Okay, so quick show of hands, how many of us are able to resist the latest sumptuous hardback reprint of the first 4 Nemesis books?
::)
The repro doesn't appear to suffer from the same problems as usually expected from the IPC film archive. Original prog-size, too. Limited edition of 250 (English language):
https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/XB682
With an introduction by Pat Mills and afterword by Kevin O'Neill, this volume includes the stories:
Terror Tube (2000 AD Prog 167),
Killer Watt (2000 AD Prog 178)
Nemesis the Warlock Books 1-4 :
- The World of Termight (2000 AD Prog s 238-240, 243-244)
- The Alien Alliance (2000 AD Prog 246-257)
- The World of Nemesis (2000 AD Progs 335-349)and
- The Gothic Empire (2000 AD Prog 387-406)
Plus :
The Sword Sinister (2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1981) and
The Secret Life of the Blitzsper (2000 AD Annual 1983).
Tempting, even though I already own the Hachette volume. ARGH. Why do you do this to me, Tharg?
... and bought... along with the limited edition Dr. Mesmer Hardback.
I was supposed to be saving money...
... but the rest can't come too soon.
Regards,
Robin
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 03 September, 2019, 06:56:38 PM
Tempting, even though I already own the Hachette volume. ARGH. Why do you do this to me, Tharg?
What with the problems that the Ultimate Collection has had and some of the ropey repro on the B&W stuff in the Dredd collection my decision not to bother with Hachette.
Of course I'm going to go and find that record player of mine that keeps sticking: more limited edition hardbacks please Rebellion. Stront would be very high on my list ...
Will there be a series of these Nemesis books or is this just a one off of the first few stories?
As directed by Mr S Green earlier, I discovered Tharg said – as ever – it depends on how many people open their wallets.
Quote from: Max Headroom on 03 September, 2019, 07:25:29 PM
Will there be a series of these Nemesis books or is this just a one off of the first few stories?
Accordingly 2000 Shop page this is the first volume: "
Developed in conjunction with 2000 AD's French publisher Delirium, there are only 250 English language copies of this limited edition English-language hardcover edition of the first volume of The Complete Nemesis the Warlock, written by Pat Mills with art by Kevin O'Neill, Jesus Redondo, and Bryan Talbot."
https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/XB682
Ordered. Pefect timing! Had a job bring in a lot more cash than expected, and just did a Nemesis re-read and really felt the need for a better copy than my Casefiles. Chance of colour for the Book III centrespreads?
Weird. I thought this was only in a French.
I was literally only thinking why have they not done Nemesis in a Mek Files format and what do you know? Well I've pulled the trigger. There'll be a Nemesis Vol. 1 paperback for sale soon!
COMPLETELY agree on the Strontium Dog Idea. That stunning Carlos art in a bigger format? Yes please.
JB
Quote from: I, Cosh on 03 September, 2019, 08:10:16 PM
Weird. I thought this was only in a French.
It is – except for this limited 250-book run in English.
Quote from: I, Cosh on 03 September, 2019, 08:10:16 PM
Weird. I thought this was only in a French.
Yeah so did I - I'm kinda hoping this one sells out quickly to remove the temptation!
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 03 September, 2019, 09:02:39 PM
Quote from: I, Cosh on 03 September, 2019, 08:10:16 PM
Weird. I thought this was only in a French.
Yeah so did I - I'm kinda hoping this one sells out quickly to remove the temptation!
Well careful what you wish for - its gone!
That was quick! Really glad I got mine so. Hope this uptake means they'll give the same treatment to the other two volumes. I'm guessing it depends if French sales also? If they do them it means that we might get the prog 2000 story and they might also move the Chris Weston story to the right place in the volume rather than at the back.
I'd be crazy to wish for the Deadlock solo story in there too but it is a kind of epilogue to book x and wouldn't it be nice to see that Henry Flint art in a big format?
Quote from: jabish on 04 September, 2019, 09:00:13 AM
Hope this uptake means they'll give the same treatment to the other two volumes... If they do them it means that we might get the prog 2000 story and they might also move the Chris Weston story to the right place in the volume rather than at the back.
I'd be crazy to wish for the Deadlock solo story in there too but it is a kind of epilogue to book x and wouldn't it be nice to see that Henry Flint art in a big format?
What you have described (minus the big format) is the Ultimate Collection books!
Oh really? That gives me a little hope so. It was over four volumes though no?
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 04 September, 2019, 06:38:43 AMWell careful what you wish for - its gone!
Oh well. I decided to sleep on it. Overnight sales obviously decided for me. I have the full series in HC anyway (if not this luxurious kind), and can just throw 30 quid at something I've not yet read or don't yet own instead.
Thank the Gods it was sold out, the only way I wasn't going to shell out for this.
As these books sold out in record time, I hope we get the complete Nemesis (with all colour included) in this format. I just hope that I am on the forum when future editions are listed and don't miss any!
Quote from: jabish on 04 September, 2019, 09:00:13 AM
That was quick! Really glad I got mine so. Hope this uptake means they'll give the same treatment to the other two volumes. I'm guessing it depends if French sales also? If they do them it means that we might get the prog 2000 story and they might also move the Chris Weston story to the right place in the volume rather than at the back.
I'd be crazy to wish for the Deadlock solo story in there too but it is a kind of epilogue to book x and wouldn't it be nice to see that Henry Flint art in a big format?
I think Book X works better with the Deadlock story than without, shall have to dig out the floppy in the meantime!
Received my copy this morning via Royal Mail. Looks to be an amazing edition, but slightly upset it has a ding in one corner which offends my perfectionist sensibilities. Never mind...
Annoying that these sold out before I heard about them.
It would be nice if Rebellion had a PR droid who could post about upcoming releases on the forum.
Best bet: sign up to the email list. That way, you hear before anyone else.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 06 September, 2019, 03:07:53 PM
Best bet: sign up to the email list. That way, you hear before anyone else.
I'm on the email list. First I knew was when I saw it on the website.
I do wish companies would appreciate that some people really have no interest at all in Twatter or Fakebook.
As an aside, turned up today, just in time for the weekend! First glance, it is lush. It's also survived the ministrations of the postal service pretty well too. Happy days!
Mine arrived today. Possibly the thing I like the most about it is that the paper isn't glossy. I find paper with a bit of texture is much, much nicer to look at. The book also opens just beautifully, no creaking of spine or having to loosen it up a bit. It's also surprisingly light to hold despite the size, which I'm guessing is down to the paper choice. It's a strange thing to say, but it's a very user-friendly book considering it's a whacking great hardback.
This might sound a rather unfair, but it would be nice of the 250 of us who bought it got advance warning of subsequent books. It would be really annoying to miss out.
Better still (and fairer) would be if these weren't so limited. This is a really nice book and I'd like to see more, for everyone. People have also mentioned Strontium Dog - well, I'd buy it, along with Slaine and Dredd epics. Hell, I'd probably buy Zenith again just to have it on non-glossy paper.
Regards,
Robin
Quote from: Robin Low on 06 September, 2019, 08:28:48 PM
Possibly the thing I like the most about it is that the paper isn't glossy.
Well that's the best news.
It would have been nice if all the new writings weren't dark grey on black - I think I'm going to have to wait for a bright sunny day to attempt to read it all without risking eye strain!
(other than that, probably the best edition since the 1980s Titans - and they had the advantage of printing directly from original art in all/most cases).
Oooo nice! Can we get get set like this for Strontium Dog?
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 06 September, 2019, 08:56:31 PM
Quote from: Robin Low on 06 September, 2019, 08:28:48 PM
Possibly the thing I like the most about it is that the paper isn't glossy.
Well that's the best news.
Yes, I much prefer that.
Fingers crossed for a Strontium Dog Agency Files with colour spreads...
Quote from: Tjm86 on 06 September, 2019, 07:36:33 PM
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 06 September, 2019, 03:07:53 PM
Best bet: sign up to the email list. That way, you hear before anyone else.
I'm on the email list. First I knew was when I saw it on the website.
I do wish companies would appreciate that some people really have no interest at all in Twatter or Fakebook.
Ditto.
Seems the often extraordinarily long postage times from the UK aren't quite as mandatory as I had been led to believe, as my copy arrived this morning. I'm not one to gloat (I really am), but oooh baruda that was one well-judged impulse buy.
I experienced a mild twinge of disappointment opening the packet to find a badly dinged corner (the cardboard sleeve itself was all-but annihilated, so I was relatively lucky), and a solitary white pixel staring at me out of the otherwise glorious black cover, but these minor imperfections are nothing compared to what's going to happen to this beauty under my ungentle care over many, many re-reads.
A second wobble occurred as I removed the Casefiles Vol 1 edition from the shelf to make room for its replacement, and I briefly beheld a perfectly good collection of almost identical material with a stonking electric green cover design: oh double (actually quadruple) dipper, thy name is spendthrift!
But then I settled down for a lunchtime read and any and all reservations evaporated like a chief of the Tube Police in a teleporter accident.
This is a lovely, lovely thing, crisp repro on matt white pages, excellent colour gallery reminding of just how many progs I mutilated to have maximum Nem/Torque coverage on my bedroom wall. Despite being larger and heavier than its predecessor, a nice binding means it's actually easier to handle for reading, and the sharper contrast is easier on my ageing eyes, especially on the glorious Redondo pages.
Some of my all-time favourite 2000AD material getting the luxury treatment it truly deserves. Roll on Volume 2, the, errr, Middle Heresies.
Someone has flipped one of these on eBay already - £92! 😡
Quote from: hippynumber1 on 09 September, 2019, 06:17:56 PM
Someone has flipped one of these on eBay already - £92! 😡
There's another f[spoiler]lipp[/spoiler]er trying to sell one for £447.98!
Quote from: sheridan on 09 September, 2019, 07:20:27 PM
Quote from: hippynumber1 on 09 September, 2019, 06:17:56 PM
Someone has flipped one of these on eBay already - £92! 😡
There's another f[spoiler]lipp[/spoiler]er trying to sell one for £447.98!
Wow until folks learn to resist buying stuff at these silly prices they'll continue to do this.
Always the way. It'd be interesting to know why the 250 units limit was decided on. Seems kinda low for that particular book.
Quote from: sheridan on 09 September, 2019, 07:20:27 PM
Quote from: hippynumber1 on 09 September, 2019, 06:17:56 PM
Someone has flipped one of these on eBay already - £92! 😡
There's another f[spoiler]lipp[/spoiler]er trying to sell one for £447.98!
Hey, Star Wars figures and Warhammer soldiers ain't cheap, buddy!
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 09 September, 2019, 08:12:19 PM
Quote from: sheridan on 09 September, 2019, 07:20:27 PM
Quote from: hippynumber1 on 09 September, 2019, 06:17:56 PM
Someone has flipped one of these on eBay already - £92! 😡
There's another f[spoiler]lipp[/spoiler]er trying to sell one for £447.98!
Wow until folks learn to resist buying stuff at these silly prices they'll continue to do this.
No bids on that one when I saw it - hopefully that won't change!
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 09 September, 2019, 08:43:00 PM
Always the way. It'd be interesting to know why the 250 units limit was decided on. Seems kinda low for that particular book.
I'm still hacked off about the way Rebellion put this out.
Just wondered if anyone who bought this book also has the old large-size Titan editions and how the repro compares between the two. Are the old editions still superior?
Quote from: Max Headroom on 10 September, 2019, 05:01:54 PM
Just wondered if anyone who bought this book also has the old large-size Titan editions and how the repro compares between the two. Are the old editions still superior?
I have - I'll check when I get home.
It was interesting comparing the Heresies, the Titan hardback edition and the Termight edition. The Titan is a bit crisper in places but not by much for the first couple of books. The Heresies seems a bit murky when it gets to book four so ironically it is the more recent material that compares least favourably to the rest of the book. The intro for the Titan edition also has more on character development than Heresies which is a bit of a shame / missed opportunity but that is me being picky.
The cover gallery scans do show their source limitations quite a bit. The challenge of scanning material of this age can be seen with one illustration in particular that shows seep through from the interior. I think Maryanddavid has posted before about the challenges of scanning this stuff for digitisation so I can sympathise.
I guess I would be hard pressed to say which I prefer. If I were to do an "Absolute Nemesis" my dream edition would be the Originals and the Eagle colourised edition together with a character development piece and O'Neill's recollections of how and why he adapted the original artwork for the American edition. Mills has written in a number of different places about how he and O'Neill developed the characters and story but it would be nice to have it all in one place. For the later books it would be fantastic to see different artists discussing the evolving aesthetics of the different artists and what their work brings to the narrative. Arguably there also needs to be a piece about Hicklenton, his life and art. A lot of this was started in the Nemesis monograph by Smith but in places it lapses into a plot overview rather than an evaluation.
Ah, who am I kidding. Never going to happen. [sigh]
Interesting to see how they compare. Were the Titan versions taken from the original artwork itself? If so, what happened to said artwork and does it still exist?
Quote from: Max Headroom on 10 September, 2019, 06:09:10 PM
Interesting to see how they compare. Were the Titan versions taken from the original artwork itself? If so, what happened to said artwork and does it still exist?
The reproduction for the Titan graphic novel collection where taken either directly from the origional art, or from the origional printing plates from IPC.
The origional art has all since been sold to private collectors by the artists (I own 5 pages from Nemesis), and in the various transitions that 2000AD had made from company to company, the printing plates and files have all been lost.
The majority of Rebellions reprints comes from scanning in either copies of 2000AD, or the Titan collections.
And a boatload of algorithmic and manual processing obv.
Quote from: seanharry on 11 September, 2019, 01:33:45 PM
The origional art has all since been sold to private collectors by the artists (I own 5 pages from Nemesis), and in the various transitions that 2000AD had made from company to company, the printing plates and files have all been lost.
Do you know that for sure? I know Rebellion inherited a substantial film archive when they bought 2000AD, because the late Stewart (WR Logan) Perkins took on the task of organising and cataloguing it for them. I'd be surprised if the negs for 'crown jewel' strips had gone AWOL, simply because they were more likely to have been kept together and used more frequently than, say, the ones for Dry Run.
The only Nemesis reprint I own is in the Case Files-style volume and now the Ultimate Collection, and I thought the repro in the Ultimate version was largely excellent — to the extent that I find it hard to imagine it was scanned from the prog or a reprint.
Mmm, maybe some of Book IV looks a tad heavy, lettering in particular, but O'Neill and Redondo's finest lines and letratone work look near-perfect to me. Surely if working from prog-sources the Book III colour centrespreads would have appeared?
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 11 September, 2019, 01:47:36 PM
Quote from: seanharry on 11 September, 2019, 01:33:45 PM
The origional art has all since been sold to private collectors by the artists (I own 5 pages from Nemesis), and in the various transitions that 2000AD had made from company to company, the printing plates and files have all been lost.
Do you know that for sure? I know Rebellion inherited a substantial film archive when they bought 2000AD, because the late Stewart (WR Logan) Perkins took on the task of organising and cataloguing it for them. I'd be surprised if the negs for 'crown jewel' strips had gone AWOL, simply because they were more likely to have been kept together and used more frequently than, say, the ones for Dry Run.
The only Nemesis reprint I own is in the Case Files-style volume and now the Ultimate Collection, and I thought the repro in the Ultimate version was largely excellent — to the extent that I find it hard to imagine it was scanned from the prog or a reprint.
While the repro on books 1-3 of Nemesis is excellent, and on par with the Titan volumes, the 4th Book leaves a lot to be desired.
The reproduction in a lot of Rebellions collections is, quite frankly awful, particularly on the earlier stories. One horrific example is Father Earth, a story for which all details in Bollands work is lost, and some panels are so badly reproduced you simply can't see anything in them.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nemesis-The-Warlock-The-Early-Heresies-Hardback-limited-edition-RARE/323907557197?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3Dba4e72fc0938476ab5a35b32fd66c2c5%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D323907557197%26itm%3D323907557197%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2481888&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A8ff6d015-d4ca-11e9-a2f0-74dbd1806c2c%7Cparentrq%3A21cdefed16d0a9cc6bac0473ffbaf957%7Ciid%3A1
Bad repro is an issue that really bugs me. Personally, I would be more than willing to pay a higher price for my books if more time could be spent on them to bring them up to a good standard. Do others agree?
Quote from: Max Headroom on 11 September, 2019, 08:45:01 PM
Bad repro is an issue that really bugs me. Personally, I would be more than willing to pay a higher price for my books if more time could be spent on them to bring them up to a good standard. Do others agree?
If the original art is unavailable and the negs are lost/degraded then there's relatively little that can be done short of basically re-drawing the affected areas. Even then, with nothing nothing more than a poor-original-copy prog for reference, what you're going to get is some hapless sap's best guess.
For tiny areas (like the relatively small amount of re-drawing I did round the edges of the new speech balloons in Charley's War), you can (I hope!) get away with it. For larger areas, you're asking not for re-touch but an artist who can convincingly imitate Bolland, or Talbot, or Ezquerra... and that's going to add a time and cash overhead that'll have more than a marginal impact on the price of the end product.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 11 September, 2019, 01:35:33 PM
And a boatload of algorithmic and manual processing obv.
As was said at the 40th, Rebellion are literally getting state-of-the-art 'droids' to recover hundreds of thousands of pages of 20th century British comics...
Necropost! My two Heresies volumes just arrived and they are a sight to behold! Glad I went for it.
Quote from: Tomwe on 20 December, 2020, 10:49:53 AM
Necropost! My two Heresies volumes just arrived and they are a sight to behold! Glad I went for it.
Nice! I'm hoping mine might be delivered tomorrow! I can't wait to get my hands on them!
Can't wait to see Torquemada's Second Honeymoon in colour!
Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 20 December, 2020, 02:49:37 PM
Can't wait to see Torquemada's Second Honeymoon in colour!
It is really good - first book of Marshal Law-era Kevin O'Neill painting!
Both books have just arrived for me too. They really are rather lovely things.
The ribbon! The ribbon!
I'd Forgotton I'd ordered it.Nice surprise.Hopefully Royal mail will deliver festive prog before Xmas