Back in his early 90s run,
Deathlok had a two-part fight/team-up with the
Punisher (#6-7) as well as a two-part fight/team-up with
Ghost Rider (#9-10) (not to mention an earlier 4-part team-up with
Misty Knight, the
Fantastic Four, the
X-Men, and the
Avengers...you think
Marvel was trying to push Deathlok, or what??).
Which lead, in the letters page of
Deathlok #19 (1993), to a question from
Thomas Cregan of Staten Island, New York:
The response, which proves that the 1990s were indeed a
very different era:
Yup. Here we had crossover stories with the Punisher and Ghost Rider, and had absolutely
no plans for a trade. It apparently hadn't even occurred to them. You see, young ones, back in those days even storyline in every comic
wasn't automatically put out in a trade, even ones with hyper-popular characters.
In 2009, of course, not only would Marvel have had a trade for those stories, but the trade would have been solicited
before the stories in the single issues were
even published, "readers' requests" be damned.
Not to go all
Nostradamus here, but the next
big implosion in the comics industry? At some point libraries, Barnes & Noble & your local comic shoppe are going to
stop automatically buying this deluge of trades...beware...
Oh, FYI, Deathlok #19 had a
chromium cover. No reason...it wasn't an anniversary, it was part 3 of a 5 part story...they just wanted to do a chromium cover. Bless you, 1990s...bless you.
Too bad it's only available in some doofy alternate future...