I’m kind of sick of DC’s and Marvel’s hardcover programs. While I appreciate the short-term $$$ that comes from charging an extra $10 for a hardcover on a book, I think they’re really hurting long-term sales. I know that the whole superhero section of the industry seems to be predicated on short-term thinking, but I think that if it was about giving consumers choice simultaneous releases would be the way to go. This is a bit of a bigger problem than I have time to give it right now, but DC and Marvel mandating hardcover exclusives for 4-6 months means that their biggest, newest, ‘hottest’ storylines remain considerably more inaccessible until well after the heat has entirely dissipated on the series. The Justice Society relaunch is the hardest-hit series I can think of, but Green Lantern and Spider-Man and Runaways from Marvel are also suffering, from my POV, for having long gaps between HC and SC collections.Since I got onboard with Blackest Night, I've actually grown curious to explore the DCU a bit, to fill in some context and form some basis for comparison with what I'm reading. Hey, mission accomplished! Getting me to start buying one thing has gotten me wanting to start buying other stuff.
Only, I'm pretty disgusted with the options I'm finding.
I wanted to check out another recent crossover event, and Final Crisis seemed to fit the bill. Only, it's not available in a more affordable softcover. Well, okay. I bought the hardcover. Only, that's missing two Batman issues from Morrison's canonical checklist. Well, okay. That's why God created pirates. It's cool, DC--I got mine, so fuck you too.
Beyond the hardcover question, my real pet peeve is seeing a story arc that could comfortably fit into one trade broken up into two. I wanted to check out Hush for the longest time, because I dig Batman, and all the sample art I'd seen online made it look like a fun visual experience if nothing else. Well, it irked me so much to see it broken up into two scrawny volumes that I refused to buy it until they recently collected the whole story in one.
For pretty much the same reason, I haven't gone in for Sinestro Corps War yet, despite all the great stuff I've heard about it. Maybe each volume collects--what, six issues each? To look at them on the shelf, they hardly look more substantial than floppies. Stick 'em together, and Jesus, it's not like they add up to some phonebook OMNIBUS or anything. They're supposed to be "collections," so why not just collect the whole fucking story in one package?!?
Final Crisis made me curious to check out something else by Morrison. For a variety of reasons, I'd really like to read All-Star Superman. Only, that's broken up into two volumes, and the second one's only available in hardcover!!! Argh!
In short, I guess they see anyone not downloading comics for free as a dipshit who can and should be screwed as many ways as possible. That's the message I'm getting, anyway.
8 comments:
The complaint about hardcovers always makes me laugh. Major book publishers do the same thing with their big releases. It's standard operating procedure for them, why not comics? I can see your frustration with the multiple volumes thing though, that bugs me too.
I was actually in a comic book store today and saw a line of softcovers all for one storyline. I think it was for Civil War. I mean what the fuck. They could have easily been put in one or two volumes. Instead of raping the fans with those prices for what in reality is maybe four to five issues per trade. I would love to grab those Starman Omnibuses but I'll wait. Since the only time I picked up hard covers are if the store has a huge sale. Or if I was given a gift card and can order them from Barnes and Noble.
This is why I stick with Essentials and Showcases more bang for your buck.
But major book publishers do not serialize their books, then release a hardcover, and then release the paperback version (usually they don't, at least). Stretching out the marketing of a story like that--to me--is not efficient. Sure, they want to make more money on the initial purchase, but the initial purchase in the case of comic books are the floppies. And by the time the cheaper TPBs come out, these stories have been well-reviewed (and also are no longer really being hyped), so I think they definitely lose sales on series that were highly anticipated yet didn't deliver (too many series, I think).
Multiple volumes also suck, but I guess my pet peeve is more that they leave out or mis-order important parts of the storylines... the Sinestro Corps War is a prime example of this, and you have to look up the reading order and dash between, I think, 3 or 4 volumes to get the full story in the right order. Casual readers would probably not even realize this and it would affect their enjoyment, I think, hurting sales of subsequent volumes. Perhaps the collections departments of the companies need to be a little more involved with what's going on in the floppies side; I realize, though, that the collections have to be decided well in advance and simply might not be able to adapt to changes made on the monthlies side.
i say as far as All Star Superman goes buy the 1st softcover and wait for the 2nd to come out in soft a couple months down the line. i myself not being the biggest fan of the Big Blue Boy Scout got both as a bday present and it was pretty the bestest thing ever.
i always look to amazon's used section to buy my trade paperbacks. i check in the store and if i dig it i buy it from there. usually for a song. and Sinestro War was worth the read.
You're not wrong. I haven't read "The New Frontier" for the same reason, and I really like Darwyn Cooke. Just put it in one $20 book, DC. It's not that hard!
I highly recommend singing up on Sequential Swap (www.sequentialswap.com), it's a great place to trade trades with other folks and all you have to do is pay for shipping. If you don't have any books you want to get rid of, hit up a convention, dig through the $5 trades and use that as your base list. It's great for checking out new things you might not want to keep and also adding new books to your collection. Just because things are expensive doesn't mean you have to pay a lot of money for them.
Absolutely right. I'm hopeful DC, at least, is starting to learn its lesson. Sinestro Corps War was multiple volumes, and Final Crisis (at first) was broken up with the Superman Beyond parts elsewhere, but when Blackest Night comes out, it's one whole book for Blackest Night and whole book for the tie-ins, and not volume one, volume two, etc.
I'd still like to see the books, hardcover or paperback, come out faster. Maybe they should starting marking time from the beginning of a series like Blackest Night, and not from when the series ends.
It's not the release schedule I'm worried about, really, it's the fact that you never know what's going to get collected in what format. Marvel has softcover trades, they used to print oversized softcovers, they've got premiere hardcovers, oversized hardcovers, digests and now this mangled OGN-HC format that's a cross between digests and softcovers. Standardize a bit, yeah...?
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