Rerun: Continuity, What Continuity
23 Dec 2016 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cryptix23 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
oldschoolcrimefighters(Originally posted August 12th, 2015)
Why are none of the Shadow reprints capable of just printing things in their original order?
The New English Library printed books 1, 8, 9, and 10; Bantam printed #192, then almost thirty years later skipped back to print books 1-3, 6, 14, 12, and 5; Pyramid again followed book 1 with books 8-12, then jumped back to 4, then 42, and continued to jump around from there. The Nostalgia Ventures/Sanctum Books numbering is all over the place: the first volume reprints books #129 and #154, and the second volume is books #65 and #306.
Each story does generally stand on its own, and they do vary in quality. There is still a definite order to events, though, and I just find it baffling that every reprint run to date has chucked continuity out the window.
It wouldn’t be so bad if each publication didn’t insist on using its own numbering, hence Pyramid calling Red Menace #7 even though it occurs well before their books #2-6, or the likes of Chinese Disks being listed as Vol 2 Issue 2 because of the Nostalgia Ventures print. Confused yet? Maybe not, but it makes finding particular stories occasionally frustrating, especially since the wiki likes to list them by publication number rather than by name.
Why are none of the Shadow reprints capable of just printing things in their original order?
The New English Library printed books 1, 8, 9, and 10; Bantam printed #192, then almost thirty years later skipped back to print books 1-3, 6, 14, 12, and 5; Pyramid again followed book 1 with books 8-12, then jumped back to 4, then 42, and continued to jump around from there. The Nostalgia Ventures/Sanctum Books numbering is all over the place: the first volume reprints books #129 and #154, and the second volume is books #65 and #306.
Each story does generally stand on its own, and they do vary in quality. There is still a definite order to events, though, and I just find it baffling that every reprint run to date has chucked continuity out the window.
It wouldn’t be so bad if each publication didn’t insist on using its own numbering, hence Pyramid calling Red Menace #7 even though it occurs well before their books #2-6, or the likes of Chinese Disks being listed as Vol 2 Issue 2 because of the Nostalgia Ventures print. Confused yet? Maybe not, but it makes finding particular stories occasionally frustrating, especially since the wiki likes to list them by publication number rather than by name.