A few weeks ago we talked about how DC Comics had altered the contents of the
Batman: The Rebirth Deluxe Edition Book One to remove some dialogue found in the
Batman Vol. 2: I Am Suicide trade paperback. This was lauded by some readers and deemed unnecessary by others, but an interesting move by DC, which hadn't been doing this kind of "director's cut" editing to trades for some time (at least that we noticed).
Well, it looks like another change has been made in the similar spirit of responding to reader complaints, this time between
Batman: Detective Comics #954 and
Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 3: League of Shadows in order to remove some spoilers for
All-Star Batman Vol. 2: Ends of the Earth. Read on to
Bleeding Cool for more details ...
This is definitely an interesting case. Surely an error like a typo is the kind of thing I'd expect to be fixed in the trade release (although if I recall the old Red Hood/Outlaws trades there were still some typos, so I guess that's the sort of thing that flies under the radar). But is this really something that should be omitted? What may be a spoiler to some is a nice continuity link (especially in a trade-waiting world where Ends of the Earth came out AFTER League of Shadows). Similarly, in the case the omitted dialogue from the Deluxe Batman HC, the reason for its removal was because of the controversy it stirred among some readers, but those who only read the deluxe editions will not be able to make their own opinion of what it contributes to the story. To me, anyways, this is a conundrum.
ReplyDeleteThe best way to fix this, in my opinion, would be to follow the example of the Alien Quadrilogy Box Set; that is, to include both the theatrical and director's cuts of each film in the box so that fans can choose what version is "their" version. One could imagine the original, unaltered page/panel included in the extra features at the back of the trade with a brief explanation about the change. There could even be a "spoiler warning" in this particular case so that would remove the problem for some while making the universe more cohesive for others. I think something like this was done for the Infinite Crisis trade, where the original red-skies battle was shown in the interview section at the back and the new version was left in the main story.
Anyways that's just my two cents.