Monday 22 April 2013

Tradewaiting: Marvel vs DC

It is often said that Marvel care more for the paperback market while DC seem more focused on profiting from single issues. This can make tradewaiting DC books a real frustration. If like me you picked up a few issues of the New 52 and decided to wait for trades then it's taken nearly 3 years to get your hands on Volume 1 of titles like Aquaman. Release order and omission's seem to be other problems regularly faced by DC collectors as well as constant trade design changes. Good news for DC fans is that all the new v 1's I have seen have been very reasonably priced. Averaging around £10 for 5-6 issues. Perhaps DC feel like they have already made their money from single issues and hardcovers.                  

  Marvel on the other hand are pretty rapid with their releases, often within fortnight if the last collected issues release. Lately they have been moving away from printing hardcovers for all but their biggest selling titles. This has resulted in a sharp increase in the price of paperbacks. 6-7 issue arcs are more regularly arriving in store with £19 price stickers on them. This is made worse as it's usually volume 5 of something you have collected 4 previous books at a much more reasonable price. Jonathan Hickman's v5 of Fantastic Four is the latest example of this. I try my best to support my LCS but I feel like my hand is being forced more and more towards using online retailers. 

Marvel are much better at being consistent with their trade designs. Although they are much more partial to renumbering titles so don't expect most of your numbered runs to make it past volume 5.

As to which is the better publisher? With one winning on price and the Other on consistency and design, neither wins. There is one decent publisher between them. Just give Image your money. Their price and release dates average in between the big 2 on both counts and often reduce their volume 1's heavily as an incentive to buy.







No comments:

Post a Comment