Sad news from Jeph York of the Marvel Collected Editions department:
Okay, after three months of solicits with no Premiere Classic HCs in them, I should probably end the suspense and make this official:
Marvel has ended the Premiere Classic hardcover line.
They’ll still be collecting modern series in Premiere-sized HCs, and the Omnibus, OHC and Masterworks programs are not in danger. But the Premiere Classic line is being put to bed with volume #106.
Sorry, guys. I know quite a few of you loved them.
Apparently, not enough loved them to make the line worthwhile in Marvel’s eyes. The Marvel Premiere Classic line, which collected much-loved series and storylines from the past five decades of the House of Ideas’ back catalog in (relatively) affordable hardcover format, had been around since 2006; we can but hope that this might mean an uptick in trade paperbacks and Essentials collecting material from the 1980s-1990s period in replacement.
August 15th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Essentials are the worst, i can’t believe anyone buys those. I just can’t read Black and White comics that were meant to be in color, it’s painful… (B&W by design is a whole other story…)
August 15th, 2012 at 5:56 pm
It’s the Visionaries and Ultimate collections that I would like to see them expand. I think people have been waiting for Ultimate Spider-man Ultimate Collection volume 4 for about 10 years now.
And DC recently repackaged Knightfall into huge, full color collections that are pretty freaking cheap. They are basically Showcase/Essentials with better paper and color.
I think there’s enough 90′s nostalgia out there now for cheap, color collections to sell, if they were available.
August 16th, 2012 at 8:38 am
I completely agree with ThePants.
August 16th, 2012 at 8:46 am
I completely agree with Odis.
August 16th, 2012 at 9:20 am
The Essentials range is just marvelous- over here in the UK we grew up with black and white reprints of US titles, and most of our weekly comics, reprint or not, were monochrome until the 1990s. Hence, we tend to have no problem reading them in that format. Coupled with the low price, this makes the Essentials a necessary purchase. we have stacks of them in our house, devoured by small people as well as big- and they don’t have to be “looked after” as are cheaply replaceable if they get “too loved”. Plus, they make great colouring books for the smallest members of the family!
August 16th, 2012 at 11:04 am
Agreed with Kyle Garret. While I wouldn’t say the wait would be about ten years (The material hadn’t even been made yet), the third USM Ultimate Collection came out two years ago, and those three Ultimate Collections have been combined into an omnibus. It’s time for Marvel to release all the Ultimate Collections for Ultimate Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four, especially since UFF doesn’t have any yet and UXM got a fourth one.
While it’s sad to see a line go, I’m new to comics, so I can’t really say whether this is a good or bad thing. I prefer paperbacks and omnibuses, so this probably wouldn’t have suited me.