?sdrawkcaB
Aug. 8th, 2008 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captain_slinkyLooking at my very large shelves full of Trade Paperbacks (collected volumes of comic books), I find myself wanting to get rid of all these massive tomes and concentrate solely on obtaining individual issues of these comics. Most of the TPB collections I have on my shelf are gathered volumes of stuff I already own anyway...
This is of course the exact opposite of what everybody else in the collecting community is doing. Everybody I know is all about ditching their traditional comic book collection in favor of getting these handsome collected volumes. Heck, that's one of the reasons I myself started getting them! That combined with the scarcity of some of the issues that were collected... It's highly unlikely I would have started reading stuff like Preacher and/or Sandman if I had been forced to pay $80 on the back-issue market to get a #1 issue after all.
But any more, it's almost cheaper to go in to the Back Issue Market to get the entire story! For instance, the book that inspired this post, Watchmen. $20 for the Trade Paperback collection at a shop or convention, $10.99 on Amazon. However, at this year's Emerald City Comic Con i found issues #2-12 of the series in a "5 For $1" box, and the same seller had #1 for $4 (half-off of his original asking price of $8). So I paid $6.25 for the entire story!
And it's all in a format that fits easily with the rest of my collection!
And I could hang all of them on my wall to make a bitchin' poster if i want without having to tear out any pages!
And i get to read the story as it was originally intended to be presented; 12 individual chapters laid out in the most artistic way possible instead of just one big book!
Mind you, Watchmen is one of the few TPB's I'm planning to keep. It's an excellent tome to lend out to friends who will undoubtedly want to read the book once the movie comes out. But as for the rest of the stuff up there? The 90's re-vamp of Ghost Rider, The Asgardian Wars, Lazarus Churchyard... it's al stuff that i can easily acquire again.
This is of course the exact opposite of what everybody else in the collecting community is doing. Everybody I know is all about ditching their traditional comic book collection in favor of getting these handsome collected volumes. Heck, that's one of the reasons I myself started getting them! That combined with the scarcity of some of the issues that were collected... It's highly unlikely I would have started reading stuff like Preacher and/or Sandman if I had been forced to pay $80 on the back-issue market to get a #1 issue after all.
But any more, it's almost cheaper to go in to the Back Issue Market to get the entire story! For instance, the book that inspired this post, Watchmen. $20 for the Trade Paperback collection at a shop or convention, $10.99 on Amazon. However, at this year's Emerald City Comic Con i found issues #2-12 of the series in a "5 For $1" box, and the same seller had #1 for $4 (half-off of his original asking price of $8). So I paid $6.25 for the entire story!
And it's all in a format that fits easily with the rest of my collection!
And I could hang all of them on my wall to make a bitchin' poster if i want without having to tear out any pages!
And i get to read the story as it was originally intended to be presented; 12 individual chapters laid out in the most artistic way possible instead of just one big book!
Mind you, Watchmen is one of the few TPB's I'm planning to keep. It's an excellent tome to lend out to friends who will undoubtedly want to read the book once the movie comes out. But as for the rest of the stuff up there? The 90's re-vamp of Ghost Rider, The Asgardian Wars, Lazarus Churchyard... it's al stuff that i can easily acquire again.
