Why doesn't Marvel keep their shit in print? I don't want to buy their modern shitty comics, but they have a lot of great stuff from the past that I would like to own, but I can't, because they don't reprint their omnibuses often enough despite clear demand. I literally want to give Marvel money for Claremont's entire X-Men run in omnibus form, but they simply will not sell them to me.
Old.. GOOD.New... BAD
>>155365059For marvel who is right now in a trash can while DC is in a Renaissance I'd say yes.
>>155365036>I literally want to give Marvel moneylol what a toolthey hate you
>>155365036As far back as when Ike was running the company he didn't want to keep too much backstock because it would accumulate costs. Add this to how Marvel's strength was in serialization and how modern Marvel keeps trying to induce FOMO and it ends up having a long-term disastrous effect>>155365059Yes, and?
>>155365189I know they hate me but I love old comics.
I don't get why they don't at least try to keep in print some of the epic collections for their more popular runs. I was trying to find the epic collection for the lee/kirby FF and the lee/ditko Spider-Man runs and they are all overpriced resellers. I get it's an old line but you'd think they'd want to make their classic runs more available.
>>155365189Yeah, but it's a good message that we're willing to pay for their old stuff so they have to give us that. I don't want their love, I want the product I like the most.
>>155365349There's the Taschen Marvel Comics Library books, some of the best reprints for the trade format I've ever seen. The Spider-Man one is available in a smaller form factor for $25 now, and the mid-sized one can easily be found for $40-50 on used book sites.
>>155365059The old stuff has been evaluated and we know what the classics are. The new stuff is obviously hit and miss, ESPECIALLY in such a disposable medium as comic books where dogshit series get like 5 issues and then get cancelled immediately.
Copyright lasting for six billion years is good for the consumer o algo
>>155365036DC is great at it, but Marvel loves FOMO. The print runs got worse when Cebulski took over
>>155365618DC just does stuff right. I'm glad they're beating Marvel now and I hope they continue to beat Marvel until they get their act together.
>>155365618DC is absurdly more consumer friendly in comparison to Marvel. DC Finest and compact comics were the two that definitively made me team DC over team Marvel. Affordable and actually kept in-print and restocked on a regular basis. It seems like DC cares much more about making their shit available.
>>155365036I was just about to make this thread and thank you for doing it. This is a common thing my comic shop owner friends and I bitch about constantly. It is so fucking stupid that Marvel can't keep ASM, X-Men/Wolverine, F4, or anything in fucking print. Say what you will about DC, but you can almost always find their old runs in print. Do you know how disheartening it is to tell a new customer that there isn't anything really new reader friendly, or that all of the good shit isn't in print or else extremely expensive? It's ridiculous. Like, look, I get that some of the Jack Kirby era stuff isn't going to read well to a modern audience, but it should at least be available more frequently for those who want to go back that far. But even basic shit like Wolverine vol 1/2, or Clearemont X-men, or fuck basic Spider-Man isn't available for new or old fans at all. Marvel also begrudgingly started doing compacts to compete with DC's, but they're nowhere near as good. The only thing they want to print is goddamn new shit from the past 5-10 years. And what's so fucking frustrating is that they are complete ASS at taking advantage of public interest, times when they SHOULD be printing this shit>New X-Men movies on the horizon, yet all they have in print are old Krakoa era stuff>Wolverine game is hitting this month, none of the old Wolverine volumes are in print. Which arguably should always be available considering Wolverine is a casual magnet>Spider-Man BND makes billions yet they can't reprint ASM vols, which if old have their allure.>Doctor Doom coming in Doomsday, they don't reprint solid F4 runsIt is yet another example of why the company is running itself into the ground. "But they're expensive!" Then make them made to order!
>>155365734And that's so weird because you'd think Marvel would be the company that would want to keep these long, acclaimed runs in print. That's the stuff that they're known for. When people think of classic DC, I think they usually think of individual stories, whereas when you think of classic Marvel, you think of Frank Miller's run on Daredevil, Walt Simonson's Thor, Peter David's Hulk, Claremont's X-Men. It's absurd that it's so difficult to buy this stuff.
>>155365734Compacts are doing so well in getting newer people up to speed the fucking twitter fans who got into comics during COVID hate their guts and often blame them for seeing dogshit opinions now lolWhenever a new compact is announced they immediately think of the consequences it'll bring to discourse
>>155365780Weapon X and Born Again are two of the only books that stay in print, Winter Soldier was too but after that obviously false Brubaker smearjob it won't be for long
>>155365780That's so true. The comic shop I used to go to always had a few Batman trades in the back. All the regular stuff that everybody knows. I just don't understand why Marvel doesn't do that. >>155365904I'm so happy to see how well those things are doing. I personally wouldn't want to read comics in that format just because it's shrunken down, but that's okay because they're not for me. They're getting people into comics, they're printing good stuff at very reasonable prices. It's such a good idea and I can't believe they only thought to do it recently. The comic industry still needs work, it's not all sunshine, but DC feels like they're actually trying, like they're not content to just tread water as an IP mill.
>>155365838 Marvel has dozens of different collected editions (Masterworks, Epic Collections, Library editions, Penguin classics) but they either aren’t complete runs or are always out of print. The issue is you can get a Taschen or Penguin collection of spider-man and FF but it’s almost always the first twenty or so issues, they reprint those endlessly but if you want the full line you are shit out of luck.
>>155366003I really just wish they'd keep the Epics in print. That's my favorite format. Omnibuses look great but they're bulkier than I'd prefer to read. I like that the DC Finest is printing a lot of the same content found in some of their Omnis, but I can just buy two DC Finest books instead of the one omnibus.
>>155365542Why would anyone buy the small form reprints? You need a magnifying glass to see the art.I don't know why Marvel doesn't reissue some of the earlier Marvel Masterworks, at least in paperback. It seems like DC reissues Watchmen every six months.
>>155366092IT MAKES ME SO FUCKING MADI bought the omni because it was cheaper than buying the Epic New Mutants also has this issue where the Omni is like $40 while the one Epic that's missing is like $200But the Thors have changed colors in the Omnis while the epics are closer to the original
>>155366150Some third party group is taking over Masterworks. It's bizarre.
>>155366003The XXL Taschen Spider-Man at least covers the entire Ditko run and I would not be surprised if they produce a smaller version of the second volumeBut it seems like it's gonna be a long while before they do subsequent volumes of other books. Aside from ASM I think the only one that got a second volume was Avengers
>>155366151You know what really galls me is when an Epic gets scalped to high heaven and it's not even good material. DeFalco Fantastic Four is over 100 bucks in Epic. I'd only have gotten it on cheap as a sense of completion. But even regular epic prices are getting too much. DC Finest has more pages and are cheaper somehow.
>>155366158It's Clover Press, they've been reprinting the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip and doing the reissues/new releases of the Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates collections>>155366150Cause they stopped the Marvel Masterworks lineSomething must've gone really wrong that they had to do that and also been having a lot of different publishers do collections of Marvel stuff--Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Clover Press, etc
>>155365036It's the Disney vault plan. They do insanely small print runs so they sell out really fast, and any time they get reprinted it's a huge deal. It looks really good ("we literally sold all of our stock in a month!") which is all that matters to suits running things. They don't want to sell 15000 units over 5 years, they want to sell 1500 units in 5 weeks.
>>155366150Dc keeps reprinting watchmen to spite Alan Moore.
I really think the MCU is partly at fault. Marvel doesn't view themselves as a comic company anymore, they see themselves as a movie company that does comics on the side.
>>155365036Reminder that foreign publishers do a better job at keeping Marvel stuff circulated
>>1553650362030 agendathey dont want anyone owning physical media or anythingthey want you to pay subscription
>>155365059Performative Contrarianism, the death nail for 4chan
Its not even just the old stuff. They'll do one run of omnis and be done. Look at Spencer ASM, and the recent Black Cat runs. Then they get insane aftermarket mark ups. What a joke
>>155366874It drives me crazy. Isn't Marvel's big strength their unbroken continuity and history? Why make it so hard for people to dive in?
>>155366805I don't think that's true. I'd honestly be fine with paying for a digital comics service, but Marvel's doesn't fucking work. It was the biggest of piece of shit I've ever tried to use. You think if they wanted that to be the lynchpin of their plan, they'd make an app that doesn't crash every time you open it.
>>155366237That's any Epic once it goes out of Print Heroes reborn will become $100 once it goes out
>>155367063All Epics can still be bought digitally butWho gives a shit
>>155367321The first Moon Knight one I think has some kind of licensing issue. It's annoying because if you want to buy the iconic 1980 Moon Knight series, the first four issues are in the Epic Collection that's out of print and I don't think it's even on digital either. The next two epic collections have the whole rest of the run, but you'll be missing the first four issues if you can't get the first volume.
>>155367321I don't like digital but what really bugs me is t hat they're often almost as expensive as a full price book but you don't actually get something. I'm not sure what a fair discount in this case would be but there really should be some savings passed on to the audience if you're not paying for production and storage costs.
In more than a few cases when a epic or omni or other trade format was too expensive I found it shockingly cheaper to just go and buy the actual physical comics.
I'm not a huge fan of DC's Compact Comics but I've been seeing a lot of coworkers with them lately.
