Hey everyone. It's been some time since I posted. I'll still post whenever I have anything to talk about, but there's not much new to say. Currently, I've started a Facebook group and we're working to annotate the later issues of Supreme. If you'd like to help, let me know and I'll send you an invite to the group.
Anyway, let's talk Checker today.
After Awesome published Supreme: The Return #6 and it was clear there weren't going to be any more issues coming out, Liefeld sold the reprint rights to a group called Checker, which handled old newspaper reprints. I talked about it at length, here.
The reprints were terrible, especially for Story of the Year. They scanned actual comics and did very little cleanup. As Chris Sprouse said, you could see the words from the other side of the page in their scans.
Checker apologized and said they would fix the problems when they published The Return TPB and ran off a new version of Story of the Year.
I never followed up to compare the two until a friend explained how to spot the differences. Here are some ways to spot the differences:
On the left is the original 2002 reprint and on the right is the fixed 2003 version.
The spine is the easiest way to tell the difference. The old Checker logo is on the left and the newer one is on the right.
Notice that Checker had decided to highlight Chris Sprouse over Joe Bennett from the old one to the new one, despite Bennett doing a lot more work on the stories in this book. In between the two, Tom Strong had become a hit and Checker wanted to emphasize that the Moore and Sprouse team had started on Supreme.
The back has a few other clues about which is which. Left is the older one and the newer one is at right.
On the older one, Checker had Swamp Thing coming out from Marvel.
They fixed Swamp Thing for the newer one.
Joe Bennett got a bio on the back of the old one.
Bennett was replaced by Sprouse on the new one.
The older one was printed in Korea.
The newer one was printed in China.
It might be hard to tell from these images but the art is lighter and has more scanning fragments in the older ones (left). The blacks are deeper and the colors brighter in the newer one (right).
Older version with more fragments.
Newer version that is darker and cleaner.
Old at left. New at right.
You can see the words coming through the old one.
You can still see the words in the new one, but it is cleaner and less obvious. It might also be the thin paper.
The ending is a little different. The old one has an ad for a Clive Barker book.
The new one has an ad for Checker's Supreme: The Return trade.
Frankly, you're better off getting the floppies, as they're still the best version of Supreme out there. But if you're going to get a trade of Story of the Year, look for the newer one.
