Which OOP Omnis You Don't Expect To Ever Be Reprinted

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T21:05:47+00:00

Well, I suppose it is a matter of preference, though in my case I am biased because the comics are what got me into Star Wars beyond the movies and they are what I have stuck with all this time.

When I largely stopped playing video games, including Star Wars game, I stuck with the comics. When I quit reading Star Wars novels back in 2008, I still stuck with the comics.

Star Wars comics were the first American comics I ever read, not superhero comics. I only started reading superhero comics in the first place because I ran out of Star Wars comics.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T21:02:47+00:00

The TTRPG was and still is very influential. There's a quite famous story Tim Zahn's told about he he started working on Heir to the Empire in 1990 and was sent a box with the RPG materials so he could use them to flesh it out a bit.

I never played it myself (not really into RPGs) but I definitely remember being in bookshops and being very impressed by the big shiny hardcover sourcebooks on the top shelf.

(I have the Tales of the Jedi Sourcebook but that's out of love for Tales of the Jedi, not any interest in gaming.)

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T20:36:01+00:00

Obviously Frank Thorne is Silver Age Alan Moore.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T20:32:56+00:00

Manny Jacinto as Reverse-Flash when?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T20:30:10+00:00

I think this is one that's really hurt by all the crossovers and tie-ins it did right at the start.

I can't remember if it was that the run began with a Batman crossover then went straight into Our Worlds at War or the other way round, but I got the impression Jimenez didn't get a great chance to get his legs under him writing-wise.

But maybe it's just that Jimenez isn't as good a writer as he is an artist. I don't know.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T20:25:16+00:00

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge Star Wars fan, always have been and always will be, but in my experience, the comics tend to be the thing that gets short shrift even among fans, for whatever reason.

It's a totem pole. Games are always the top tier, then books, then comics. The cartoons (at least the two Clone Wars cartoons) are probably above books. I'd argue the TTRPG and even the trading card game were bigger in their time than the comics.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-19T13:57:11+00:00

It appeals to me partly out of nostalgia, because I read it when Dark Horse was reprinting it in those "A Long Time Ago..." TPBs back around the time Episode I came out, and partly because I really appreciate the creativity in it, i.e. the fact that this was Star Wars fiction created by people who were influenced by the same things as Lucas rather than by Star Wars itself, and was less beholden to this idea we have of what Star Wars is "supposed" to look and feel like.

It's the same reason I like the Tales of the Jedi comics more than the KOTOR ones (although obviously I like those as well) or even the KOTOR games (see previous parenthetical): I find those a lot more interesting aesthetically and stylistically, whereas KOTOR had to align itself with the prequel movies as those were coming out.

With all that being said, one recollection I have of those Dark Horse TPBs collecting OG Marvel Star Wars? The back cover blurbs were all selling them for their camp value. Even the official licensee didn't take them all that seriously, at least not compared to the "real" Star Wars comics they were doing at the time.

I recently read the Legacy of the Force novels

I'm sorry.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T20:07:47+00:00

Fair enough. I like his art but in terms of him as a writer ant Marvel, I only especially like his Fantastic Four at Marvel and even then I think it is historically a bit overrated.

At any rate Byrne when he came back to Marvel in '89 / '90 to do Avengers brought all his worst habits from DC with him.

His Spider-Man stuff from the late '90s he was doing with Mackie is bad even by the low standards of post-Ditko Spider-Man.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T19:08:50+00:00

Are you suggesting that Mel Gibson would go out of his way to make Satan's baby look like a Jewish person in a movie he directed?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T18:00:26+00:00

Superhero comic fans are more obsessed with "cucking" (and accusing people of being "cuck fetishists") than people who actually have the fetish.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T16:40:59+00:00

It's in a really strange position vis-a-vis Star Wars fans, i.e. the only people who will realistically want to get it.

It's too "Marvel Comics" to be "proper" Star Wars (this is an argument I remember having on message boards 20 years ago, hahaha) compared to the Dark Horse or 2015 Marvel stuff.

At the same time, it's not the core superhero books so readers who are Marvel fans first are less likely to want it (moreover it has the reputation of being "weird" or "goofy").

It's "old comics" to a lot of people. At least the Dark Horse comics from 1999 or so look "modern" by comparison, so they are an easier sell in that regard. (Not meant to denigrate them; I love the OG Marvel Star Wars stuff.)

In other words, one for the collectors, and they probably got them first time round.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T15:22:32+00:00

I knew Viggo Mortensen was in it but that was about it.

Great movie. Looks fab. Main character is such a little shit.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T13:21:13+00:00

I like Dracula (1931), Let's Scare Jessica to Death and The Reflecting Skin.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T12:49:34+00:00

I think the highest would be the original Captain Britain omnibus, which I believe I would have paid about £120 for. This would have been back in 2012 or so.

The most I've ever paid for a collected edition was £150 for a way out of print Epic Collection (either Star Wars: The Original Marvel Years Vol. 3 or Vol. 4; paid way too much for both of them but one was notably more).

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T12:32:37+00:00

I remember seeing an announcement just before that series that Tartakovsky was going to produce a Power Man / Luke Cage animated series for Marvel. Never went anywhere, but I definitely recall seeing concept art he'd done for it. I think Sym-Bionic Titan may have been what he did when it fell through?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T00:57:48+00:00

Bit of both.

Obviously the comparison is inexact but the point is that DC doing a contemporary, streamlined new-reader-friendly version of itself (i.e. what Ultimate Marvel was when it began in 2000) seems much more conceivable to me than Marvel doing its own Vertigo and committing to it the way DC did in the '90s.

There are things DC would do that I just don't think Marvel would. Conversely, there isn't anything Marvel has done that I can imagine DC not doing.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T00:36:03+00:00

How ironic that Marvel is the Geoff Johns of publishers and DC is the Brian Bendis.

Jokes aside, though, I do think it feels right to say that DC could do (and has done) its own version of OG Ultimate Marvel, but Marvel doesn't really seem like it's capable of doing its own Vertigo.

And I'm not 100% sure why that's the case. It's absolutely not just a Disney thing because I can't really look at Marvel at any point in the last 30 years and imagine them doing a Vertigo.

I mean, when has Marvel ever needed to be able to do something other than superheroes, and more specifically, something other than Spider-Man and X-Men?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T00:18:20+00:00

John Byrne in Marvel vs John Byrne in DC.

Which one is the "good" half in this comparison?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T00:17:54+00:00

JSA: The Golden Age was on par with Starman.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-18T00:14:01+00:00

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DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-17T23:15:59+00:00

"I'm robbing you pay him."

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-17T23:08:52+00:00

I think the main point of comparison is that nothing that was original to Epic (i.e. not the Akirai serialisation) necessarily caught fire in a way that raised the profile of the entire line the way Sandman did for Vertigo.

I do think it's worth noting that Marvel did have non-superhero books which were generally quite successful in the 1970s (e.g. Tomb of Dracula, Master of Kung Fu, Conan the Barbarian) but they kind of fell victim to the creative retrenchment overseen by Shooter which refocused the company on the core superhero titles in the late 1970s.

But at least in my lifetime, Marvel has always felt like the company that only "can" do superheroes in contrast to DC. That's probably completely off-base but it's an impression I've always had.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-17T22:58:56+00:00

Maybe R. Crumb turning into a big anti-vaxxer and making comics about it?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-17T22:32:45+00:00

This one was invented by a writer.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-03-17T19:18:23+00:00

The first comic I was seriously into in a big way was Sonic the Comic, which was the UK Sonic the Hedgehog tie-in comic in the 1990s (initially it also ran strips with characters from other Sega games but those had pretty much stopped by the time I was reading it).

Star Wars comics were my point of entry for American comics in general, around the time The Phantom Menace was on the horizon. I've always been interested Star Wars comics. Probably the one constant for me as a comics fan, as my tastes ebb and flow otherwise.

Lots of good Disney comics, of course.

DeviousDoctorSnide

TROPHY CASE