Anyone else bought the Nikolai Dante GN - The Romanov Dynasty

[WoD]

I just got it through the post (very quick delivery from the online shop) and I'm dissapointed with the quality of the reprint.  The whole thing looks blurred in places and is not as fine as when it was first published in the comic.

I wondered if anyone else had it and what you thought.  Is it just my copy that's crap or is it all of them.  Also has anyone bought one of the other GNs and if so, what's the quality like on these?

[Mr D]

I've got the Batman/Dredd one and it's lovely and crisp and clear...

[The Monarch]

Bats/dredd is nice but wod is right about dante it is a bit blurred in places

[Mr D]

Hm... I might not get it then. I'll wait and see.

[Oddboy]

I got it from the Future Shop too - I've not read it yet, I've only flipped through it but it looked okay.

[DavidXBrunt]

Same thing as Odders, bought it, flicked through, looks okay. Might not stand up to closer inspection but it looks okay to me.

[WoD]

mine jumped out so I wondered if it was part of a rogue batch...

I'LL HAVE A (oops) look in my local book store to see if they have one for comparison.

[The Amstor Computer]

I've got all of the trades so far, so here's a rough idea of print quality:

Batman/Dredd Files - very good.

Sin/Dex Vol 1 - good. Some iffy reprints of some iffy painted art, but it's generally solid.

Red Razors - very good.

Swimming in Blood - major printing issues with the first tale, but the rest of the book is good.

Judgement Day - very good.

Nikolai Dante - iffy in places, but generally quite good.

Some of the issues seem to be down to the source material - stories from a certain period come off very badly, I suspect because some of them had to be scanned from progs rather than films or original art - and some down to the paper quality. Unlike Rebellion's own trades, these DC/Rebellion books are printed on a fairly light, non-glossy stock. This works fine for black and white or four-colour comics, but it impacts on the subtler modern art.

I expect earlier strips like Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog and Robo-Hunter to look great, and the recent Rebellion-era strips should look fine, but there's likely to be a patch in the 90s where decent reprints are going to be hard to pull off.

[Tweak72]

mine was chipper thankyou was very impressed with the whole thing even tells you when the different storys where originally printed

[Grant Goggans]

My only complaint with The Romanov Dynasty is with a couple of incorrect credits.  Simon Davis and Trevor Hairsine each get creditted for one of Simon Fraser's pieces.  Otherwise, my copy looks quite good and it's a great read.

--Grant

[Tweak72]

i was gonna ask about that

[Leigh S]

A thing that struck me about the Nikolai Dante collection is the fact that the version reprinted by Hamlyn removed all the "chapter" stuff - basically, no repetition of logos, and such breaking up the story - I think it reads slightly better than the new version where the next prog and logos scream at you "reprint" every six pages... Now the answer might be because the pages had to be scanned from the comic, but couldn't they have been scanned from the GN, which are a nicer quality?

[Byron Virgo]

I've got two copies: one from the Future Shop, the other from Forbidden Planet (oh well, at least that means I have one less Christmas present to buy). The printing is fine on my copies. Occasionaly it can be hard to see, when the image is a centre page spread, so that the centre is lost in the spine of the book, but such is always the case with gn collections.
The colouring's a bit lacklustre, but then it was like that originally, and it wasn't until a bit later (probably the next collection, or the one after that) that we'll really see the the quality of colour improve.

[Revelation 6:8]

>Now the answer might be because the pages had to be scanned from the comic, but couldn't they have been scanned from the GN, which are a nicer quality?

offered my G/N to be cut up but the decision was made to go with the Progs.

[DavidXBrunt]

Personally I like the chapter headings and things like that. It's a serial that's being reprinted in one fo, it's never going to flow like a novel so we might as well be able to see exactly where the endings were. Plus I like the little Next episode blurbs.

My one petty complaint is about the pages used to seperate the tales, they're essentially mostly wasted space. The recent Titan editions of Modesty Blaise and James Bond have similar title pages but have little behind the scenes pieces on them. Would this be possible for these editions or would it be too costly? Snippets from T.P.O. or from the writers and artists maybe? It would be more time and effort but would really improve the books.