Wednesday Comics or Months Later Comics
Comic buyers always debate which to buy; floppies or trades. There are pros and cons for both, which I’ll attempt to enumerate quickly right now.
Floppies – the monthly comics
-due to the publishing schedule this means you get to go to the comic store every week to pick up at least one title
-you get the story as soon as it comes out, and you have the anticipatory moments as you hit cliffhangers along the way
-you can try out a new title with a small purchase of the first issue
-you support the comic industry by giving them sales figures
-certain comics offer entries only available within the single issues (I’m looking at Criminal and Casanova)
-floppy prices seem to be on the rise, with nearly all titles set to hit $3.99 each very soon into this new decade
-floppies are a tad more difficult to store, bagging and boarding can be laborious
-advertisements abound amongst the pages
Trades – the collections of the monthly comics, maybe one every six months
-you no longer have to go into the store every week to get your titles
-you get the story all at once, not being left with a month, or more, to wait to see what happens
-you can try out a new story with the entire first arc to see if you like it
-trades are easier to store on bookshelves
-you can more likely give a trade to someone to see if they’ll like it, many will not try single issues if you give them to them
-some trades offer concept sketches, intros and forwards, and proposal examples
-trades can often be cheaper than the floppies, especially with Internet discount on such sites as Amazon
-there are no advertisements in trades to break up the story
-you have to wait months for your continuation of the story
These are just a few examples off the top of my head, by no means an exhaustive list. Now, in saying all of these I will admit that I buy floppies and trades. I buy trades on certain series’ that I got in too late for and have to catch up, or which have been and gone and can only be found, affordably and easily, in collected editions. These include, but are not limited to, The Walking Dead, Scalped, Proof, and Northlanders. I now buy plenty of floppies, including, Daredevil, Iron Fist (when it publishes), Spider-Woman, Fantastic Four, Criminal/Incognito, The Boys, Resurrection, Viking, Cowboy Ninja Viking, and Stumptown.
I buy a lot more in floppies now and I have the secret reason why all fanboys should switch to the monthly format. Here goes, and stick with me people I’ll be moving pretty fast:
Trade collections can, sometimes, be slightly cheaper than the floppies, I agree, but it still involves me having to order those trades, usually shipped from the States, and this adds up to a large sum of money going out in one time. I have to beg and plead with the lady to make this happen, not a fun position.
However.
I am allowed a monthly budget for certain titles which I collect pretty much weekly. With $10 or $20 bucks going out in each little top-up trip it doesn’t seem like much. It’s much better than $200 going out, even if that number is not as frequent it is still too jarring. You see, it’s all about perspective. I can sneak in an extra title or two every few months and no one needs to know. But sneaking in those trades would make some serious difference. I don’t miss one extra comic a week, that’s a coffee, or a juice, or another drink. And I mostly drink tap-water, so I’m saving big time.
Perspective people. What $5 a week? It’s nothing, that’s what it is.
I slotted Wednesday Comics into my weekly budget at the start of the year. People complained about the price but I loved the format so much, and I don’t even dig on DC (as you can tell by my pull list above) but this thing won me over big time. I added that price in each week and never really noticed the hit. I absorbed it easily over 12 weeks. Now they’re collecting the series, in what looks to be a lovely and large format, but it’ll cost roughly the same cost as the weekly floppies set me back. So, when does that price hurt more, spread out or in one lump sum? Sure, there’ll be a discount on Amazon, while it’s in print there, but is that a reason to wait?
Some people didn’t like the newspaper format, and will prefer the bound and easier to store edition found above. I can’t call those people fools, but I can say that getting the comic weekly, having those natural cliffhangers sit within me, percolating, for a week was a spectacle I haven’t had in a long time. Feeling that newspaper open up in front of me each week was a giddy little treat. It was fun and you don’t get that by waiting a month and then getting it all at once on glossy paper. If you like that, fine, run with it, but me. I’m going to sneak in my extra few dollars each month, keep the missus happy, and get my story on time.
But it’s our little secret, each and every week.
Enjoy.
Posted on January 12th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: Uncategorized
Okay, doing this is two parts – experience and then costs.
Back when I was in college, I loved going to the comic shop week in and week out since it was literally just across the street from the campus but, after I graduated and had to drive to the store every week when it opened so could make sure I picked up any self copies it became less and less fun each week. Hell, I hated it by the time I quit.
That’s why I’ve haven’t bought into the “weekly experience” argument since then. It always seemed more about going to the comic shop than about the comics to me. It places too much emphasis on your initial experience with comics you buy as unfinished stories instead of them as whole work.
For example, I got Northlanders in singles but gave up with issue #4. Later, when I got the trade, I loved the first arc since it worked well as a whole. Final Crisis is another example were I’ve seen people change their mind once they’ve read the work as a whole, usually going from negative to positive.
Most comics nowadays are meant to ultimately be read as a collected work. Some do a better job of balancing the demands of being read in singles and as a trade but their end product is still the trade, not the floppy. Sure, some series like Phonogram, Criminal and Casanova may add back matter to the single issues but the story itself is still written for the trade.
Of course, format definitely plays into this as well. For example, I never 52 as a weekly but as trades which were ill paced for the format. Obviously, they were meant to be read as weekly installments where the momentum would do a better job of carrying each issue to the next but, once you read through the series, you loose that sense of momentum and the story doesn’t work as well. Obviously you could argue that the weekly experience is the entire point but not everyone would agree. I wouldn’t at the least.
As for Wednesday Comics, the point of it seemed to me to be the larger page size would allow the creators to tell stories in new ways while both telling a complete story with each page and as a cohesive whole, which wouldn’t be lost in a collected edition to my mind.
That said, I can see the appeal of the weekly trip but to me, it’s a mind set which means that, well, you need the mind set for it. I’d say that 95 times out of 100 get the trade is the obviously superior option since that is how most comics are meant to be read as. This of course ignores stuff like buying to singles to support series, getting something new each week, getting the story sooner or similar arguments.
Okay, now for costs. Obviously, I’m approaching this a comic reader in America so some of the issues you have, like shipping, are not a factor for me but….
You mention cutting back on something each week so you’d have the extra money to buy Wednesday Comics since you didn’t have room in your regular comics budget. Of course, you could have also saved the money over a period of time to buy the Wednesday Comics collection. In fact, you could do the same thing with your monthly budget. Yeah, it is a matter of perspective so it just depends on how you look at. Saving up for big purchases or several smaller ones. Personally, I prefer the lump sum since I find it easier to keep track of and it cuts down on impulse buying.
Personally, I’m actually spending less money when I buy only trades vs. when I was buying singles. I went down from $100 a month to $50 a month, mostly because I didn’t have to buy everything every month, in theory, which is something that I think tends to get overlooked in the whole trades vs. singles argument a lot.
But yeah, I can see how buying singles would be cheaper on the whole for you since you have deal with extra shipping costs and everything.
Eric, some interesting thoughts. I guess if you hate having to hit the comic shop every week, yeah, floppies aren’t your thing. I don’t mind hitting the store on Friday arvo after work, it’s a nice relaxing ritual. I agree that most stories are written to work to the trade in the end, but many writers worth their salt are now putting great little sections of the story so that each issue stands alone, to a degree, and leaves you wanting more. I like that anticipation and need to wait. With Daredevil at the moment I like dragging out the Hand story, whereas I read the DD in prison arc in trade and it seemed to go too quickly and not mean as much when it lasted an afternoon instead of a year. The second Casanova arc worked very well with the mystery held on for ages, and as for trade waiters on that, well, unlucky, it still isn’t collected.
I know that either way if you budget the money you’ll be right, but I also know that incidentals crop up each week, and if the comics are incidentals they don’t hit your leftover budget as hard as they would in trade.
In the end, though, each person must make up their own mind and preference. Like blondes over redheads or handwritten over typed, you’re the person who has to do it and so it comes to you.
Obviously I grew up reading floppies because they just didn’t have trades back when I was a lad. But as trades became more frequent and reliable, I found I actually preferred that format long term. I like reading comics as soon as they come out, but I always wanted the trade on my bookshelf. If I could afford to buy both, I would.
For a while I bought a lot of books in floppy then sold the individual issues and bought the trade. But a lot of the time I wasn’t making enough back to be able to afford the collection so that was costing me even more money. So I had to resign myself to waiting for the trades, since ultimately that’s the format I want to keep. The only book I still buy as comics then “convert” into trade is Amazing Spider-Man, for obvious reasons.
Rol – I thought you were so old you only read comics in the splash page centre of the old newspapers…? No?
I can see once I have a family that trades might just need to take over, and I don’t mind storing either kind, not exactly shelf-conscious about it all. I like a good chest full of floppies.