Just got my Boxtree first printing of Dark Empire it is slightly less tall than the us edition also on lousy quality non glossy paper. Very disappointed. The only positive is the content is identical to the first US printing, but it looks so muddy i feel like i wasted 25 dollars. In fact its on worse paper than the original run of comics of which i own the first edition of issue #1. Now i’m tempted to get the Epic Collection from Marvel to compare.
Why would you want glossy paper for something that wasn’t originally printed on glossy paper?
I haven’t read the boxtree edition of DE so I can’t really tell how “muddy” it is compared to the original issues, and it’s obviously a flaw if it’s worse, but I don’t see how glossy paper is necessarily the “solution”. I own the Norwegian translation of DE from the late 90’s and they were printed on fairly pulpy paper and I’d say that’s quite appropriate for the series and probably what quite close to Cam Kennedy had in mind while doing the colours. That is unless the original six issue run was done on something fancy like Baxter paper? I know there was a lot of experimenting done at that time.
You might want to get a hold of The 2003 TPB. It is on fairly glossy paper, and I personally think it looks artificially bright, but it’s a lot better IMO than a lot of modern Marvel reprints which always seem excessively bright and cheaply printed to me (i.e. the ink easily smudges, etc).