No doubt there is some laziness, cheapness, stop gap measures or cost-cutting in reprints, yes. At times this has led to disappointments. Case in point are the last two annuals from Jinty. They are Jinty in name only; they are nothing more than a collection of reprints and there is nothing in them to say 'Jinty' at all. I also hear that some people, including Pat Mills, were disappointed with the 2009 Misty souvenir special because they felt it did not reprint the stuff from Misty that people would sink their teeth into.Marionette wrote:Call me cynical, but I always assumed that a reprint, even brought back "by popular demand" was a lazy, money saving move by the editors.
Still, when it comes to popular demand, the editor is always out to please the readers. So if there is popular demand to bring back a story or character, the editor is likely to concede. Olympia Jones and Bella Barlow are two cases in point.
You can't always read the original, especially if it was printed a long time ago and you have to spend time and money tracking down issues. Or you may not know about it at all but are missing out on something great. For example, most post-1976 Tammy readers were unlikely to know about Olympia Jones, but once they read the reprint in 1981 they must have blessed the older readers who had asked for it to return. I myself had only seen two episodes of the original and I was most pleased to read it in full with the reprint. In some cases you may have missed some episodes of the original or lost it, so you welcome a reprint to catch up on what you missed or have it all over again. Also, reprints can be easier to find than originals. This happened with a contact I met once, who was trying to find a print of Sheilah's Shadow from June. I directed her to the reprint in one of the Jinty annuals. Much easier to find than the original, and far more convenient as the whole thing was in an annual. It sure beat tracking down individual June issues for the original!
