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Underground > Comic Books >

Waiting for the Trade

Glenn Close But No Cigar

13:58 / 17.11.06

Like, I suspect, many of you, I'm getting increasingly sick of the long delays between issues of my favourite comics. So much so, in fact, that I'm thinking of ceasing to buy single issues, and instead wait for them to be published (if indeed they will be) in trade paperback format.

There's some obvious plus points to this: trades beat single issues for durability, the 'looking nice on my shelves' factor, price, absence of ads and - in lots of ways - reading pleasure, especially now that many comics seem to be written precisely with their collection in this format in mind. I suspect that a day or so reading, say, the collected Seven Soldiers will be a far more enlightening, joyous experience than wearily checking the web to see if SS1 has been delayed AGAIN...

However, there are some minuses to this. My childhood enjoyment of comics was about the weekly wait for the next (on time!) issue of 2000AD, Secret Wars II, or Spiderman & Zoids (still love those early Morrison stories), and buying comics in collections disconnects me from that memory. Similarly, no longer buying single issues means no more covers (cover galleries in trades just don't have the same feel), and the lingering suspicion that I'll be left somehow behind the curve (I'm not so fannish that I can't live with this, but still). More importantly, there's a sense with some writers that their work is something that's of now, and for now, and that by reading it a year or so later a certain 'nowness' is lost.

Another way of putting all this is to ask whether buying trades is somehow untrue to the medium, or whether - in an age when the (mainstream, anglophone) medium is arguably geared more towards trades than single issues - it is simply the best way to absorb comics goodness.

Your thoughts?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:28 / 17.11.06

I've recently been rereading The Invisibles and, for the first time, I've been reading trades rather than the individual comics because I've been reading it in the library rather than at home. For me it's psychologically different to be reading a book than a collection fo comics, even if I have all the comics. If they reprinted the first trade of the second series with the missing pages I'd be quite happy to throw all my comics away and just get the GNs. I think there is something different between the next chapter being a page away and being in a pile by your side.

On the other hand, there's an awful lot of trades out there of stuff that was considered transitory from a time before comics were thought to be things to treasure and keep that don't work so well. Claremontian X-Men where every twenty pages Wolverine is talking about his adamantium claws and healing factor, and Colossus brings up his organic iron skin.

Which brings us to Fell. It would be really interesting to see what would happen if this were never collected. Would it be forgotten? They never collected more than the first few years of Hitman and that's now half-forgotten.

18:45 / 17.11.06

There are two major drawbacks to the "wait for the trade" mindset.

The first is that there may not BE a trade, although this has become less and less likely. Still, some material still requires diving into back issue bins.

The second is the wait. Some books aren't colelcted for months, even years. And with the HC-first mentality that's turned up of late, the wait for affordable collections is even longer.

However, these days there are very few titles I buy anyway, so I can afford to double up. Singles, then trades. And that's the best of both worlds.

18:54 / 17.11.06

Why are singles best of anything? These days I only buy singles because I can't help myself, because I'm weak.
So many of my favourite books are written with the trade in mind and frankly don't actually play that well with monthly gaps (or, in far too fucking many cases these days more), in that they're either decompressed or lose a whole lot of their momentum.

The fact that we buy monthly and in trade format makes me think we're a bunch of idiots, frankly.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:11 / 17.11.06

Living a hella drive from a big city and not owning a car has forced me into a default TBP position. The only problem is that I get rabid waiting for things like All-Star Superman to come out (freakin' JANUARY? COME ON!) and then succumb to the urge to Torrent.

19:48 / 17.11.06

In recent years I found monthly comics increasingly unsatisfying for all the usual reasons and moved mostly to trades. Problem was, reading comics mostly in trade form really highlighted just how bad the cost/enjoyment ration is for the vast majority of them. It's hard not to feel a little ripped off when a book I just paid $16-20 for takes under an hour to read and is only average in quality. While the cost/enjoyment ratio is technically even worse for the monthlies (given the poorer paper quality, ads, decreased narrative momentum, etc.), I found I didn't notice it so much when buying $2.50 installments rather than dropping $17.95 or so for what amount to larger installments.

In any case, I found myself increasingly unwilling to buy trades of many of the fluffy superhero books I would've previously had no problem buying monthly. An additional disadvantage of trades was that while monthlies go out with the weekly recycling (a collector I am not), trades tend to pile up and take up space. Something about the "bookiness" of them prevents me from throwing them out with the monthlies.

So these days I've retreated to a sort of middle ground. I buy monthlies of the fluff, and mostly trade-wait for the good stuff I may actually want to keep and read again. Most of the "good stuff" ships way less than monthly in any case, so my eventual enjoyment of it is far less compromised by annoying narrative gaps, etc.

20:24 / 17.11.06

Dude, you throw away your comics?? That just... that's just wrong. At least stick 'em on e-bay or something or give them to a little kid... but throwing them away? The fatbeard inside me is crying, you've hurt him.

*ahem*

I was actually talking to my comic-store-owner dude - my comics pimp - about this earlier on this afternoon. He says that more and more of his customers are moving exclusively to trades instead of buying the singles. I'm not sure where I stand on this myself. I usually buy the trades of either older books that I've missed because I was, y'know, 9 at the time or stuff that I wasn't quick enough to get into when they kicked off (like most geeks, I can't simply buy from issue 2. I don't know why, there's a compulsion in me for buying the complete story, and I feel all weird if I don't have it). I have been considering waiting for comics that I know will be great, like AS-S, because of the better paper/less ads factor, but then I considered that having say, 6 issues of Frank Quitely in a row without too much stress kinda takes away half of the fun of being a comics collector. The anticipation and thrill of discovery, being drip-fed purest liquid brilliance at agonizing intervals - it's brilliant, it makes me get all sweaty and anxious in a good way. Having it all in trades, it's a bit too convenient, it takes away the weekly fun of coming back from the shop with a little stack of comics that a short sharp bursts of dizzying variety and novelty. If you have well-rounded tastes, a good week at the shop can mean a highly entertaining weekend of all your favourite stuff, rather than deciding 'this week I'm going to read... New Frontier, or an Alan Moore book' or whatever. It's like the Saturday morning cartoons for kids that never grow up and most likely sleep in past whatever crap passes for cartoons these days.

So yeah, singles all the way is the gist of what I'm saying, but maybe special collected stuff as a treat every now and then.

20:45 / 17.11.06

I stopped buying singles around 2000. I got sick of the wait, I got sick of the ads, and I got sick of hoping that maybe, just maybe, the next issue wasn't going to suck as much as this one did if I just held out for one more month. Plus it seems (subjectively, as I haven't actually done a price breakdown) to cost less to purchase trades.

The really good stuff, the stuff that the critics rave about, tends to make it to TPB eventually. I know there are exceptions where, oh, say, the trademark of "Hero of the Beach" are concerned, but I'm sure that such examples are rare and eventually overcome. Even the more esoteric stuff, like early Peanuts strips and Prince Goddamned Valiant are being released in archival-quality hard-bound volumes. Given enough time, there's a good chance that the issue or story arc you passed up today will be available again.

In the past, the above statement was largely true only of the larger publishers. The wonderful little black & white self-published underground comic was likely not going to see a reprint unless you do it yourself. This was the instance in which I found myself buying single issues. But even this has been changing. Back when I was more involved in comics, there was little chance of seeing a TPB out of Caliber or Slave Labor or Fantagraphics, but it seems like the economy of reprints has been made apparent (and available) to the smaller publishers.

20:56 / 17.11.06

You see, I'd like to get a short sharp kick of dizzy fizzy excitement every week, but the way most comics are written these days I don't.

Singles that are made to stand strong on their lonesome are still out there - ASS and much of Seven Soldiers count among 'em - but they're few and far between. And, well, singles that actually come out on time are getting rarer and rarer.

22:16 / 17.11.06

almost exclusively trades. I've only purchased 5 single issues in the past year. I like A tpb'S hefty quality, the way IT lookS on the bookshelf, how much easier it is to store and find instead of scattered all around (that's an enormous factor)...You know, everything already listed.

In addition, TPBs are easier to lend to friends. When I'm sharing Alan Moore's Swamp Thing with someone I want 6 nice, easy-to-find-in-your-house TPBs rather than dozens of single issues where the potential for loosing one is much higher.

22:22 / 17.11.06

Oh for - I had the capslock key on for some parts of the above post, hence the attrocious formatting. Argh.

Another reason to purchase a trade, so this post isn't just me slapping my forehead: TPBs are easier to resell than single issues. Used bookstores that don't take single comic issues are generally very happy to see TPBs come through their door.

13:52 / 18.11.06

I think the serial nature of comics can be fun and part of the reading experience. The single issue SEVEN SOLDIERS were a lot of fun - I enjoyed the unpacking of the issues and the dissection of minutae on this board between issues almost as much as reading the comics - and there was a feeling that we were watching a balancing act, "Will he pull it off? Did he pull it off?"

But for most comics I'm just as happy to wait for the trade. If I have to have it when it comes out I'll either buy it (rarely) or download it (more common) and then pick up the trade when it comes out.

I'd love to see publishers embrace a more manga-friendly model and start doing entire storylines in trades all at once. Oh, wait, Marvel used to do just that with their graphic novels. Did those not sell well or something? I used to love 'em - THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL was particularly great.

uncle retrospective

14:00 / 18.11.06

I stopped buying monthlies when I noticed I just wasn't getting enough enjoyment out 10 minutes reading for nearly €5. That and the fact I hate re reading stories when I have a pile of 70 issues in front of me instead of 5 easy to put on a shelf books.
Saying that I'm not getting the kick out of comics I used to either, I used to love the pouring over each issue that happens here and having people spot things I'd missed and reading a thread when the trade comes out just isn't the same. Phonogram is the only book I've broken my trade only policy and I'm loving the hell out of it.

22:17 / 18.11.06

I much prefer trades for pacing reasons.
But it annoys me when you can't view double splash pages properly because of the spine.

04:28 / 19.11.06

I much prefer trades for most titles, for all the same reasons that have been mentioned already - Trades look nicer and are easier to handle and (a big one for me) there's no ads.

But I still do get some singles - normally Image books that probably need my support from the get go, and might not get traded if they aren't lucky. I also got the singles of Winter Men, 'cause it doesn't look like it'll ever make trade (and now it also looks like they've fucked it up majorly in the process of cutting it down from 8 issues to 6).

People like to say that singles are dead, and that trades are the way of the future, but I think we need singles. Economically, the big companies won't keep making comics if they aren't getting that sweet monthly advertising revenue, and creatively, it seems to me that artists and writers get even more lax on OGN deadlines than they are on monthly ones.
But all that said, we also need singles to be worthwhile.
I think Warren Ellis and Matt Fraction with their "Image Slimline" books have proven that they can be, but it'll be interesting to see if the big-2 pick up on it.

10:39 / 19.11.06

JD - it seems to me that artists and writers get even more lax on OGN deadlines than they are on monthly ones.
Could you expand on this a bit please?

I think there is a lot going on here, a lot of factors that are effecting the formatting of comics and, interestingly, publishers such as DC/Marvel and IMAGE are not the sole, or indeed most prominent, locus for this.

It's probably worth recalling at this point the origins for the format that lead to the standard comic book format favoured by the DCs, Marvels and IMAGEs of this world was Famous Funnies - the same size a a standard US newspaper sheet folded twice (Max Gaines apparent innovation was the second fold down from tabloid to the half babloid size so recognisable today). Inflation, paper prices and printing costs effected the page count and took a fraction of an inch off the trim size over the years but this has been the format that the DCs, Marvels and IMAGEs have cleaved too. But that is merely one stream of comics.

Bigger publishers, including Houghton Mifflin. Hodder and Bertlesman (Random House, Pantheon/Jonathan Cape) are focusing their attention on the graphic novel market and they have not been so hidebound by the traditional formatting of US comic books.
Many of the Bertlesman graphic novels have tended to reprint work that has been pre-serialized elsewhere, whether it be in newspapers (Gemma Bovary, Jimmy Corrigan) or something more akin to the adopted by Mavel/DC etc (Black Hole), while other publishers have favoured complete OGNs.

And then there is manga, which has adopted its own format structures and episode lengths.

All of which is probably a bit of a digression. The point being is that the notion of waiting for the trade is largely one focused on comics published by DCs, Marvels and IMAGEs of comics, but there are increasingly more publishers out there publishing an increasingly richer and wider variety of comics. There is no orthodoxy as to the overall format of a comic strip. I feel that's probably a good thing

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:57 / 19.11.06

Recently I've been starting to prefer trades simply for reasons of practicality- I've only got so much room, and as someone mentioned above, if you know where the trade is, you know where the whole thing is; you're not gonna get half-way through and realise you lost an issue.

But I like buying single issues. At the moment I'm in a compromise, where I buy all the issues, then if it's any good I'll buy the trade and get rid of the comics.

20:52 / 19.11.06

JD - it seems to me that artists and writers get even more lax on OGN deadlines than they are on monthly ones.
sleazenation - Could you expand on this a bit please?

I probably shouldn't have stated it as such an over-arching generalisation.
I have, however, observed that every OGN that I've been interested in has ended up months and months overdue - Top 10 the 49ers, LoEG Black Dossier... and there was at least one other (that wasn't Alan Moore)...
Of course, this could be an issue with the companies soliciting them far too early without checking with the artists and writers first.

20:18 / 20.11.06

Well, it seems to me that this is more of a problem you have with Alan Moore and his attitude to publishing schedules, rather than anything endemic to graphic novels (original or otherwise), especially since such problems have also afflicted Moore's work that was first presented in the standard comic book format favoured by the DCs, Marvels and IMAGEs of this world.

But yes, as far as the financing of longer form comic strips goes, there are alternatives to pre-serialization. Bryan Talbot sold limited edition prints to help finance Heart of Empire (though he also pre-serialised the strip, Talbot's latest work, Alice in Sunderland, may well eschew this model).

Janean Patience

10:42 / 21.11.06

I switched to trades some years ago, finishing up those long-form series I was already buying before I did, and it can be hard at first. I remember seeing Paul Pope's 100% and Grendel: RW&B on the stands and restraining myself from buying them. You get used to it, though. Nowadays I note a new series with interest without wanting to buy it, and it even allows you to preview more easily; you can look through a few issues before deciding whether you're going to take a chance on the trade. Plus look nicer on the bookshelf, easy to lend, cheaper, no ads, all the other stuff.

After a couple of years without, I decided to go back into singles for Seven Soldiers. It sounded like the kind of series that would reward being picked up fortnightly, I'd moved somewhere with a comic shop nearby, I thought 'Why not? Bring the magic back.'

My disappointment with the series aside, it was an object lesson in why I gave up singles. Pages and pages of adverts, the pain-in-the-arse of schlepping to the comic shop all the time, missing issues and having to go to the trouble of tracking them down, paying around £70 for comics that would've cost £40 in trades, and the ridiculous lateness of the conclusion, left hanging for months.

The independent sector is actually leading the way when it comes to trades. The argument that if you don't buy it, it won't be collected simply isn't true in the case of smaller titles. Andi Watson's Little Star was always intended for collection - the singles are a loss-leader and, like newspaper serialisation for celebrity biographies, an attempt to get some early cash and publicity while recognising that the back end's what counts.

Indie artists are finding that the book trade's offering them what they want without any need to worry or care about singles. Eddie Campbell's latest came out as an original GN, and Pride of Baghdad was brought out that way, I'm guessing because the press are more likely to review books that haven't already been published.

Singles are increasingly for collectors, for unknowns, for fans, as they are in the music business.

11:03 / 21.11.06

I've noticed a handful of creators working a new paradigm. Publish the story first as a daily/weekly/etc webcomic (usually a page at a time) and then, when enough material has been "printed", making a trade.

Is this one future for the medium?

11:16 / 21.11.06

I assure you the advert situation has gotten much, much worse. These days Marvel aren't adverse to flooding their books with as many as 24 pages of ads. Now, it an be argued that this is sound business sense, but, frankly, I think that argument can fuck off. The practice totally destroys the the flow of the sequential narrative and renders moot much of the creators' hard work. It's horribly out of control and I have no idea how Joe Quesada can keep popping up in columns and defending it (well, actually, I do, but it gets on my nerves loads).

Cue someone turning up to defend the practice on the basis that it doesn't ruin the reading experience for them, and that I should get over it and become a really real realist.

Janean Patience

11:34 / 21.11.06

Cue someone turning up to defend the practice on the basis that it doesn't ruin the reading experience for them, and that I should get over it and become a really real realist.

Hey, it totally fucking ruins reading a comic for me. And it's easier, and cheaper, to do without.

Though rereading Seven Soldiers now I've got an Xbox, it was quite helpful to see adverts for games and look up reviews of what I fancied...

I've killed my own argument again, haven't I.

11:45 / 21.11.06

No you haven't. Just because people can make use of ads is no reason to suggest that comics should be flooded with them to the detriment of the actual story.

Janean Patience

12:38 / 21.11.06

MY ARGUMENT LIVES! And it's gonna get those bad guys who left it in a shallow grave!

Janean Patience

12:47 / 21.11.06

Apologies for that last.

I've noticed a handful of creators working a new paradigm. Publish the story first as a daily/weekly/etc webcomic (usually a page at a time) and then, when enough material has been "printed", making a trade.

It's the paradigm of most literature and increasingly most entertainment; if you've paid money for content, then it shouldn't be interrupted with adverts. Films are preceded by them, DVDs, books, albums (except for Sigue Sigue Sputnik's debut) are advert free. Comics are an exception but as they migrate toward book form, that'll be less true.

The internet model of free content then repackaged into a more familiar and charged for, has, I believe, been cast as the approaching future for some while. I don't know enough about economics to know if that's the case.

07:58 / 25.11.06

Well, the other big avenue for advertisers is getting in on the narrative itself in the form of product placement - witness the latest Bond film, which is saturated in product placement...

17:55 / 02.01.07

Because this seems to be the best place to put this and because it sums up my feelings about Marvel perfectly.

From the X-Axis

ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS HULK shipped an issue back in February, and then fell off the face of the earth. The book has now officially been cancelled altogether, and Marvel claim it'll be resolicited at a later date. I don't believe a word of it. I think it's another Daredevil: Target. The actual content is rather good, but the absurd delays have long since overshadowed that. This, perhaps, is the point that Marvel seem to miss: it is almost unimaginable that a book can run this late without either the creators having a total disregard for deadlines, or Marvel being utterly incompetent. The idea that a book can run over a year late because, hey, shit happens, is a ridiculous one, and yet it's essentially the only explanation Marvel ever offer, usually in a slightly hurt "How dare you expect us to deliver books on time?" kind of a way. I don't like the company's attitude these days, and I don't like their attitude towards their customers. Bluntly, the standards of professionalism the company displays fall way, way below anything that I would regard acceptable in the way I deal with my own customers. It's not just a matter of enlightened self-interest; I'd be ashamed, because I take pride in doing my job properly, in meeting my deadlines, and in turning down the work I know I can't do even if I move heaven and earth. When I say I'll get something done by the first day of the new year, I damn well mean it. From all appearances, Marvel (and many of their higher-profile creators) feel differently, because they've been cossetted for years by a cottage industry that thinks it's a publishing giant, and encouraged by fans so desperate to believe that Comics Are Art that they'll accept the most ludicrous delays on the most absurd action comics as a sign of artistic integrity. This business needs to grow up.

I'm screaming YES! over and over again