posted February 03, 2003 09:41 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:
We've done various story arcs from LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT and might do so again. Any suggestions?

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Okay, I'll bite. I'd love to see a collection of "Terror" (# 137-141), myself. It's a direct sequel to "Prey," which has already been collected (but is now, I think, out of print). It offers Batman, Catwoman, Hugo Strange, and the Scarecrow in a wonderfully macabre story from a classic creative team (Doug Moench & Paul Gulacy).

The recent "Blink" (# 156-58) is already getting a sequel. They'd make a convenient collection together.

posted February 03, 2003 09:51 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by gothcityfan:
Titles, such as JLA, JSA, GA (so far) GL, and flash have pretty much all their issues reprinted. If batman is popular enough to warrant 3 in-cont monthly titles as opposed to one all of those guys gets, cant we also assume he'd be popular enough to support 3 times as many in-cont tpb's?

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posted February 03, 2003 09:55 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:

ATOM 2 or HAWKMAN 2? Well, I suppose one of them could be out by year end. heh heh heh

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posted February 04, 2003 12:07 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by NecessaryImpurity:
In the particular case of Supergirl, Diana Schutz explains this in her forward. She was the one who pushed for the Supergirl Archive, telling DC they'd get a Frank Miller illo for the cover if they scheduled it. Too bad; I think DC bought a pig in a poke on that deal.

They should make it up to Mooney by getting a handful of cover illos they can use for the duration of his run on the strip.

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posted February 04, 2003 12:35 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by samdhi:
Now that Ed Brubaker is on board as the regular writer of DETECTIVE COMICS, it might be worth collecting his first storyline, "Dead Reckoning" (# 777-82), at the earliest convenience, testing its reception as compared with trades of other titles.

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Oh, cool, sam's here. Didn;t see you post here earlier. As for Dead Reckoning being a good test, not that i wouldn't like to see it collected, but id guess Greg Rucka's Evolution already could have made a good test. How did it do? I m assuming it did well, b/c it was a good story by a good writer on a good character, so im assuming ppl picked it up.

posted February 04, 2003 06:19 AM            

quote:

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NO MAN'S LAND, like FUGITIVE or OUR WORLDS AT WAR, was considered too large and unwieldy to collect in their entriety. As a result, the edited versions were assembled. Five volumes was deemed what the readership would sustain and they have sold very well indeed.

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posted February 04, 2003 09:07 AM               

Marvel's exclusive deal for the Masterwork reprints with B&N must make sense to them financially, although I'm scratching my head at how they can do a 256 page tpb for $12.95 and make a profit. Wish the web site indicated contents or showed the trade dress, but I think we're all assuming these are the first volumes of the various characters. If B&N is publishing these, it's in their best interest to display these for the casual consumer which can only help Marvel and comics in general.

Dale selects the best possible image for the Archives covers and when possible, gets someone like Jerry Ordway to come in and reink it for clarity. If we go with a new image, it's for a specific reason as happened with Supergirl and will happen again with a book coming this summer. Pencils came in last week and wow, the guy can still draw!

The DC CHALLENGE never comes up as a serious collection suggestion. Despite it featuring some top creators and favorite characters, it just doesn't make sense. The idea behind the project was sound and fun, but it was a side job to everyone and it languished in Dick Giordano's office. At some point, Dick asked me to help him keep it on track and before I knew it, I was editing. One of the first things I had to do was ask Gil Kane to accept an inker on #4. He was gracious and Klaus Janson did a great job. By then, though, Paul Levitz was getting impatient to see this either published or killed. I was told I needed three scripts in a month or the project was dead. Well, thanks to the interest of the talent, issues #6-8 got done in a month and it was a breathless experience. It could not have been done, I should point out, without the early forms of IM and e-mail. I remember working out drafts of #8 with Gerry Conway on MCI Mail and plotting #7 with Paul Kupperberg and Joe Staton (who was up for anything as long as he didn't have to draw horses). By the time we got to #12, Mark Evanier had to flowchart everything and I recall standing in my kitchen having him explain it all and how it was to be broken down for multiple artists. Breathless and fun, yes. A succees? Less so.

Our Batman trades seem to work best with complete stories so the last few years there have been big event storylines and then some breather stories and it's those breather stories that make for a tougher collection. The LOTDK suggestions and the Brubaker one have been duly noted. Thanks to all.

Yeah, we've only pitched one western archive and it was Jonah Hex. No one seems to ready to touch the 1970s yet so we'll see.

Onward to 1000.

posted February 04, 2003 09:16 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:
Dale selects the best possible image for the Archives covers and when possible, gets someone like Jerry Ordway to come in and reink it for clarity. If we go with a new image, it's for a specific reason as happened with Supergirl and will happen again with a book coming this summer. Pencils came in last week and wow, the guy can still draw!

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posted February 04, 2003 11:19 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by gothcityfan:
Oh, cool, sam's here. Didn;t see you post here earlier.

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I hadn't. I've lurked on this thread for some time, though, since it's such a great source of information.

quote:

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Originally posted by gothcityfan:
As for Dead Reckoning being a good test, not that i wouldn't like to see it collected, but id guess Greg Rucka's Evolution already could have made a good test.

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posted February 04, 2003 11:21 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:

Yeah, we've only pitched one western archive and it was Jonah Hex. No one seems to ready to touch the 1970s yet so we'll see.

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Bring on the Hex!
(and what about a Firestorm Trade?)

posted February 04, 2003 11:31 AM               

quote:

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...the fact that EVOLUTION was never followed up on doesn't suggest results you or I would be happy with.

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Funny, the Evolution TPB was the first DCU-based Batman story I'd bought since about 1986. I was curious about the color-keying experiment (which I liked), I trusted the creators involved, and it looked fairly self-contained. Too bad there hasn't been a follow-up.

posted February 04, 2003 12:56 PM            

Are there max and min page number requirements for archives? I mean, is there a minimum number of pages that an archive must contain, and is there a maximum number of pages that an archive can exceed. I'm not talking about the challengers reduced pagination, but for the standard archive, have you settled on any particular numbers because archives used to be much longer. Is this trend to continue?

posted February 04, 2003 02:20 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:
Marvel's exclusive deal for the Masterwork reprints with B&N must make sense to them financially, although I'm scratching my head at how they can do a 256 page tpb for $12.95 and make a profit.

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Easy. All of the restoration work is done. All Marvel has to do is provide them with the film and they're in business. Plus, they don't have to give the distributor a cut, since they are the distributor. That's a lot of money saved right there.

quote:

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Dale selects the best possible image for the Archives covers and when possible, gets someone like Jerry Ordway to come in and reink it for clarity.

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That doesn't explain why the cover to the next Legion archives is so muddy. It's like the old cover wasn't even scanned at a high resolution before certain parts of it were blown up.

posted February 04, 2003 03:35 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Zero Lad:
That doesn't explain why the cover to the next Legion archives is so muddy. It's like the old cover wasn't even scanned at a high resolution before certain parts of it were blown up.

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But the cover to the next Legion volume hasn't even been properly published yet. You're probably looking at a low-res scan, distributed to various online/preview sites and therefore doesn't have to be publisher-quality (or possibly a low-res copy of a higher-res scan).

posted February 04, 2003 04:14 PM            

Any chance we could see GRIP: THE STRANGE WORLD OF MEN, VERTIGO POP! TOKYO, and POP! LONDON collected down the road? I think all three of these could do really well in bookstore sales.

Thank you for your time!

Teisto

posted February 04, 2003 04:55 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:

The DC CHALLENGE never comes up as a serious collection suggestion. Despite it featuring some top creators and favorite characters, it just doesn't make sense. The idea behind the project was sound and fun, but it was a side job to everyone and it languished in Dick Giordano's office. At some point, Dick asked me to help him keep it on track and before I knew it, I was editing. One of the first things I had to do was ask Gil Kane to accept an inker on #4. He was gracious and Klaus Janson did a great job. By then, though, Paul Levitz was getting impatient to see this either published or killed. I was told I needed three scripts in a month or the project was dead. Well, thanks to the interest of the talent, issues #6-8 got done in a month and it was a breathless experience. It could not have been done, I should point out, without the early forms of IM and e-mail. I remember working out drafts of #8 with Gerry Conway on MCI Mail and plotting #7 with Paul Kupperberg and Joe Staton (who was up for anything as long as he didn't have to draw horses). By the time we got to #12, Mark Evanier had to flowchart everything and I recall standing in my kitchen having him explain it all and how it was to be broken down for multiple artists. Breathless and fun, yes. A succees? Less so.
[/B]

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Well I remember going nuts when I found a complete set of the series for sale at the comic shop one day. (I had somehow randomly picked up a copy of #12 and had been wondering for the longest time what had been going on.)

Best part was when the letter column for the final issue which was the fans essentially BASHING DC for even putting this series out and making fun of the "Eli Ellis" answer. One guy even detailed every plot discrepancy from every issue which was downright hilarious.

posted February 04, 2003 05:37 PM            

I'm relatively new to these editions, and only have about 5 of them currently, but with Silver Age Adam Strange material up for consideration, and the handful of titles I'm already attempting to collect (All-Star Comics, Superman, Captain Marvel (SHAZAM!), etc.), I've got my work cut out for me.

Great ideas all around folks!

------------------
Fortiter--Per Mare-Per Terras!

posted February 04, 2003 06:05 PM               

The way I see it there are two markets for TPBs, the current comic readers, and the casual readers who come from the Bookstore channel and are probably reading Manga right now.

For the current reader crowd I think for the most part people buy either TPBs or the single issues, only in rare circumstances does anybody buy both. I also believe that people who aren’t sure about a series are more likely to try it out by sampling a TPB since it offers a complete story in one sitting, instead of just one chapter in a larger story. For this crowd collecting selected story arcs and skipping around in the chronology of the series isn’t a big deal, since if they like it they will go to a comic shop or convention and track down back issues and pickup the monthly if no further collections are forthcoming. This is why I think that Marvel’s quick solicits aren’t a big deal, because the people buying the trade probably wouldn’t have bought the singles anyway.

However for the casual bookstore crowd, the people already reading Manga, or the person who saw the latest Batman movie and thought they would go check out the GN section at their local Borders, this approach probably doesn’t work as well. Lets start with the person going in after seeing the latest Batman film, when s/he gets to the GN section what is s/he going to see. The Archives which are in chronological order and nicely labeled but cost $50, and a couple random TPBs collecting NML, BW:M/F, and some older X-overs. There is no clear chronology, where do they start? Do you really expect someone who may have never read a Batman comic to be able to pickup NML or BW:M/F and know what is going on, not to mention the 3 years of continuity between the end on NML and the start of BW:M/F with only one other TPB between them?

Then you have the Manga buyer, these people are already conditioned to stop by the bookstore every so often and look for the newest volume of the story they are reading. These people expect for the first volume in a series to be labled Vol 1 and they expect Vol 2 to be a continuation of Vol 1. Now lets say these people saw the latest Batman movie and wanted to give some American comics a shot. What book do they start with?

Both Marvel and CrossGen are addressing these groups of people. CrossGen is collecting, in order, all of their series and is clearly labeling their books vol 1, 2, 3, etc. Marvel is doing something similar. In their long running series they picked a point and started from there and called it vol 1 and each successive volume collects the next set of issues, not skipping over any. They unfortunately are not collecting all of their series, but what they are they are doing right. The Manga crowd knows that if they want to try Spiderman, they can pick up Ultimate Spiderman V1, or Amazing Spiderman V1, and they can see that V2 of both series continues from where V1 left off. Vertigo does this beautifully, but the DCU books are sorely lacking in this regard.

I think that DC’s approach of collecting only selected story arcs and X-overs makes sense if they only want to consistently sell to the current readership. If they want to expand their readership to get some of these Manga buyers, or the casual reader that might stop by the local Borders, then they need to start putting out sequential trades.