Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

Reader David L. wrote in to ask:

Remember how Marvel and DC used to sometimes just reprint an old issue in a current issue of a comic? What was the last issue at each of the publishers to be a traditional "reprint" in a standard issue of a comic?

First off, let's explore the history of this interesting phenomenon.

When comic book publishers first started popping up in the late 1930s and early 1940s, they specifically WERE reprint comic books. The most popular early comic book was Famous Funnies, which literally did just that - reprint famous "funnies," that is, newspaper comic strips.

Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications (a company that he would be pushed out of a few years later right before it had its first major hit with a little comic book called Action Comics #1. They later officially re-named the company DC Comics) with the idea of taking that basic idea only doing it with ORIGINAL material, hence his book was called New Fun Comics...

Dang, they didn't even know how to spell "Hola" back then.

While National Allied introduced the idea of original content, other companies continued to have success with simply reprinting comic strips. When some of the world's most famous comic strip superheroes (like the Shadow, the Phantom and Green Hornet) got their own comic books, they were mostly just reprints of their comic strips (not all of them were like this, of course. There were some whose comic books had original stories in them).

So reprinted material didn't used to be a big deal.

Then, when original material became the norm at most comic book companies, they were done in anthology format. Even when Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and more heroes got their own titles on top of the anthologies in which they were first featured (Action Comics, Detective Comics and Sensation Comics, respectively - although Wonder Woman technically appeared in a preview story in All Star Comics #8), their stories continued to be told in the anthology format, it was just that the anthologies would be entirely about them (so instead of a short Superman story appearing in Action Comics with stories featuring other heroes, it would appear in an issue of Superman along with other short stories starring Superman).

The reason that this matters is because it allowed companies to juggle a bunch of content and never have to worry too much about not having enough, as they'd just be putting together a bunch of stories that could be swapped in interchangeably. For instance, one of the stories in Batman #1 was originally advertised as appearing in an issue of Detective Comics.

This approach continued throughout the 1950s, so books would always be good, content-wise. Marvel had plenty of anthologies of their own, like Journey Into Mystery and Tales to Astonish, where they could fit various stories that they had on file.

However, once comic books became SERIALIZED, you were really screwed. You couldn't just swap in another story as it would break up the continuity of the series. That happened at Marvel before it happened at DC.

DC Comics was still telling mostly stand-alone stories, so they could work in reprints easier. DC did a few extra-sized issues in the 1960s where the books would be entirely reprinted material. Even of relatively new series like Justice League of America.

At Marvel, so long as Jack Kirby was there, they would typically be able to meet some crazy deadlines, as Kirby was FAST. In the 1970s, though, with Kirby gone, they began to have problems and thus the dreaded Deadline Doom would creep up and issues would just suddenly be reprints instead of new stories.

On rare occasions, the notice would be so short that they didn't have a new issue to use and the cover would remain the same even though the comic inside turned out to be a reprint, like on Ghost Rider #10, which reprinted his first appearance, despite the cover remaining of what the issue was SUPPOSED to be about...

A notable example was when Steve Englehart left Marvel right in the midst of doing an issue of Avengers that would have introduced a new line-up. So Marvel quickly turned that issue into mostly a reprint book...

And then Jim Shooter and Gerry Conway cobbled together another issue made up of new pages by them and re-used pages from Englehart's original story (meant for #150) to introduce the new lineup in Avenger #151!

Okay, so when did this stop? Go to the next page to find out!

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Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort wrote in to let me know that the first time Marvel actively tried to avoid having reprint issues was during Marv Wolfman's tenure as Editor-in-Chief, circa 1975.

Tom explained that Wolfman referred to it as "'Marvel Fill-In Comics,' a regular ongoing series on the production schedule made up of stories that could be used in any number of titles should the books run late."

An example was Avengers #163 (written by Jim Shooter), which was designed to work as a fill-in issue for either Iron Man, the Avengers or the Champions...

The problem was that Wolfman did not have a big enough editorial staff to keep the books running on time so just having a single thing like "Marvel Fill-in Comics" wasn't enough to prevent Marvel from still having to resort to reprint issues occasionally.

When Jim Shooter became the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel in the late 1970s, one of his biggest priorities was fixing the production problems that Marvel was going through at the time, specifically late books and stuff like that. He also hated the idea of doing reprint comics in new comic book series (he hated doing that Avengers story that I mentioned on the previous page). His main solution (and one that has served Marvel very well in the decades since) was to simply hire more editors. A larger editorial staff made it a lot easier to maintain Marvel's production schedule.

Shooter kept up with Wolfman's idea of inventory stories, although he would alternate them between either fully finished fill-in stories that could be inserted whenever a comic book was late or fully-developed scripts that could be drawn by an artist very quickly if they had more time and knew that they had an issue that was going to need a fill-in ahead of time (I imagine that the latter examples were more common, as they were a good deal more cost-efficient, since you wouldn't have to pay pencilers, inkers and letterers unless you knew you absolutely needed the comic book done).

X-Men #106 is an example of the former...

and Marvel Two-in-One #51, featuring very early Frank Miller art, is an example of the latter...

DC, though, kept doing the ol' reprint game well into the 1980s. Although obviously with less frequency than they used to when they would throw in an 80-page giant seemingly every other month.

One of the most famous World's Finest Comics covers of the early 1980s by Ed Hannigan was to a reprinted comic book story...

Eventually, DC likely figured out the same idea as Shooter, which was that readers just weren't putting up with the concept anymore.

So when was the last comic book by each company to just do a reprint of an old comic book in place of a new comic book due to lateness?

For Marvel, it would have to be late 1977/early 1978, as that's when Shooter took over and the increased staffing helped stop the reprint problem.

And it seems that the answer is Invaders #24, which reprinted an old Human Torch vs. Sub-Mariner story in a late 1977 issue...

This was, like, a MONTH after an issue of Fantastic Four also reprinted a classic Human Torch story.

Now, the tricky thing is that later in 1978, with Shooter now the Editor-in-Chief, Super-Villain Team-Up #15 was a reprint issue...

So, you could count that issue, but I don't believe it was a deadline issue, as that was, ostensibly, the final issue of the series. Then, six months later, a new issue came out. Then, THIRTEEN months later, the final issue came out. So that seems like just a bizarre book and not merely a case of slipping a reprint in there to hit a deadline. But I could be wrong, so feel free to count it! I personally am sticking with Invaders #24.

So how about DC Comics?

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As noted, they kept at it for much longer than Marvel.

I think that the last time that they did a reprint issue due to deadlines was in 1985's Flash #344, which had a current framing sequence (Kid Flash testifying against Flash at Flash's murder trial) surrounding a bunch of old Kid Flash stories. This was the second time during the Trial of the Flash storyline that they had to go this route (a framing sequence surrounding reprints) in order to hit their deadlines...

However, here's the tricky one for DC. Tales of the New Teen Titans began reprinting New Teen Titans stories with issue #60. That was a plan, but for whatever reason, they had a fill-in issue before that reprinting the first appearance of the Teen Titans for whatever reason...

Since it was supposed to be a reprint series anyways, it seems a bit unfair to count this, but it probably DOES count, since that issue wasn't supposed to reprint that particular story, ya know? It probably WAS a deadline problem. So while it seems weird to count a reprint being placed into a reprint series, I still count it.

By the way, while I am pretty darn sure that I'm right about both DC and Marvel's last examples of reprint books being put in place of late books, if I missed one, feel free to let me know!

Thanks to Tom Brevoort for the head's up about Marv Wolfman's important role in creating inventory comic book stories!

Thanks for the question, David! If anyone else has a comic book question, drop me a line at brian@cbr.com!