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| From the ABDO fall 2020 catalog. |
This year ABDO started publishing Disney comics under their Spotlight imprint, and we got a new American publisher of Disney comics in English. I think they are mostly selling books to libraries and schools/nurseries and such, but they are available for everyone on various online book stores. The Disney comics they have published so far are all "Reinforced Library Bound Hardcovers" and a bit pricy to get for personal collecting. You can buy the books as both collections or as individual books.
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| The books are sold in collections online |
The titles published so far are from the Disney Kingdoms series that we got from Marvel Comics a few years ago, and several series of movie adaptations.
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| The different series available so far (fall 2020) |
I have talked about library editions of comics on here before, and wanted to check out the ABDO books too. From all the available books I went for the Robin Hood adaptation as I think that's the only story I don't have on print at all. It's been available in English digitally for several years, but to my knowledge this is the first time the story is published on print in English. Several of the other ABDO books have been available from Joe Books or Dark Horse in recent years.
The first thing to say about the book is that the binding is really nice! But I guess it should be if it's intended for libraries.
And the size is perfect for these kinds of album stories as I like to call them. The recent series of movie adaptations from Joe Books and Dark Horse are printed in too small a format I think, but this one is just right. And the paper and printing inside is in good quality too. I really wish more comics were published this way instead of the "budget prints" we often see these days.
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| First page inside the Robin Hood book |
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| Some of the other available books |
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To illustrate the size, let's compare to some of the recent series from Joe Books and Dark Horse. (if you've been following this blog you know I like to compare different editions 😊)
From Joe Books we got a number of different series with movie adaptations. Also, a lot of the announced comics ended up being cancelled and it was a bit of a struggle trying to keep track of everything. But first we got a couple of huge 800 page Treasury books. Later we had series titled The Story of the Movie in Comics, Movie Graphic Novel, At the Movies, One-Shot and we had pocket books called [Movie name] Fun Book and [Movie name] Comics Collection that had movie adaptations in addition to games and other stuff.
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| Thick paperback books with movie adaptations from Joe Books |
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| Thin paperback books with movie adaptations from Joe Books |
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| Regular sized comic books with movie adaptations from Joe Books |
All of the different series compared to the size of the ABDO book:
After Joe Books closed down Dark Horse started publishing movie adaptations instead under the same The Story of the Movie in Comics series name as Joe Books used. A lot of the titles are the same too, but this time they are in hardcover.
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| A summary of published and so far announced books in Dark Horse's The Story of the Movie in Comics series |
Most of the stories in the Dark Horse series are published before, but if you are trying to collect all the different movie adaptations like I am, the following are of special interest:
Toy Story that includes Toy Story 4 on print in English for the first time
Onward, on print in English for the first time
Alice in Wonderland, maybe on print in English for the first time ..at least in the USA
Frozen II that have the adaptation for both movies, but Frozen II on print in English for the first time
The above books are the ones I got so far, the rest I skipped. Also, even at half the price of the ABDO books, I still think the Dark Horse books are a bit pricy for what you get.
For some reason the Alice book is a lot smaller than the other ones from Dark Horse. These kinds of album stories really should be printed larger than this!
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| The Robin Hood book from ABDO is printed a lot larger than the Alice book from Dark Horse |
If I didn't already have a collection of movie adaptations and had unlimited money I definitely would have gotten more of the ABDO books. They are far better than any other printed editions in my opinion.
