Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Another piece of the digest Man-Thing puzzle...


For those of you still following the saga of the digest Man-Thing reprints…

Well, just when I thought all the digest Man-Things had been retitled, such as Monster of the Swamp and Swamp Creature, along comes a conventionally self-titled issue.

This issue is numbered six with a 70c cover price, and reprints in full the U.S Man-Thing #’s 16, 17 and 18. The front cover is from #16, and the cover from #17 is included in black and white.

There is also a black and white cover reprinted preceding #18, but for some odd reason, rather than being the cover of Man-Thing #18, it is actually the cover of (Adventure Into) Fear #18, which also featured Man-Thing. I have no idea why Yaffa did this - maybe they just mistook one ’Man-Thing #18’ for another…?

I don’t know… but I’m guessing that if there was a regular-sized man-Thing #6 by Yaffa, that it would be just like this digest issue…

This issue slots in quite neatly as the sixth digest with the other two mentioned above - that is, each issue basically carrying three U.S issues - except for the fact that this is a 70c cover price issue, and the others are 75c cover price issues… which suggests that there were two digest editions… so it does appear (as suggested before regarding some of the horror digests) that there was a series of conventionally-titled editions, followed by some retitled editions… which may or may not also explain why some Yaffa digests are shorter than others… more pieces of the puzzle to ponder…

2 comments:

Daniel Best said...

Spiros - now you're walking in my territory. I'll dig out my data base and help fill in some gaps if you want. I've got a few hundred of the Yaffas, both large and small, as you know and am close to solving all the mysteries...

spiros xenos said...

Sure Danny, by all means send through what you have.