I feel that I must confess something – I’m not actually a huge comic book fan… Before you click off this page in disgust, please allow me to explain. I’m not against comics, having been a fan of the medium for over 20 years it's just I’ve always preferred the graphic novel approach to collections rather than individual issues.
To me a graphic novel is more accessible and allows newer fans to introduce themselves to the medium. The back catalogue of stories would be impossible to source in comic book form, a collection makes the job so much easier.
Imagine attempting to work through Crisis on Infinite Earths and piecing together the whole story issue by issue with the added danger of missing one in the middle. It’d be tough. I’m not even sure if the full collection of comics for this storyline exists out there anywhere besides DC headquarters. I recently came across issues one, three, five and seven of Final Crisis in a second hand shop. Why on earth anyone would buy or keep the others and not these is beyond me but at the time I hazarded a guess that not having every second issue would hamper my enjoyment of the series and back in the box they went.
Maybe I’m missing out on something. The last single issue of a comic that I bought was the concluding part of Batman RIP as I just couldn’t wait for the collection to be released and I wanted to see how the Caped Crusader allegedly met his demise. The excitement of clutching that hot off-the-press comic in my sweaty paw as I marched home determined to savour every frame of it was quite interesting but since I’m a quick reader it probably took me longer to buy the comic than it did to complete the damn thing.
Given my enforced speed-reading abilities I rarely feel that buying a comic is good value and I’m also the impatient sort so don’t like waiting a week, a fortnight or a month to find out what happens next. I find it much better to ignore the series until it’s released in trade paperback form. Does this make me a philistine? Probably. Does it increase my enjoyment of comics (in the larger sense)? Definitely.
How do you take your comics? Issue by issue or trade paperback collection? Leave a comment and let me know.
To me a graphic novel is more accessible and allows newer fans to introduce themselves to the medium. The back catalogue of stories would be impossible to source in comic book form, a collection makes the job so much easier.
Imagine attempting to work through Crisis on Infinite Earths and piecing together the whole story issue by issue with the added danger of missing one in the middle. It’d be tough. I’m not even sure if the full collection of comics for this storyline exists out there anywhere besides DC headquarters. I recently came across issues one, three, five and seven of Final Crisis in a second hand shop. Why on earth anyone would buy or keep the others and not these is beyond me but at the time I hazarded a guess that not having every second issue would hamper my enjoyment of the series and back in the box they went.
Maybe I’m missing out on something. The last single issue of a comic that I bought was the concluding part of Batman RIP as I just couldn’t wait for the collection to be released and I wanted to see how the Caped Crusader allegedly met his demise. The excitement of clutching that hot off-the-press comic in my sweaty paw as I marched home determined to savour every frame of it was quite interesting but since I’m a quick reader it probably took me longer to buy the comic than it did to complete the damn thing.
Given my enforced speed-reading abilities I rarely feel that buying a comic is good value and I’m also the impatient sort so don’t like waiting a week, a fortnight or a month to find out what happens next. I find it much better to ignore the series until it’s released in trade paperback form. Does this make me a philistine? Probably. Does it increase my enjoyment of comics (in the larger sense)? Definitely.
How do you take your comics? Issue by issue or trade paperback collection? Leave a comment and let me know.
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