Mark Evanier talks about over-sized treasuries

Over at his blog, Mark Evanier talks about "treasury-sized comics," an oversized format that my brother and I used to love as kids:

In the seventies, most of the major comic publishers experimented with something they called "treasury sized" comics, which were comic books about 10" by 13" in size. I remember when Jack Kirby heard about plans to publish these, he was initially excited because he loved the idea of big comics. He was a little disappointed that they were only 10-by-13 and even more disappointed when the publishers mainly used them as a means of reprinting old comics drawn for the smaller format. But when they began commissioning original material for the bigger comics...that's when he was the most disappointed. They insisted the books be drawn not on huge sheets like he suggested, but at pretty much the same original art size used for the smaller comics. Jack did two original treasury books -- an adaptation of the movie 2001 and a Captain America special -- and they were pretty good. But what he really wished was that since they were printing the books at twice the size and selling them for more than twice the price, they'd paid him twice as much, let him draw twice as large and let him put in twice as much.

He goes on to talk about the Wizard of Oz adaptation that Marvel and DC co-published and John Buscema drew from memory. I remember having several of these, including a reprint of Thor comics, one on Superman's Fortress of Solitude that detailed ever squared inch of the place, as well as my favorite, Secret Origins of the Super villains. It featured the origin stories of the Joker, Sivana and Captain Cold, among others, and detailed how Superboy caused Lex Luthor to lose his hair.

You can read more about them here.