Posts Tagged ‘ Trades ’

It’s a new week of comics which means it’s a new Pull List. There’s a bunch of trades coming out in addition to comics this week – some worth your time, some…less so…

Batman The Return Of Bruce Wayne Deluxe Edition HC – Alright, people. I know he’s back and all, and I know the rough outline of how he made it (Omega Effect, time bouncing, etc) but tell me – is this worth picking up in all it’s Grant Morrison craziness? Because clocking in at $30 for 6 issues before discounts seems pretty steep.

DC Universe Online Legends #1 – I don’t know who this is targeted at; gamers who want more background on the game, comic fans who are playing the game, or what? Because a non-PS3, non-PC gamer this is just one giant Elseworlds, right?

R.E.B.E.L.S. Volume 4 Sons Of Brainiac TP – I’m on record as loving the original L.E.G.I.O.N. but this relaunch didn’t click for me. I’m honestly stunned that it’s lasted long enough to get four trades.

Superboy #4 – This has quickly and sadly slipped into the mediocre. Superboy’s managed to reveal his secret identity to two people in three issues, but it feels like there’s no real consequence to it. The whole book just feels a little bland and unthreatening. I’m disappointed as I had high hopes for the book, but I think I’ll use the upcoming Doomsday crossover as a jumping off point.

Time Masters Vanishing Point #6 (Of 6) – Not to poke fun or anything, but wasn’t this supposed to be a companion piece to the Return of Bruce Wayne that ended months ago? Or is it now leading into Flashpoint somehow? Was there ever a story here that could be told on it’s own strengths?

Transformers Infestation #1 (Of 2) – I picked up the start of Infestation on the strength of Abnett and Lanning’s involvement in it and enjoyed it quite a bit so I’m going to take a look at this even though I don’t think I’ve ever bought a Transformers comic.

Amazing Spider-Man #653 – The second Big Time arc continues, with Stefano Caselli on the art chores, as the Spider-Slayer and the Scorpion’s assault on the Jameson family continues. I like the idea, and Caselli’s art is great, but the Spider-Slayer is such a tedious villain that I can’t wait for this to be over.

Civil War X-Men HC – I like that Marvel are collecting all their crossovers in nice big HC, but this is one that you can certainly skip. Very little happens here that impacted the main Civil War storyline; the X-Men mini was more of a continuation of The 198; Cable & Deadpool was fun but irrelevant, with Deadpool being tracked down by the GLA; the X-Factor issues dealt mainly with Quicksilver’s return to the book’s cast, and only Wolverine‘s tracking down of Nitro (responsible for the destruction that kicked off CW)
really bore any relevance to main story. There’s a few other things thrown in here, like an issue of Blade and a handbook or two but ultimately there’s nothing essential here.

Deadpool And Cable #26 – I’ve also seen this as solicited as a #1. Regardless, it appears to be a one-shot with Deadpool mourning his old buddy Cable in his own special way. No doubt hilarity will ensue.

Doctor Strange From The Marvel Vault #1 – I like the idea of releasing old inventory issues this way – and a Roger Stern Doc Strange story is certainly one that I’ll at least take a look at.

Invincible Iron Man #500.1 -And so the Marvel .1 initiative kicks off. For some reason I’m reminded of those Marvel and DC Annuals years ago that made a point of introducing new heroes so that the companies could get the names before Image snagged them all, but I’m not sure why as I don’t think all of them are introducing new characters. Of course, what I really want to know is if they’ll be included in the title’s trades if they’re by guest creative teams?

She-Hulks #4 (Of 4) – That this was retroactively converted from ongoing to mini before the first issue hit (presumably due to low orders) is a crime against comics – it’s a comic not afraid to have fun with it’s central concept: two green girls smashing stuff and trying to live a normal life on the side. I hope this comes back in some form or other, because it’s been a hell of a lot of fun.

Spider-Girl #3 – A solid comic, and much more engaging than Anya Corazon’s previous attempt at a solo title (helped by the nicer costume, I think), but there’s something about the book that doesn’t quiet sit well with me – and I think it’s the tragedy that befell her last issue. I understand the need for a tragedy in a hero’s background dramatically speaking, but I don’t think every character needs a dead loved one looking over their shoulder to push them forward. Then again, I’m not convinced that this specific character is actually dead so all this thinking may be for naught.

Spider-Man Big Time HC – This HC collects the first four issues of Amazing Spider-Man under the Big Time banner, with Dan Slott flying solo on the writing chores. It’s a strong opening arc, with the return of the Hobgoblin, a new status quo for Peter and Humberto Ramos turning in some dynamic art. The collection would also seem to collect the back ups that are running in the book meaning that after a discount the HC price is actually quite palatable compared to the single issue cost, even if it might not seem that way at first. Recommended!

Thor Worldengine HC – This collects Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato’s short four issue arc on Thor just prior to him getting kicked into the Heroes Reborn universe in the mid-90s. I remember it as being pretty good, and at the time it was a huge change of pace from what had been quite a painful run before it. Now, though, it’s probably best remembered for Fabio-Thor and his hooking up with the Enchantress. At $20 for four issues (and one Journey Into Mystery reprint), it’s grossly overpriced but may be worth picking up if you can get a decent discount.

Let me get this out of the way: The Marvels Project is one good-looking trade. Steve Epting and colorist Dave Stewart do a beautiful job on the art, perfectly capturing the war-time settings that most of the book takes place in. I’ve always been a fan of Epting’s work since his Avengers run almost twenty years ago (urk) and he’s at the top of his game here.

Unfortunately, Ed Brubaker’s story lets the art down. Borrowing heavily from the far superior Marvels, The Marvels Project tells the story of the then-Timely Comics heroes as they gather for the first time against the backdrop of World War II, as narrated by Dr Thomas Holloway, the Angel.

The problem is, that’s all it does. There’s no true ‘story’ here, no overarching theme besides ‘ordinary men become heroes, and so do an android, a super-soldier, and an Atlantean’. The big draw for the series is the formation of the Invaders, but we see little of the team in action. Instead, we’re treated to things we’ve seen before; the Human Torch’s unveiling, Namor’s attack on New York and first battle with the Torch, Steve Roger’s transformation into a super-soldier.

There are some original touches – the Angel’s hunt for Nazi spies that has him crossing paths with the new Captain America, a cameo from an aging gunfighter, Nick Fury’s pre-Howling Commandos wartime exploits tying him to Professor Erskine and Captain America’s origin, and the teasing that a new generation may take over the Angel identity – but none of them really take center stage, and the scattergun approach to storytelling is undermined by the fact that too many storylines stay separated or even unresolved at the conclusion.

Brubaker also uses the series to reintroduce John Steele, a soldier from World War I with superhuman powers revived in World War II. Steele had been pretty much unheard of since 1940 (in real time), and Brubaker clearly revived him to use him in Secret Avengers.

Overall, though, this feels like a greatest hits collection that hits all the right scenes but never comes together coherently. Sure, it’s great to look at but it lacks any real heart. This feels like a real missed opportunity.

The Marvels Project is available from Amazon and loads of other places.

These days, if you read Captain America it’s a fair bet that you think that Ed Brubaker is, to put it in colloquial English, the dog’s bollocks. And he is – but reading comics over the past twenty plus years, there are two other writers’ runs that I prefer on the book. Not because they’re ‘better’ writers, necessarily, but because they’re the ones I grew up with.

Don’t get me wrong, Brubaker’s run has a great hard-edged tone to it and takes extraordinary risks – such as reversing one of Marvel’s two previously untouchable deaths (Peter David had less success with kind-of reversing the other one around the same time). The comic today has an almost espionage-like tone, and that’s no bad thing – but when I was a lad, someone else was writing the good Captain as an out-and-out superhero and his name was Mark Gruenwald.

Gruenwald was a well-respected writer and editor for Marvel prior to starting his Cap run, but it’s arguable that, alongside Squadron Supreme, that it’s Cap that he’s most remembered for. His run spanned Captain America #307-443, and although not without it’s rough spots (such as Cap-Wolf and ‘Fighting Chance’) it also included a number of classic story lines.

Luckily for all of us, many of those story lines are now being collected as Marvel want lots of product on the shelf when the star spangled Avenger’s movie is released next year…

#308 is in the Secret Wars II Omnibus – okay, so this is a ridiculously oversized (and some would say overpriced) collection, and it includes only one issue of Gru’s Cap run – but it’s worth pointing out for completeness sake. Cap tries to settle back into his old life, but runs afoul of new villain the Armadillo – he’s also shadowed by the Beyonder, who is so impressed with him that he makes himself an identical body to saunter the Earth in.

Until, of course, changes his hairstyle…

Moving on…

#318-320, #358-362 is currently the first real collection of Gruenwald’s run – although the issues collected are separated by a few years. They’re in Captain America: Scourge of the Underworld – collecting the Scourge saga (also included is the Gruenwald-penned U.S.Agent mini-series, plus Scourge’s other appearances), where the eponymous vigilante is eliminating the deadwood of the villain circuit, including the infamous Bar With No Name massacre which took out a whole host of D-list villains.

#332-350 (along with Iron Man #232) are collected in the mammoth Captain America: The Captain - surely Gruenwald’s finest hour on Cap. Steve Rogers resigns as Captain America rather than work for the shadowy government Commission, leading them to replace him with John Walker. While Walker and his new partner serve as the new Captain America and Buck- er, Battlestar – Rogers eventually adopts a modified uniform and calls himself simply ‘The Captain’. (Cap #339 is also collected in the upcoming Fall of the Mutants Omnibus).

#357-364 are collected in Captain America: The Bloodstone Hunt; think of it as Cap as Indiana Jones and Diamondback as Marion Ravenwood and you won’t be far off. This story also introduces the Red Skull’s lackey, Crossbones, currently a major player in Thunderbolts.

#365-367 are collected as part of Acts of Vengeance Omnibus. Essentially a story of villains switching opponents to take down the Avengers, Cap’s issues have him fighting against Iron Man villain the Controller. These big omnibus collections are pricey, but for me are a perfect snapshot of Marvel at that time – and worth it purely on a nostalgia level, but your mileage may vary.

#398-399 and #400-#401 are included in Operation Galactic Storm Vol 1 and Vol 2, respectively.

For my money, OGS was one of the better inter-title crossovers that Marvel did around this period. Centering on the wide-spanning Avengers family of books, the story features the team – and most of the reserves – stuck in the middle of an interstellar conflict between the Kree and the Shi’ar. A spiritual successor to the classic Kree-Skrull War (and spiritual predecessor to War of Kings, for that matter), the story results in a schism in the team with Cap leading the more idealistic Avengers while the Black Knight and Iron Man head up the more…well, ‘realistic’ is the wrong word when it comes to space wars with superheroes, but you get the idea. Good, solid, comics.

#402-408…well, there’s not a lot you can say about Captain America: Man and Wolf that the cover above and this cover doesn’t say for you:

Captain America becomes a werewolf and, er, runs around the MU encountering people like Wolverine and Cable. Oh, and the conclusion ties in to the lackluster Infinity War, just to top it all off. Probably the low point of Gruenwald’s run.

#425-437 are collected in two volumes, Captain America: Fighting Chance – Denial and Acceptance. The Super Solider serum in Steve Roger’s veins begins to kill him, forcing him to evaluate what he wants to do with his final months (before suiting up in armor, obviously). I’ve got mixed feelings on the storyline, myself. On the one hand, I appreciate what Gruenwald was trying to do – and I have a fondness for Jack Flag (lately starring in Guardians of the Galaxy) and Free Spirit – but I don’t think it quite works.

There are some other storylines in Gruenwald’s run that deserve collecting – Streets of Poison (#372-378) springs to mind especially – but right now the best of his run (and, oddly, the worst) are either available or will be shortly.

As for the other writer that I like? That’s a whole other post…

As a fan of writer Paul Cornell’s amazing work on Captain Britain and MI:13, and of artist Leonard Kirk (who also worked on that title), I was looking forward to reading Dark X-Men.

After all – a team of mutants operating under Norman Osborn’s leadership in the midst of the Dark Reign superarc taking place after Utopia? What could go wrong, especially when that team includes the always-good-value Mystique and Dark Beast, the Mengele-esque alternate world version of our own Beast?

Quite a lot as it turns out.

The series has a number of problems: firstly, it focuses less on the team that makes up the Dark X-Men and more on Osborn and returning mutant Nate Grey. While Grey’s return to the Marvel Universe is welcome enough, Osborn has been the center of so many Dark Reign books that any work done with the character here feels redundant – not to mention that having him outwit Mystique, a character with decades more experience than him, diminishes her somewhat.

The second problem is that the other members of the Dark X-Men team are just plain dull; Weapon Omega, born of Bendis’ New Avengers ‘The Collective‘ arc and late of Omega Flight, has been characterized differently in every series he’s shown up in. Here, he’s addicted to the power that Osborn feeds him by throwing other mutants into a big machine that siphons off their power. He’s essentially an addled near-vampiric character with little willpower.

Also on the team is Mimic, a character who has been around since the sixties but rarely gets any facetime, mainly because he’s simply not that interesting – and that doesn’t change here. There’s a hint that he knows he’s due to die at some point in the future and that explains his nihilism but its never really expanded on.

As I mentioned above, Mystique being manipulated by Osborn devalues her character, so thank the heavens for Dark Beast, gleefully vivisecting and experimenting away.

Overall, I was very disappointed, especially as I like the creators. The series doesn’t pick up any plot strands from Utopia and doesn’t really have any impact on anything else going on aside from Nate Grey’s return – and honestly, who missed him anyway?

Look, you know me. I’m a sucker for a good crossover and all that it entails including tie-ins. Tie-in issues that happen between the panels of the ‘main event’, or tie-ins that barely qualify to have the trade dress on the cover (AKA red sky tie-ins) – they’re all okay by me. Hell, the much-reviled Secret Wars II got me into Marvel Comics, and I’ve picked up the Inferno Omnibus and the Inferno Crossovers Omnibus in spite of having all the original issues because I love the story so much, and the fact that it reached out and touched so much of the Marvel Universe.

So picking up this was a no-brainer, wasn’t it? I hadn’t picked up the original Dark Wolverine tie-in issues and despite being irritated at Marvel’s shrinking trade sizes, I decided to pick this up – especially as I got it 50% off through Midtown Comics.

Collecting Dark Wolverine #82-84 (a whole three issues!), New Mutants #11 (also collected in the Siege: Thor trade, and New Mutants Vol 2) and the Siege: Storming Asgard – Heroes and Villains one-shot (which I’ll get to later), the book clocks in at a lightweight 128 pages.

Even so, 128 pages of good comics is 128 pages of good comics so for $10 I was willing to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, the main event here – the Dark Wolverine issues – can’t remotely be described as ‘good comics’. Daken – the son of Wolverine, for those not in the know – was introduced in Daniel Way’s Wolverine: Origins series before graduating to a starring role in the Dark Avengers and taking over one of his father’s other ongoing series. A bisexual, amoral, scheming, pheromone-emitting killer, Daken attracts the attention of virtually everyone he comes into contact with and always has a hidden agenda – even while he’s working alongside Norman Osborn’s Avengers.

In the three issues presented here, he heads to Asgard along with the rest of the team as Osborn – falling apart – has decided to take the battle to the Norse gods at Loki’s urging. Once there, Daken attracts the attentions of the Fates who consider him vitally important and go about showing him what consequences his decisions have.

You realize at the end of the first issue when Daken kills Norman Osborn what consequences these decisions will have for the reader: none. Everything that Daken does ends badly when he chooses to follow his instincts, so the Fates keep rewinding and giving him the opportunity to make different choices.

That’s right, it’s the comic-book equivalent of ‘and it was all a dream!‘.

Not only that, but this happens in every single issue. I counted three resets at the hands of the Fates, and each time Daken snarls a bit and begrudgingly chooses another path. The art is passable, the dialog readable, but the story here is so repetitive and pointless that it gives crossovers a bad name, because quite simply: nothing happens.

At the end of the three issues, we’re not far off where we started: Daken is in Asgard doing Osborn’s dirty work. I’ll say it again: nothing of note has really happened and – worse – it’s been boring while that nothing has not been happening. These are three dull, dull, dull issues.

Now I grant you, it’s possible – possible – that if I were a regular reader of Daken’s own book I might find the issues enjoyable, and see that he’s a changed man following the Fates’ intervention but – and this is crucial – I’m not a regular reader. And if these are any example of what I can expect when I pick it up, I never will be.

Unforgivably bad.

As far as the additional material goes, New Mutants #11 is good enough but available elsewhere, and the handbook-style issue makes the tragic error of not containing any handbook-style information. Call me old-fashioned, but when I read a handbook I like to read up on the past of a character or team, not get fictional characters’ opinions of them.

Avoid this trade. Avoid it like the plague.

Siege: X-Men is available on Amazon and elsewhere but I wouldn’t get it if I were you…

I haven’t even got to the comic store for last week’s picks (well, I did but the smoke evacuation of Midtown Comics meant I didn’t have a chance to actually buy the comics) so this week will be a double whammy.

Red Robin #15 – I like the new pro-active stance that Nicieza is having Tim Drake take here. It sets him apart nicely from the other Bat-types running around Gotham. Good stuff.

Amazing Spider-Man #639 – Last issue was a mess, both art wise and story wise. I appreciate the attempt to use the original marriage issue as the basis for the changed history, but I would have enjoyed it more if the art for the ‘new’ history has actually meshed well with the art from the original. As for the story – well so far, it’s just a bit feeble. Mephisto turns into bird, lets criminal escape, Spidey knocked unconscious stopping criminal, misses wedding. That’s the best they could do? Roll on Big Time.

Darkstar And The Winter Guard #3 – This has been a great, enjoyable mini from Messrs Gallaher and Ellis. Recommend you pick it up!

Deadpool #1000 – I enjoy these oddly-numbered jam issues a lot, so I’ll get this.

New Mutants Forever #1 -One for the trades. I love the original New Mutants run, and I’m keen to see the new direction this heads in with Magneto as school head.

Spitfire #1 – Hello, English?

Young Allies #3 – Probably. As much as I like the idea of this book, so far something has just been missing. There’s potential, but it needs to kick it up a notch .

On the trade front -

Losers TP: Book 2 – Collecting the remaining issues #13-32 of the original series at a low price, I can’t recommend this enough, or the first volume which I raved about here.

In the run-up to SDCC, Bleeding Cool has run a quick list of some items from Marvel’s unreleased October solicits –

October will also see the launch of Tron Betrayal, DeadpoolMAX, Tomb Of Terror, Spider-Man v.s. Vampires, Avengers Vs Pet Avengers, Chaos War, Iron Man Titanium, Klaws of the Panther, Prometheus, Millar and Yu’s Superior, Captain America Lives Omnibus, Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato’s Thor World Engine in hardcover and an Atlantis Attacks Omnibus.

Look at that last one again – one I laughingly predicted would happen a while ago on Twitter because, you know, no way would Marvel be stupid enough to release an omnibus of one of their annual crossovers.

It’s not that I don’t love these old crossovers, I do – and, yes, I have every issue of Atlantis Attacks and it’s pre-cursor, The Evolutionary War – but these will not look good collected. The art and writing in many (not all) of the annuals is sub-par, many of the stories are only vaguely interrelated, and the X-Factor and Avengers West Coast annuals still don’t fit into those series’ continuity.

I know, that last thing only bothers me, but still….really? An Atlantis Attacks Omnibus?

Good grief

There are few superheroes as iconic as the Big Red Cheese – DC’s Captain Marvel – who haven’t been in constant publication for years. Since the Fawcett characters were reintroduced to the DC proper (as opposed to Earth-S where they had existed following DC’s acquisition of the Shazam! characters) following the Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, the character had been relaunched in the unsuccessful Shazam! The New Beginning, briefly been part of the Justice League where he was pretty much treated as a joke, had a strip in Action Comics Weekly and then pretty much languished in the limbo of guest appearances until the early 1990s.

This, for a character who came to film seven years before Superman.

Then in 1994, former Superman artist Jerry Ordway wrote and painted The Power of Shazam! a hardcover graphic novel (still available in tpb and highly recommended!) that essentially rebooted the Shazam! family once again – only this time it worked, and shortly afterwards the ongoing Power of Shazam! series was launched

The trick was not to adopt the same tone as the rest of the DCU, but to have Fawcett City – Marvel’s base – be an almost timeless corner of the DCU where it feels like you never really left the 1950s. Boys hawk newspapers on street corners, gangsters wear suits and are accompanied by molls with Veronica Lake hair, and plucky orphans who live on the street manage to stay optimistic and out of crime.

Ordway wrote the series through it’s cancellation, with most issues drawn by Peter Krause although Curt Swan and Gil Kane also contributed to the series. The entire run is almost stand alone – yes, there’s a Final Night crossover, a Genesis (yeesh) crossover, a DC 1,000,000 crossover and an excellent four-part Starman crossover (reprinted as part of the Starman Omnibus vol 4) – but by and large the series is untouched by the DCU.

When characters do guest star, they’re characters that fit with the established Marvel aesthetic – Superman, Batman, Plastic Man – and they nestle perfectly into the series.

In recent years, Captain Marvel – and his enemy Black Adam even moreso – have maintained some level of visibility in the DCU (although the former Captain Marvel Jr carries the Captain Marvel mantle while the original has become the new Wizard), but they’ve never been as much fun, as optimistic, or as hopeful as this series was.

The entire run is a love letter to superhero comics – and it deserves to be collected.

Ka-Zar gets a raw deal. He’s ragged on as a poor man’s version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and, you know, there’s something to that. Both are Lords raised in a savage land (or in Ka-Zar’s case, THE Savage Land which itself bears more than a passing resemblance to Burrough’s Pellucidar), and both have a tendency to not fit in too well in civilized society as they’d rather be swinging on a vine in a loincloth.

Even so, Ka-Zar (well, the second version at least) is one of those characters who keeps on getting shots at ongoing titles. At this point, he’s had four self-titled series and appeared in features in a few anthology titles as well and he continues to crop up as a guest star any time someone wants to plunder the Savage Land.

This, though, is about just one of those series. Launched by Mark Waid and Andy Kubert in the wake of Onslaught, the series gave equal time if not billing to Ka-Zar and Shanna, his wife. Like most Ka-Zar books, it wasn’t long until the pair temporarily relocated to New York, giving the jungle lord the opportunity to mix it up with the likes of the Rhino.

Ka-Zar’s usual nemesis, his brother Parnival Plunder was on show too, of course, but Waid upped the stakes by throwing Ka-Zar and Shanna up against villains way, way, way out of their weight class – namely Thanos and the High Evolutionary.

Yes.

Thanos.

I seem to recall that this Thanos was later retconned into being an inferior clone in Jim Starlin’s pretty much overlooked (and deservedly so, because it’s terrible) Infinity Abyss series, but even so – Ka-Zar against Thanos.

Waid devleoped in Ka-Zar a similar never-say-die attitude and confidence in his abilities that he had recently installed in Captain America in his first seminal run on that book, and strengthened it with an adult relationship with Ka-Zar’s wife and their child.

I know – an adult married superhero with a child. Crazy.

Waid and Kubert’s run lasted 14 issues, but Waid also worked on a -1 issue as part of Marvel’s Flashback event – with art by John Cassaday.

The Waid/Kubert run deserves collecting. Waid’s on good form (and when Waid is good, he’s very good) and Kubert’s art is strong, if not as individual as it is these days. Add in an issue by John Cassaday, and hell, why not throw in the mostly-unrelated 1997 Annual and, maybe even Priest’s short-lived follow-up run on the book from #15-20 that led to it’s cancellation if you must – that’s enough material for a nice thick trade paperback.

But at the very least, Ka-Zar #1-14 and #-1 are damn good comics – and should be available in trade.

A couple of days ago I tweeted the following:

This was followed by a few more ranting tweets about increased price of TPB against the falling number of issues collected in them, especially from Marvel although Boom! are also guilty of this. Now though, I’m going to focus on Marvel – because there’s another thing that’s irking me…

Look at that. A big, beautiful hardcover edition. I love these things. They generally collect at least twelve issues in a bigger format, they look great when you read them and they look great on the bookshelf.

Right now, 12 issue collections are retailing for about $35, like the great X-Force one that arrived yesterday (actually, that was 13 issues but you get the idea) but after a discount on Amazon it’s less than $24 which means you’re getting the hardcover for less than the original issues.

And did I mention they look great?

Then there’s the regular old trades (and premiere hardcovers). About the same size as the comics, usually 6 issues long. The regular trades tend – or at least used to tend – to retail at around $15 like the Thor one here, with the hardcover preceding it by a couple of months at around $20. Again, once you factor in the price, good deal.

Now though – and this is the bit that I was tweeting about a few days back – the price point is remaining the same while the issue count drops to 5 or 4. Examples include the upcoming Siege tie-in trades; $20 hardcover, 4 or 5 issues, and the Dark Wolverine trades which are hitting softcover at $15 retail for 4 issues worth of story.

After an Amazon discount, it squeaks by at a lower cost than the original issues (unless of course you get a store discount) so I suppose it’s just about acceptable, but it still feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Then there’s the digests. I know that these are aimed at younger readers, and tend to collect series like Spider-Girl and Runaways, not to mention the Marvel Adventures lines, but I love these formats. They were retailing at $8 for 6 issues – and you can’t really beat that. Sure, the repro’s smaller, but the stories are the same and they’re great value.

Recently, though, the price has lifted to $10 for 4 issue digests and $15 for 6 issue digests – still a good deal, price-wise, compared to the originals but that means $15 for 6 issue digest sized when just a few months ago, we were paying $15 for 6 issue regular sized.

But wait there’s more…

This week I picked up the Nomad trade in yet another format. Smaller than the regular TPB…

…but bigger than the digests, but on the lower quality digest-style paper.

And it was $15 for 4 issues plus the backup from Captain America #600. Luckily it was half price in Midtown Comics – but I’ve notice the Marvel Noir 4 issue limited series are also turning up in this new format at $15 for 4 issues – the same price that 4 issue regular-sized trades are retailing for, and the same price we were paying for 6 issue regular size trades just a few months ago!

These prices are crazy – and I know that it’s just another way of increasing revenue in an increasingly dwindling market, but that market will dwindle even more if Marvel continues to gouge the consumer in this way.

…bitching about, of all things, trade paperback collections. Well, hardcover collections as well, but it’s the same thing. There’s also blatant linkage to my Amazon store, but you don’t have to click on anything, do you?

As you may have noted, I’ve been dropping books left, right and center recently. Some I’m done with completely, some I’ll be picking up in trades.

I’ve now dropped pretty much all the X-books – but there are some that I’m going to pick up in trades; X-Force and New Mutants being two of them. I dropped both these titles (and X-Men Legacy) just before Necrosha hit them, figuring that there’d be a nice big juicy hardcover at some point – and there is!

Look, here it is -

It contains the X-Necrosha one-shot, X-Force #21-25, New Mutants #6-8 and X-Men Legacy #231-233. Maybe the Gathering one-shot, but it isn’t listed on the website. Whatever, that’s what I was looking for – great!

Only…wait, no. Not so great.

Because as I also want to pick up X-Force and New Mutants in trades from now on, I’m going to have to do some double purchases.

Take New Mutants. The first arc and its epilogue issue – #1-5 – are collected in one handy volume:

The big X-Necrosha hc picks up #6-8, so that works. The thing is, the second volume of New Mutants picks up #6-11 plus the New Mutants story from the X-Necrosha one-shot:

Which means #6-8 are printed in two collections. Not the end of the world, but irritating.

But wait, it gets better. I also liked the idea of picking up the Siege: Dark Wolverine/New Mutants collection…

…mainly for the Daken story – but that book also contains New Mutants #11. Of course, I could pick up the Siege trade and the X-Necrosha trade and forget about the New Mutants trade – but then that leaves me missing #9-10 of the series. Aaaargh.

Then there’s X-Force. I’m sticking my issues on ebay and plunking for the nice big collection of the first eleven issues:

Nice. But now I’m thinking about the next few issues. It’s only a few issues until Messiah War – so maybe I’ll just pick up that trade and assume that the next big hardcover collection of the book will skip on by that, the way that the individual collections of the book did. That makes sense, right?

But…the collected X-Force Necrosha trade includes #20, a book conspicuously absent from that big X-Necrosha collection, so what if the next hardcover X-Force will skip that? You can drive yourself crazy with this!

See, Marvel, I want to buy your trades. I want to buy the nice big hardcover collections of storylines you put out – but you just don’t make it easy, do you?