Amph Comic Books or TPBs?

Ehh...I just buy a sleeve for every book when I go. It costs like 15 cents extra, and I think individual comics have a greater value placed on them (monetary or otherwise) than TPBs.

 

Both formats have their positives and negatives. Indiviual issues are good and if you put in the effort to take care of them, you shouldn't have to worry about losing or damaging them. Waiting a month or a couple of weeks is actually fun. The anticipation is part of the fun, at least to me it is. TPB's are advantagous as you can get it all in one lump sum. Downsides for both. If you don't have the patience or willing to take extra care of your individual issues, then monthly is not for you. On the other hand, TPB's lose out if they don't print everything that was important to the story. Or now that they go six issues for one TPB, which requires you to wait for the second volume. Plus, now you've got hardback covers which cost more than paperbacks. I know that hardcovers have been around for a while, but they're becoming all too frequent now.

 

Exactly. Luckily certain things like the Marvel Essentials series really do try to include everything in a TPB that was ever relevant. I love that. For current stuff, though, I love the monthly wait, I take care of the stuff, and I can get everything that's pertinent.

 

Not sure if ever answered this or not, but even though I buy individual issues sometimes most times I perfer TPBs. Especially for older stories where individual issues are hard to find.

 

I generaly go for individual issues, but i think i'm going to start becoming of a trade person. It's a lot cheaper. I'm not very happy with these little hard covers marvel are doing. It raises the price on the collected story, but it does make it a little more likely to last. I think tacking care of your trades or individual issues is a better alternative to paying more money for somehting more durible.

Ecxellence, if you want to preview a trade you can do a couple of things, go to a store and look at it, find out what issues are collected in it and find the preview for these individual issues or see if one or more of the issues has been released digitaly.

 

I buy nothing but graphic novels nowadays.

 

The more I read, the more I think that TPB/HC is the way to go. There are some series I can't stand waiting on (Fables, Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina), and would continue to get in singles indefinitely as well as getting them in TPB. But more and more, I'm skipping singles and going straight to trade.

 

I FAR prefer trade (or HC, depending on the story). And since the '90s, most comics have been written in story arcs of 3-6 issues -- written to be collected. The trades tend to have better paper; they're bound; they're presented without ads or gaps or months of waiting.

Unfortunately, with the popularity of trades, comic sales lag, and when a comic doesn't sell, it dies, and then there will be no more trades of that line. So if I love a comic (or a particular writer) I'll buy that comic monthly and probably later upgrade to trade.

Also, I like buying monthly for the cases where issues are skipped in TPBs for whatever reason.

Also, while Marvel is awesome with TPB -- gloss paper, and their TPBs of nearly everything come out within a month or two of the last issue of the series/arc, DC is very very frustrating, with months and months of wait after a story for the TPB. Right now, even though they're not done collecting Mike Carey's run on Hellblazer, they're releasing Denise Mina trades alternating with Carey's, rather than just getting on a regular schedule, and . . . urg. Marvel also has a far better track record when it comes to releasing older stories collected in a variety of formats, from cheap B&W reprints to very expensive deluxe oversized hardcovers. I really wish DC would jump on the wagon and get their TPB program going right.

 

DC has released alot of the classics in nice hardcovers such as Watchmen and Batman Year 1.

 

MArvel is very good with trades, none of the other comic publishers are even romotely close. How hard is it to put out a trade in a timely manner? Everything is all ready written.