Modern Comics
By Mike Ambrose

These books were reprinted page-for-page from the originals, undoubtedly using the originals negs (negatives - Ramon) or silver prints. Even letters pages and text stories are reprinted, and as far as I can tell even the same color schemes were used from original to reprint. Only the advertising content is different.

Because of the way the Moderns were picked essentially at random and printed and packaged cheaply, I can't see where there would have been any incentive to start monkeying with a book's contents to put together any kind of "original" reprint content.

The copyright on the Modern reprints was by Tops Photo Engraving Corp., which was the captive engraving entitiy that Charlton used. George Wildman, in CBA (Comic Book Artist - Ramon) #12 (p.24) says "[Modern Comics] was a merchandising type thing. They would sell them to department stores -- Caldor, Wal-Mart, name any chain stores you could think of. And our people didn't have to worry about distribution on these... You buy them outright. Here's how it worked: J. C. Penney would buy 100,000 [copies] from us and they could then advertise, 'Buy a T-shirt and get three comics for free.' The comics were used for merchandising."

The only mysteries left about Modern, as far as I'm concerned, are:
1) How many of what issues were reprinted, and in what quantities;
2) Who was Ronald Gold, publisher of Modern Comics/Unisystems, Inc.;
3) If the Moderns were supposedly packaged in bagged 3-packs, how is it you never see any of them still around in the original bags? The multipack Charltons from the mid-70s are reasonably common, but all the Moderns I've ever seen have been loose;
4) Every Modern I've seen has a 35c cover price, which makes me tend to doubt that the books were exclusively used for promotion. I suspect a lot them were sold on the stands.