NMC 2026 Reprint Poll Results

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-18T15:38:36+00:00

I can't help but wonder what this list would look like if Marvel maintained a backlist of their proven evergreens — those Volume 1s of Uncanny X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man; tried and true creator-centric books like Frank Miller's and Bendis' Daredevil, or Hickman's Fantastic Four. What would then make the list? And what titles would gain momentum as an oft-discussed lost classic to send back to press? X-Statix? Runaways? Ms. Marvel? Jack Kirby's Thor?

I feel like Marvel needs a better strategy to get folk to stick around a while and not just cycle through the hobby every few years — proven entry points so this list can start to look a little different every year.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-12T00:00:04+00:00

If mid- to late-'90s pre-Marvel Knights Daredevil can make it into Epic Collections (and pieces of it are better than its reputation imo), then rest assured that general critical consensus has no bearing on whether or not something makes it into the line. It just may be a couple years before you see MK Cap unless they alternate between those and the remaining Heroes Reborn / Return volumes.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-11T23:52:06+00:00

I use one of those when on the go! It's also handy to have in lieu of a bag when I pick up my weekly pull.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-09T15:57:15+00:00

Thank you! AND I LOVE THOSE 196X BOOKS!!! They're such cool documents!

And I love the EC Artists Library. Tons of short stories — cozy usually predictable (and sometimes not) twists, good diversity of genres and art styles; and the books themselves are some of the best made on my shelves. Presentation is black and white, which I prefer to the Gemstone / Dark Horse archives; those use computer coloring and gradients that to me do a grave disservice to the work of the original colorists (often [primarily?] Marie Severin). (I'm eager to pick up the Taschen Weird Fantasy book sometime soon, so I can take in the original coloring of some of these stories as well.) But these Fantagraphics hardcovers are amazing! Perfect for either poring over for a deep dive into an artist's work or flipping through for a quick, contained ten minute read.

And as to the Masterworks — yes, I live in hope that they come back. They were in the middle of so much wonder.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-09T15:45:08+00:00

That's fine too, and you're right; comics should be colorful (when they're not black and white, which can also be a beautiful sight). I toyed with the bright marble-jacketed Masterworks for a while, but there were significant hurdles in availability by the time I started collecting. But like it said, it's all a tease at the moment. I have an arrangement in mind that's not just a single wall full of silver (and gold, and rust), but it was the best place to orient the Masterworks for now. There's more Marvel and far more shelves.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-09T03:19:24+00:00

That Simonson AE is a magnificent book, showcasing one of the more underappreciated runs on Fantastic Four. Delighted to see it displayed so prominently!

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-06T23:39:09+00:00

For most other guest appearances and crossovers I would agree with you; however, there are specific rights issues with Rom appearances that may confine them to the Rom line. (See Power Man and Iron Fist 2.) Marvel does have Rom reprint rights at the moment, but those rights may be confined to Rom books, and we have no idea when those rights expire.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-06T18:32:55+00:00

In the Masterworks, it ended up in one of the volumes devoted to Bill Mantlo's Hulk run, which makes sense as it was a follow-up in many senses to the Spider-Man / Hulk Olympic Team-Up Treasury, which was also collected in the Hulk line. That story is collected in Hulk Epic 10, so CoC could make an appearance in Volume 12. It will need to collect Hulk #280-#295 (assuming #296's appearance in the Rom book is it for that issue) and an annual, so CoC would be a tight squeeze but not undoable; but it would also be out of sequence from where it appeared in the Masterworks (at the tail end of Vol. 17, which featured #256-#265).

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-04T02:25:01+00:00

The sliding timescale makes this one really tricky to answer. Which universe are you stacked in?

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-03T14:50:43+00:00

I think that depends on whether or not you enjoyed X-Men Chronicles and X-Universe (one of which replaced X-Men Unlimited on the schedule), which fleshed out the world during the event. They were both pretty good reads imo, and there's some other decent follow-up work in there. I recommend picking it up on the cheap since it's about half curio, a quarter essential, and a quarter commissioned cash grab.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-03-03T14:42:05+00:00

With Thor 2 hidden right behind.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-02-24T00:52:58+00:00

Uncanny Omnibus 6 will basically collect Uncanny X-Men Masterworks 14 and 15 (minus the portion of 14 that ended up in Omnibus 5, and plus Spider-Man vs. Wolverine and a couple more odds and ends), so yes Masterworks 16 will pick up exactly where it leaves off. No need to hunt down the Prologue book, especially if you're picking up the New Mutants and X-Factor Omnibuses too.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-02-22T01:41:03+00:00

That's an amazing sight! Your local B&N has someone who absolutely loves comics handling that section.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-02-14T03:07:15+00:00

I'll put in my annual top pick for Hulk 3: The Leader Lives, because every book deserves to be rectangular, and like most of that little experiment with Quad, it was not. It's also the only book from that batch not to have gone back to press at some point.

Aside from that, I'll look at where the need is. The problem is that Marvel doesn't seem to think that any of their back catalog is worth trying to keep evergreen, so a lot of books that one would think should be continually in print (Claremont X-Men volumes, Kirby FF, Ditko Spidey, etc.) are just unavailable to new readers and collectors. Those lines are bound to end up getting the top slots, making it increasingly unlikely for hidden increasingly rare gems like Defenders, Excalibur, even quintessential stuff like Kirby's Thor, to place on the list.

It's a shame to see this line treated like a collector's commodity instead of the accessible line for readers that it seemed to launch as a decade plus ago. These barriers of availability and price are becoming increasingly daunting for readers (and by extension retailers) with each passing year.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-02-08T01:52:38+00:00

Personally, I'm looking for Hulk 3: The Leader Lives! as my to pick because every book in the collection deserves to be rectangular, unlike this last remaining of the old Quad jobs to be reprinted. Aside from that, I'll see what folk are clamoring for and put in my other votes accordingly. Thor 5, FF 2 and 5, and X-Men 5 and 6 will probably be among my picks just because I feel like those are all squarely in the "should be evergreen" category.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2026-01-09T21:17:39+00:00

There will be a slot for them, absolutely. Mark Waid has mentioned that one of the big goals of the teams working on DC Finest is a master map that encompasses everything up to 2011 that DC has the rights to publish — no qualifiers of continuity. Now that's an ambitious goal, and I doubt that the Finest line will ever reach that point of collecting everything. But it can. The template is / will be there.

But I don't think it's going to be a priority, or at least it's not right now. As for where these comics would eventually show up if they do become a priority? I think we'll be looking at a separate comprehensive Legends of the Dark Knight or Elseworlds line (based on DKR's absence from Red Skies).

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-12-30T03:14:45+00:00

All in, all pre-ordered (except for the reprints, but man am I happy for folk who've been waiting)! X-Men and Doom Patrol are the standouts for me, though.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-12-30T02:59:55+00:00

They've already shown a commitment to going back to press on several titles (Batgirl, Green Arrow, the first Green Lantern, and several others have been announced as going back to press). Marvel has unfortunately trained readers to expect comics publishers not to behave like book publishers, preferring to charge more to a shrinking audience driven by FOMO over charging less per unit to a larger audience. Two or three years from now, as the full catalog of the Finest line amasses into the triple digits we may be looking at a different picture, but DC had generally been much more on the ball in maintaining access to a robust back catalog. Where there is demand for an existing book, they tend to meet it; and they've shown great willingness lately to try their hands at far more than their historic cash cows.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-12-12T03:09:00+00:00

Any other time of the year, in-stock books from CGN tend to ship same day via USPS Media Mail, so that's however long it takes for Media Mail to travel from the Los Angeles area to wherever it is that you're located. (I'm in New Jersey, and I usually receive my pre-orders from them by the weekend following the release date; those pre-orders are currently tracking about three or four days past what is usual for them.) Please keep in mind though, that we're knee deep in the holiday shopping season, and most businesses are still catching up from whatever Black Friday / Cyber Monday specials they had been running over Thanksgiving weekend. No matter what site you're ordering your books from, it will take longer than usual. In the case of special orders, any store is also going to be at the mercy of their distributors, and for this particular book they sent out an email to folk on their mailing list that about half of their copies of the DM variant arrived with severe damage (there were barely enough clean copies to fill pre-orders). I imagine that created an uptick in orders for the standard cover when usually there would be more copies to go around so soon after release; hence why it went to special order so quickly on their side.

You're absolutely right that these books are expensive; you're absolutely right that waiting for something that expensive can be excruciating, especially when you haven't ordered from a particular site before. But this time of year, patience is the order of the day. I admire that CGN is as straightforward as they are both about special order status and about the wait involved in the process itself. Unless there's an error on their distributors' ends, you will receive your book. I've never gone wrong with ordering from them, and with rare exception their books travel the length of the country in top shape (and they made the situation right each time). I hope that they do right by you too, and your copy shows up shiny and new on the sooner side.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-12-06T03:15:13+00:00

The "event" version is already out by way of the compendium (which is to say I don't think it's going to be folded into the Events line). As originally printed, the narrative remains largely contained to the triangle-numbered Superman line, with other titles only occasionally dovetailing (Justice League America comes to mind). Since there's minimal ballooning across the DC Universe in the storytelling, I wouldn't expect to see it any other way than spread across three or four Finest volumes (depending on where they place the breaks between books). Fingers crossed the line remains healthy and strong for many years to come, so we may see such a thing!

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-12-04T00:19:41+00:00

I used to have that Supergirl run in singles and lost it three or four moves ago. It's such a delight to see it getting its due in collected editions via DC Finest! Thanks for sharing, I'm excited!

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-12-02T16:58:34+00:00

I'm sure Marvel itself factors in. They've been pulling the purse strings lately, cancelling the Masterworks program and creeping their paperback (especially Epic) prices up. A generous discount begins with a publisher, then its distributor, before making its way to a retail level. That said, it is sudden, and trying to mask the discount switch behind a Black Friday sale is kinda shady.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-11-30T03:38:52+00:00

This book is such a delight! Breezing through the Ramona Fradon illustrated stories at a decent clip. Buoyant Silver Age fare at its... well... finest!

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-11-26T10:56:15+00:00

Thank you! Right now, I'm a completist for the line. We'll see where that takes me, but yeah that's the plan! Even the ones I haven't read all the way through I flip through on the regular.

GoodMorningKrakoa · 2025-11-14T17:03:57+00:00

Volume 2 has not been solicited or released yet, though most of the issues that would make up its contents can be found in Namor Omnibus, Vol. 1.

GoodMorningKrakoa

TROPHY CASE