Back in the 1990s, I became aware of Microcolor International and their offerings of Golden Age comics on Microfiche, and I got a few, and bought a viewer to read them on. Computer technology quickly outdated this format. I stopped buying (they were still pretty pricey, even if far cheaper than originals), and somewhere along the way they lost their license to issue Marvel & DC comics. (I'm incredibly surprised to see that they are still issuing Archie and public domain comics on film rather than converting to digital files.)
What did you get in this obsolete format? On small sheets of film, about the size of a 4" x 6" index card, an entire 64 page comic was imaged, including covers and all ads. Every page. The images on the film were far too tiny to make out with the naked eye, being only millimeters tall, but projected onto a microfiche reader's screen, the pages came to glorious life... with various degrees of quality depending on the original book's condition and quality of photography (usually that was good). Being enlarged to so great a degree, the images were incredibly susceptible to dust and anyone careless enough to scratch the emulsion side of the film, yikes! (I can only imagine!)
Before Marvel and DC started reprinting some of this material, this was the only way to see most of it. Even illegal digital scans aren't as complete as these films are - when has DC ever reprinted ALL the stories from the first 100 issues of Action Comics, for example? Never, that's when.
I remember when I signed up for a Microcolor subscription, you selected various comics you wanted, in 5-issue blocks, and they were sent to you on a monthly basis, and your credit card was charged. I don't remember the costs, but subscriptions discounted the price of placing individual orders. As I recall, the big incentive tease was the offer of Action Comics #1 for a nicely reduced price.
Which brings me to the crux of this.
A few years ago, I thought I'd see if people were unloading their 'fiche on eBay, and I discovered some interesting things. Some of the batches people are selling are random issue groupings. Perhaps missing films were damaged, or for whatever reason people only wanted # 61, 63, 64, 68, and 70 of a series. Possibly they had the other issues, I dunno, but there was a lot of that.
But the most bizarre thing is...
That promo Action Comics #1? The most reprinted Golden Age comic, the obviously most plentiful microfiche they ever produced?
Is always, always, ALWAYS listed for a minimum $70. And called "rare." As I said, I've been looking at these (out of curiosity - and a desire to find All-Flash issues I hadn't gotten around to picking up 20 years ago) for a few years now. I'll see, say, 5 issue lots of Planet Comics on microfiche for $7.50-$15, 5 issues of Batman for $20-$25, but that one single issue of Action Comics is always listed for $70. And I'm sure no one ever buys them, so I can't for the life of me figure out why they do it.
Anyway. Microfiche were good!
Except for the early issues of Archie. They were photographed from a bound edition and you can't see/read the edges of the pages that are in the spine.
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