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Multiversity 101: Waiting For Trade

By | May 16th, 2010
Posted in Longform | % Comments


We’ve all heard or used this phrase before. “Are you reading Chew?” “No, I’m waiting for trade.” It happens. In today’s economy, a lot of people find that buying comics on a weekly basis is simply not feasible. It’s unfortunate, but it happens. This is one of the reasons why companies release collected versions of their materials, occasionally with additional incentives for the people who buy it in collected format.

However, the idea of waiting for trade on an on-going title is often frowned upon by the overall comic community, and for some very good reasons. Allow me a moment of your time to weigh the pros and cons of trade waiting, and we’ll see if we can’t find some sort of comfortable medium within our current economical position.

So first let’s take a moment to look at the pros of waiting for trade.

Pro #1: It’s somewhat more financially viable
If you’re like me, you love buying comic books every week. Going into the store and looking at the new issues 1s, finding new series and continuing to collect the old ones. It’s something to look forward to on Wednesday, and if nothing else it gets us nerds out of the house! However, if you’re like me and you want to be up to date with every super hero and every hip comic and every underground hit, you’re going to be spending a lot on Wednesday. This is just not something everyone can do, and often times the weekly Wednesday books can be sacrificed so that one could eat, or perhaps pay rent. This is where trade waiting comes in, because you’ll still get to own your favorite stories… you’ll just get them at your own pace.

Of course, I have to mention it’s only somewhat financially viable because ultimately you’ll pay the same amount of cash. If you’ve never done this before, try it out with some of your collection: grab any trade (preferably something in the middle of a run, or perhaps a mini), and find out how much the initial comic book cost. If it was a 4 issue mini series that sold at $3.99 an issue, you’re going to pay roughly around $16 for it. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. It depends on how much work is put into the trade (bonus materials, interviews, concept art, etc). Heck, if you go out and get one of the new Marvel ultimate collections that combine 12 issues into one book, you’ll notice that the price on all of them are usually around $34.99 for 12 issues. Divide 35 by 12 and you’ll end up with just about $2.99 per book, which should be the cost of the comic.

Still – once the book is out in trade, it should be out for a while, so even if you don’t have money for it the day it comes out, you can always get it in a week or order it on Amazon. Amazon is a great place to look for trades because not only do you get your book at a discount, but it makes it easier to afford multiple trades for perhaps the price of one in-store (and with a $25 purchase, free shipping!). You also can’t buy weekly comic books from Amazon (yet), so that’s a plus in the old money saving idea jar.

Pro #2: You get the full story
This is sometimes the most aggravating element of buying comics as they come out. Sometimes waiting to see what happens next can be so painful. Take The Sword – the last issue came out this week, but the cliffhanger for the previous issue was absolutely dynamite. Waiting for this finale has been a nail biter for the fans of the book… but for the people that bought the trade, all they have to do is turn the page! It’s just that easy to get the resolution you crave for your stories! You don’t even have to worry about going to a store and having the issue sold out. It doesn’t matter – you already own all of it. How convenient is that?

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Pro #3: Added bonuses and, sometimes, bragging rights
Ultimate. Omnibus. Absolute. Library. Complete. Definitive. Premiere.

There are all kinds of different versions of trades to get. You could get the basic trade or hardcover which has just the issues you’re looking to get. You could get the Omnibus or Absolute editions, both of which are limited and filled with extras. How about a Library edition of Hellboy, in a beautiful black binding with an embossed cover? Or perhaps you’d be interested in the complete collection of Scud, The Disposable Assassin or Bone, all in one book rather than 12?

However you want to have these books on your shelf, you can often times get multiple options. Some of these, like the Absolute edition, comes with a set amount of bragging rights due to their limited availability. It all depends on how much of a nerd you are, but they do all look beautiful on your shelf.

So now that we’ve looked at some pros, let’s look at the cons – perfectly matched with each pro!

Con #1: Spoiler alert
Just because you aren’t in the store doesn’t mean your friends or random people you’ve never met who use the internet didn’t. In fact, in today’s day and age, you are quite likely to find spoilers online for comics the day before they’re released, if not the day of. This week on Multiversity alone we shared the revelation of the Rulk’s identity as well as the cover to Batman and Robin #13 (pictured here), which featured the Joker laughing his head off for the world to see. These are all things that, if you wait for trade, you run the risk of finding out before you want to.

I hate spoilers beyond all belief. I don’t know why people are so obsessed with them. This goes for all mediums. Heck, before Iron Man 2 came out, I did my best to stay away from any website that might reveal the trailers before the film, because frankly I didn’t want to know. Half the fun of any story is not knowing what’s coming, and when you experience a surprise ending outside of it’s original place it sometimes loses it’s meaning. If you just read that Thor’s hammer was after the credits in Iron Man 2, it takes away the excitement of seeing it theaters because you know it’s coming.

And if you haven’t seen Iron Man 2 by now and didn’t know, I apologize. But, to be fair, this con was called “spoiler alert.”

Con #2: You might not actually get the whole story
Ok, so on the one hand you have the complete Blackest Night trade, right? Well, for those that weren’t buying it all as it came out, you missed out on QUITE a bit of story. In fact, if you don’t read Blackest Night along with Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps at least, and you don’t read them in a certain order, you’re going to miss a lot of the big moments of the story and it’s going to come out very unfinished. This is the danger of waiting for trade – while the rest of us read all the issues as they came out, those of you who waited for trade not only have the story spoiled for you with all this Brightest Day stuff everywhere on the internet, but you’re not even going to get to read every bit of story present – and when Sinestro becomes the White Lantern and explains why Nekron is so cranky, you’re going to miss it all.

Now, there are some trades that do try to streamline it for you. The Final Crisis and War Of Kings trades are perfect examples. They include the original minis, as well as some of the additional stories that are important to the overall telling of the tale. But when we look at the different Crisis books of DC, Final is the only one that does it. Reading Infinite Crisis in trade alone isn’t enough for the entire story, although it is much more well streamlined than Johns’ Blackest Night.

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Con #3: That bragging right comes with a helluva price tag
Yes, you own Absolute Justice, and yes, it’s positively gorgeous. You know what? So do I. But that bad boy comes with a $100 price tag. That’s a bit rough for 12 issues, which if you remember my earlier math equation should round to about $35 or so at most. Granted, if you get it on Amazon you’re going to pay $60 something for the book, which I suppose on some levels isn’t as bad, but that’s still a pretty hefty price tag for the overall prize. Again, this depends on how much you want the book and/or the bragging rights. The original version of Absolute Planetary could probably bring you in a pretty penny right now, I’d wager.

For me, the reason I go with the Absolute Justice is partially due to all the extras in it from Ross, but to be honest I’d rather own it all in one beautiful hardcover like this than 3 tiny little trades. Call me OCD about my shelf, but it looks better with the hardcover.

But wait, there’s more! Unlike with the pros section, I have two additional cons that can make trade waiting a rough enterprise, both for us and the comic industry as a whole.

Con #4: Trades, just like comics, can be delayed
Now, I will fully admit that I wait for trade on some occasions. I mostly do this with a Vertigo title I’m unsure of, or an Image title that I hopped on late. For example, I picked up Invincible when the on-going book was around issue #60, so rather than have a series of trades on my shelf and a bunch of issues in my box, I decided I would rather buy the entire series in trade. This happens on occasion, and sometimes makes the lives of nerds like myself a little easier. The trouble is, especially with Image, trades can get delayed. To continue my example, I collect Invincible strictly in Ultimate Collections, which are roughly two trades worth of books. It takes up less space on my shelf and has more bonus material. It’s also much more interestingly packaged, and looks very cool lined up together. Unfortunately, Invincible Ultimate Collection Volume 5 was delayed almost a year. It was such a long delay that my pre-order on Amazon for the book was cancelled because Amazon lost faith in them being able to provide me the book, and the day it came out in stores nobody had any copies of it. So I was in a bit of a pickle when it came to enjoying the on-going saga of Invincible due to this.

This ties in to previous cons, i.e. serious heavy duty spoilers for the future of Invincible as well as by waiting for trade on Invincible, I get kinda miffed over when it comes to the tie-ins to the Viltrumite War and the Guardians mini. But more importantly, due to delayed trades it does an odd thing that you might not think of off the top of your head: say you’re reading Invincible via trade, too. However, you like it so much that you want to jump into single issues. So you hop on Wikipedia, you read what is being printed in trade, and you plan accordingly. However, if you can’t get your trades on time, you risk not being able to follow the story in a sequential fashion.

But that’s really not all bad in this day age. Heck, the ability to catch up and plan accordingly with titles is easy enough via other methods. Go to your friends house and read his copy if you have to. What is honestly worst about the idea of waiting for trade is:

Con #5: It hurts on-going titles
You may not even have thought about this once, but it’s the honest to God truth of the whole situation. If a book doesn’t sell well, it’s not going to last. It doesn’t matter how many stories the writers and artists have planned. Money is what we speaks, and if the book doesn’t sell well in stores, pre-orders from the retailer go down. If the pre-orders go down, the companies see that sales aren’t worthwhile for the title and – if it’s not a mini – they tell the writer to wrap up their arc and nip it in the butt. Why shouldn’t they? The economy is in a recession, and it doesn’t make sense to spend a large amount of money on something that isn’t going to make a profit in the long run.

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But then there are the people involved in some way with the book. There’s the writer, the artist, the inkers and colorers, the letterers, and heck, there’s even the reader. There are people who can get invested in a book after one issue, and they might be in a small minority but they’re still there. We may never know how good title X could have been if it had been given a full chance.

Of course, this isn’t the SOLE fault of the wait for traders. It is JUST as much a fault of anyone who goes into a store and buys X but doesn’t buy Y, and it is OBVIOUSLY the book’s own fault if it’s just plain bad. I’m not trying to imply that it is (as I swear I’m done crying and crying about SWORD being cancelled). What I am merely nudging at, though, is that if you look at writers and artists, they’ll often tell people not to wait for trade because it doesn’t show anything. If you say that you’ll wait for trade, you’re essentially pledging to maybe get it some other day rather than buy it when it matters. This sort of thing is relevant for all mediums: if a television show doesn’t have high ratings, it gets canceled – even if it does well on DVD (although, in the cases of something like Firefly, we could get a movie out of a strong enough fan following). So when you add something to the wait for trade list, ESPECIALLY in the case of an indie title, you are ultimately hurting that book’s shot at becoming a full on going book given a variety of circumstance.

I can’t make any decisions for you when it comes to your comic book buying habits. It’s not in me do it. For the most part, I feel like those of us that are deeply involved and invested within the comic community are good with our formats for following some books and waiting for trade on others. Even kids like me, who buy everything, have to leave some books for wait for trades – and sometimes the whole reason for that is simply because we might have missed the buzz with issue 1 and decided not to buy the reprint (because we’re nerds and that stuff matters!!). What I can say is that (and this is the important part) if you like something, you need to buy it. I don’t care how you get to it. If you’re afraid to buy a book in store and you want to sit there and read it by the register, borrow your friends copy, or cheat and read it online first – then fine. I can’t stop anyone from doing that. But if you like it, you need to go and buy it (assuming that it doesn’t cause you to not be able to feed your kids – if anyone gives that argument on this site again, I will find a way to slap you through the internets). Your weekly $2.99 shows much more than you may realize.

Of course, I’d also argue that you should generally get comfortable with blind buying a title some times without relying on waiting to know if you like it or not, because isn’t that some of the fun that goes into reading weekly comic books? But that discussion will be for another day.


//TAGS | Multiversity 101

Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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