–Brendan McCarthy draws the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
–Reader mail: A Blog@Newsarama reader dropped us an emailing, asking:
So what’s up with out of print trades? And not things like Flaming Carrot - things that are relatively obscure, and, although it’s showing some resurgence, really doesn’t have a big enough demand to justify a new printing - or things like the Starman trades - books that we are actively seeing come back in new, big, fancy shiny editions - or even books like Days of Future Past - where if you missed it, you missed it, but it’s not really hard to find anyway - but books like Garth Ennis’s Marvel Knights run on the Punisher, or volumes 2 and 3 of the Walt Simonson Thor Visionaries books, or the TPB of Daredevil: Born Again? (I realize that Born Again is in the big Frank Miller Daredevil Companion book now, and that’s cool and all, but what if I ONLY wanted Born Again? Which, you know, was the only thing I wanted.)
Obviously there’s a big enough desire for these books. At the very least, vols 2 and 3 of the Thor books. Amazon has vol. 2 listed as available “New and used from $65.00″, and vol. 3 from $149.99.
That is very silly.
That does seem silly, and I don’t have an answer. Can anyone else provide one?
–Boneyard, the quite excellent humor book from NBM, is going on hiatus while creator Richard Moore works on other comic projects and children’s books. “I can’t say how long I’ll be away from Boneyard; it really depends on how things go,” he said in a press release. “I may do the occasional Boneyard short on my website (once it’s up) to feed the jones of any hardcore fans. And,one of the other projects I’m considering is a chapter from Abbey’s life going back 400 years. If you like vampires, werewolves, pirates, or just a scantily-clad Abbey, you won’t be disappointed.”
–Ghost World in nine panels.
–Bart Beaty is covering the Angouleme Festival for the Comics Reporter. You can find his first two reports here and here. Related: Matthias Wivel looks at the type of infighting that goes on at these types of events.
–Good news for Umezu fans.
–The Comic Book Club’s latest show, featuring Jim Starlin, is available via podcast.
–“R. Crumb’s Underground” opens this Saturday at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle.
Compiled by JK Parkin and Chris Mautner.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:02 am
I have been wondering the same thing as your e-mailer: why aren’t these popular books kept in print? I specifically have been looking for a new printing of Ennis’s Marvel Knights Punisher run and the Miller/Sienkiewicz Daredevil/Elektra: Love and War book. These books were first published not too long ago, and they already have disappeared….
January 25th, 2008 at 9:03 am
In reference to the out-of-print TPB question, high prices for used books are a result of supply and demand — although just because someone’s listing an OOP book at $65 doesn’t mean they’re selling any at that price.
As for why they aren’t perpetually in print… I’m guessing it’s a combination of factors. Print runs do sell out, and the costs to run another printing may not seem justified if the book has had a slow sales velocity over many years. Alternately, some of the companies we’re talking about may not be comfortable thinking in terms of perennial markets. They may intend, as they do with their comics, to only do one printing and when they’re gone, they’re gone. Only with books that point comes much later.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Remember, all it takes for the availability of used books to dry up is demand for a couple more copies than are out there.
What it takes to make a reprint worthwhile is a demand for thousands more copies than are out there.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I can see why TPBs would go out-of-print after they’re collected in more complete editions. I always hated having to chase down and sort out the different Daredevil books, trying to get the complete Miller run, so the 3-volume set was a godsend to me.
Also, this phenomenon nowadays of almost EVERYTHING being available in trade is still kind of new, so it’s logical that a few books here and there are going to fall by the wayside, relative quality notwithstanding.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
As a retailer, and in particular a head buyer… this kind of thing is the bane of our shelves. It’s not so much books going out of print, but say like ALIAS, where the first three volumes are in print, and the fourth is gone - so what’s the point? It’s a big problem with DC and Marvel, but Marvel are the worst with it. I and other retailers are often arguing with them about it, they have books that come in and are unavailable within a month of release. Both companies have problems advertising books that are no longer available. A favorite was a recent Thor spotlight, whose entire trade listing was completely unavailable. It’s kind of nuts… I realize the answer is the sales on the book, but I can’t see the logic… we get requests for early Batgirl trades ALL THE TIME, same with any X-Men related materials from any time period, and we can’t fill the most of them because of low print runs. The publishers also like to bring old characters and old storylines into the spotlight, creating instant demand in older works that are usually unavailable (Marvel Boy, JLI, until recently the Hood)… They kind of force stores to buy as many as they can when they’re first released and do our best to ration them out or what not, and I don’t know many retail stores today that can do that kind of warehousing on EVERYTHING, cause you never know what will be gone tomorrow.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
From November Marvel Previews, under the solicitation of THOR VISIONARIES: WALTER SIMONSON VOL. 5 TPB:
“*Coming soon: New printings of Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson Vol. 2 & 3 TPB’s.”
January 25th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Currently, my retailer can’t get hold of Hellblazer: Rake at the Gates of Hell. That’s mad. Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s grand finale is out of print? What sense does that make?
January 26th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Amazon resellers are frankly psychotic. Anything out-of-print gets busted up to weird prices, as though that automatically makes it a collectible. It’s worse than eBay, and I don’t know why.