Change the Reprint to Fit

In a Comic Book Legends Revealed post, Brian Cronin quotes Roy Thomas about the time Chip Goodman (son of Marvel publisher Martin Goodman) gave some editorial input: demanding a cover for a Kid Colt reprint issue feature outlaws in animal masks. That meant the reprint story art, which featured nothing of the kind, had to be altered in a couple of panels to match the cover.

Here's another reprint where, as already pointed out in the Grand Comics Database, a story was altered (and again with masks). I submit that it was changed for the same reason as the Kid Colt story: to match the cover. Who knows whose decision it was? Weird Wonder Tales 2 (Feb/74), cover by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia,  reprints "The Little People" from Marvel Tales 138 (Sept/55). The title is changed to "I Was Kidnapped by a Flying Saucer"—to match the cover. (Possibly the scripter is Joe Gill.)

The hurried redrawing certainly sticks out in the midst of Paul Reinman's earlier art:

From the next page:

The "improvements" don't end with the art. You can't miss where some dialogue has been relettered to fit the new plot point. In panels not shown here, names have been relettered, just as poorly, to those of Marvel Bullpenners: "Mabel" to "Carla," "Colonel Mite and his wife" to "Don the Dwarf and Tiny Tony," and "Cluny the Giant" to "Marvin the Giant"—but not consistently; "Cluny" is left unchanged once.

I can't cite a single instance where altering a story in reprint improved it for this reader. Reprints have been changed for any number of purposes beyond fitting the story to a new cover or a production person's whim. For instance:

cutting the story length
acquiescing to the Comics Code or new publisher policies
updating fashions or culture references
retconning or annotating
replacing a character because the license has expired, or for other reasons
redesigning the page
rewriting the story entirely

Every great once in a while, I suppose, an actual mistake in the original has been fixed.

I think the readers and original creators are respected more just by reprinting the stories unaltered.