Marvel has confirmed the end of their Essentials program of black and white reprints of classic material. Marvel has sold off almost all remaining inventory of older in-print volumes and will not be adding further books. ‘This material needs to be in color,’ Marvel Senior VP of Sales David Gabriel said. ‘So we’ll be replacing our Essentials program with more full-color Epic Collections.’
“This material needs to be in color” translates as “We can charge twice as much for the same material if we change format,” I believe.
It’s sad, but not surprising, that the line is going to be killed. Guess I’ll never manage to find cheap copies of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One now.