Upper Deck’s issuing of chase cards in its Marvel Beginnings’ release featuring cut-up comic panels from rare back issues (see “Cutting up Expensive Comics”) has generated a fair amount of interest and controversy (see “Glen Soustek of Westlake Cards, Comics, & Coins on Cutting Up Comics”), but creating this sort of chase cards is not without precedent.
Steve Charendoff of Rittenhouse Archives wrote to remind ICv2 that he did something very similar in Rittenhouse’s The Complete Avengers Trading Cards in 2006. For that release Rittenhouse cut out panels from original comics and affixed them to an oversize card. Charendoff told ICv2 that no well-preserved comics were used in the program, “We used several issues of the first few Avengers comics, but it’s important to note that we only used comics that were in distressed condition, many without covers. In fact, we thought we would continue this program into the future, but it was only met with a lukewarm reaction, so we’ve not since pursued it.”
Upper Deck’s tweak to the idea is to reduce the oversize format to a standard trading card size with one panel from a comic per card. Will it be more successful?