It wasn’t until I had walked out of my local comic book store on Free Comic Book Day with a copy of the EC Sampler that I realized my mistake. For some reason I thought that, because it was printed on newsprint, the EC Sampler would be similar in quality to Gemstone’s earlier reprint series. I have no idea what I was thinking.

The stories found within the Sampler have all been recoloured in the same manner as the recent hardcover EC collections, making them damn near unreadable. If the purpose of the Sampler was to entice consumers to pick up the EC Archives, it had precisely the opposite effect on me. My girlfriend and I have been considering buying the Archives for awhile, but after witnessing first-hand the excessive use of gradients and other unnecessary forms of sloppy Photoshop hackwork, we’re going to have to pass. Thanks for helping us make an informed decision, Gemstone.