Nyarlo.net

marvel is reissuing grant morrison’s entire run on new xmen in three softcover volumes. this is fantastic. i want comics i can pick up on a whim and flip through, and hardcovers are the exact opposite of that.

there’s this wierdness going on in tradepaperbackery right now where it’s kind of a crapshoot if something will be a hardcover only, paperback only, both, or like both plus a solid gold variant.

say i want to pick up the first 100ish issues of fantastic four by lee and kirby. i have four options.

i can get the omnibus editions, vast unreadable tomes with thirty issues at a time in archival quality oversized hardcovers, with obsessively hi-res paper stock, list price $99.99 each.

i can get the masterworks editions, a more reasonable but still overdone archival quality hardcover, with ten issues at a time, list price of $49.99 each.

i can get the essential editions, twenty issues at a time, in cerebus-style black and white paperback, list price of $16.99.

or i can get a dvd-rom set with 575 issues of fantastic four and 185 issues of silver surfer, complete with all original ads and bullpens and letter columns going all the way back to the original 60s issues, for $49.99.

if the essentials were manga sized i’d be all over them, but at full-size, i want the stuff in color.

if the oversized omnibus editions were available in a softcover for $50 each, i’d eat up all the jack kirby i could get my hands on. fantastic four, silver surfer, inhumans, eternals, fourth world over at dc… all the classic cosmic stuff on burly hires paper stock, but without an inflexible shell encasing the thing and making it awkward to read. as hardcovers, i’d need a lectern.

i’ll probably end up getting the dvd set just because it’s the most accessible option, and the price is certainly right, essentially $1 a year. but i would rather have something material, something i can hold in my hands. something that won’t suddenly look terrible if i upgrade my video card.

a straightforward tpb release, ten issues per volume, full color, $19.99 each. that’s what i want, and that’s the only way i can’t get classic fantastic four right now. or classic xmen, or doctor strange, or avengers, or all the other classic marvel that’s only available in essential or hardcover.

if these were real books i could almost guarantee a softcover release six to twelve months later, and happily wait for that. but comics are different and it doesn’t make any damn sense.

in other book news, i found my copy of the bible again. it’s this little abridged, i think, version, with an orange vinyl cover, that i was handed by missionaries in front of high school one day.

i’ve never quite been able to bring myself to get rid of it. not out of religious fervor, just that i’d feel like an ass.