Hi, Dave.
DJ> Back in 92, an era ended, when with the release of 10 last silver
DJ> age classics, DC ceased to have sparta press of Illionous(Yeah,
DJ> Its spelled wrong) print up their books after 33 years.
     Was that when they started using Ronalds in Montreal?
DJ> Around that time more or les˙s, marvel also bailed out on sparta,
DJ> thus, dooming this once giant of a comics printer!  You know, it
DJ> would have been in both companies interists,not to have so burned
DJ> their bridges behind them.
     How so?  What reason did DC and/or Marvel give for the switch
away from Sparta?
DJ> If both marvel & DC, had just 10 reprint classics a month, at an
DJ> afors\dable price come out, still printed at sparta, they might
DJ> have had a chance to hang on!
     Whether DC would've/could've/should've continued reprinting those
"Silver Age Classics" (and whether Marvel would've published their
"Marvel Milestone Editions" at Sparta) would, not unreasonably, be
determined by whether the first bunch which came out sold well or not.
I known I bought all of them when they came out... but I also know a
lot of stores which still have lots of 'em in their back-issue bins...
so I don't know how much demand there really was out there for them.
Actually, I remember at the time hoping that DC might start releasing
"Golden Age Classics" too... sort of as a sister-series of reprints
for the silver age stories... but it never went beyond the first
release... and a good idea was lost (as well as a printing company
evidently).
DJ> As is, they are now history, & I doubt that ANY american printer
DJ> could do as good as job, so cheaply.  It was a sad day for comics
DJ> when the folded.
     A sad day... if that sort of thing was important to you I guess.
It'd be interesting to know the reason for the switch.  I know there
was a push towards better paper (I know a friend of mine wrote both DC
& Marvel to complain about the quality of the paper they printed their
comics on... and I can't believe he was the only one).  Is it possible
that Sparta was unable to accommodate the companies' desire to print
their books on different paper?
Talk to you later.
David
.
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