing anything either.

>>149264971 (OP)
Hahah! Dick means PENIS!

>>149264971 (OP)
>Hermes Press
That's your first problem, anon. Hermes Press is mostly known for museum-esque archival collections of works and they charge shitloads for their books. Pic related is $100+

>>149264971 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFArYx3Ay84

>>149264971 (OP)
I'm rather fond of this man's jacket

>>149264971 (OP)
Nobody reads comics anymore

>>149282808
cuteness

>>149282808
The world is gonna be a sadder place after Harry Shearer passes...

>>149282808
Woah...

>>149264971 (OP)
I like how he's name Dick Tracy.

>>149269616
How?
Is there any viable way to read Dick Tracy or other old strips online? Paid or otherwise?
I looked into accession the Chicago Tribune archives but you need an Illinois library card.
Someone posted some Popeye strips a week or so ago that were culled from another newspaper archive, but there are no individual memberships for that one, only institutional access.

>>149287552
Why can't you get a library card?

>>149287596
Some states allow out of state residents to get library cards, Illinois doesn’t

>>149287833
>Out of state residents
Aren't you supposed to update your residency within 6 months of living there

>>149264971 (OP)
jewish af

>>149265132
>It's not an East-vs-West thread Im just incapable of making a point without comparing things from Japan and things from America

>>149264971 (OP)
Where did you get the $1000 number from? Are you really treating out of print secondary sales as a price point?

>>149264971 (OP)
>In Japan, you can get the entire run of One Piece for under $400
In America the first 23 volumes of OP costs 250 so it’s over 1000 for the entire comics (so far) as well

>>149290791
This, if it’s out of production or low quantity obviously it’ll cost more on a secondary release. If I wanted Yeezy 1s it would cost me 1400 lol. Red October versions like 11000.

They originally retailed for like 300. Supply and demand dictates price especially on the secondary market.