It's about time I would say!! After releasing the entire series RECOLORED in Absolute Editions, Vertigo has announced that they will be re-releasing the entire series of 10 Sandman Graphic Novels in paperback, all using the recolored art from the Absolutes. I can't tell you how excited I am by this! Sandman suffered from the lack luster coloring of the 90's that many books did at the time, through no fault of the colorists I might add, they did the best they could with the tools available. Now, with the advent of digital coloring/painting the look of standard comics have changed dramatically. I am so excited to see Vertigo releasing the Sandman paperbacks with the new coloring. To be quite honest, Sandman can be a hard sell these days to the average person on the street, because of the flat colors. Now with these new editions I can go back to pimping the hell out of this series. I guess this means I will be giving Neil Gaiman MORE money sometime next year. I swore up and down that I would NOT contribute ANY more cash to his wallet as far as Sandman is concerned, but damn it now I have to go back on my word. See, back in the day, I bought every single one of the floppy issues of course. Then they started releasing the graphic novels in paperback, which I bought of course so I could spread the joy of Sandman to my friends and family, and then they released th GN's in hardcover, which I had to buy to put on my book shelf. When Vertigo released the Absolute Editions, I swore up and down that I would NOT buy the same damn thing AGAIN, especially for the price and the size of the books. I really have no where to put Absolute Editions, my place is just not big enough for books that size. NOW with the re-release of the newly recolored paperbacks, I guess I will have to give Neil money ONE MORE TIME. Sigh....I hope he has enjoyed all the cash he has made off of all the crazy Sandman fans in the world, that just keep buying and rebuying the same material over and over again. I'm sure he makes more cash off of his NY Times Best-selling novels, but still, I'm sure those royalty checks from DC don't hurt. I really don't have space on my book shelves for another set of Sandman graphic novels, but I will find somewhere to put them.
I can only hope that some day Vertigo goes back to recolor other series. I would love to see the Grant Morrison Doom Patrol run recolored, and just about any other Vertigo series from the 90's. Don't they know that new fans today have a tough time stomaching the old colors? I know, both Marvel and DC could recolor their entire libraries. Some fans would applaud this move and others would bitch and moan that that would be sacrilege of the worst order. It's sort of like George Lucas going back to redo effects shots for the old Star Wars movies. He did the best he could at the time, so unless he wants to reshoot all three films, he should leave well enough alone. 9 out of 10 times the coloring matches the art of the time period so they should leave it alone, but every once in a while, a series is SO good it would be nice to see it recolored. Time will tell if DC considers doing this with any other series in their library.
So, if you don't already own Sandman 3 times, you may want to consider picking up the recolored versions. If you already own all 10 Sandman GN's, why not pick up the new versions for yourself and then give away your old editions to a friend to get he/she hooked on comics. That is most likely what I will be doing with my old editions. (On second thought I only have the hardcover editions still on my book shelf, I already gave away my old paperback editions. Not sure if I will ever part with my original hardcover editions. I like having the original editions right next to the new editions. I did this back in the day with the original Star Wars trilogy, I had to own both the new Special Editions and the original theatrical releases. And yes, I did the same damn thing with all three LOTR films. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. It's the collector within, she never rests.)
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