If you looked at the list of top-selling collections and OGNs yesterday and thought, “Wait, where’s Marvel?” then this Publishers’ Weekly piece might answer your question in a depressing way:
The problem is that Marvel is inconsistent in what they keep in print. A series with 8 volumes in it will frequently have two or three of the middle volumes out of print. Some titles that should be evergreen sellers, like Secret Wars, will be randomly out of print. To compound the frustration felt by retailers, when titles come back in print, they sometimes are reprinted in a different format entirely… The 10-volume Essential Amazing Spider-Man has volumes 5, 7, 8 and 9 out of stock and the 8-volume Essential Fantastic Four only has volume 8 in stock.
“They’re a publisher that publishes their trade books like they’re periodicals” says [Chicago retailer Eric] Kirsammer, who adds, “They don’t really have a backstock. I’ve been told by Marvel they don’t.”
Marvel’s lack of coherent collections policy has been long-standing problem for retailers and fans, with various retailers tracing the problem back as far as 15 years in the PW piece. But it’s something that I’ve also noticed as a reader, especially the different format thing (And while I’m at it, what’s with the Essentials format being dumped for full-color trades that contain less issues and are more expensive? Essential Defenders is replaced by The New Defenders, and Essential Marvel Two-In-One Starring The Thing could have continued with one final volume as Essential Thing, as opposed to the color Classic Thing volumes). It’s not exactly news that Marvel treats collections as periodicals, but that doesn’t make it any smarter or less frustrating.
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January 12th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
That’s true, I’ve always noticed that they do make it pretty hard to collect collections of older series and sometimes even series that aren’t that old. I still have trouble collecting the rest of the old Mangaverse series(of course it could be I’m looking in the wrong place, but I draw the line on spending $200 on something I know I can find cheaper).
January 13th, 2012 at 1:32 am
I agree completely with the essential argument, as I’ve been collecting them since they started. Essential X-Men Vol. 10 comes out soon and stops just shy of collecting Claremont’s entire run for what reason? And don’t get me started on Excaibur or New Mutants not being collected in this format. I don’t know if Marvel is wholeheartedy pushing new characters out in the essential format with the recent Sgt. Fury and Rawhide Kid books, or if its just cheaper for them to reprint older stuff. I can’t help but wonder why they would think there is more of an audience for rawhide kid than Jim Lee X-men.
January 13th, 2012 at 9:21 am
I remember when Marvel sent out those free guides to all of their collected editions and my retailer thought they were great until she realized 80% of the books were out of print and now she had a bunch of customers trying to order the books listed in the guide and she had to tell them they were unavailable. Marvel did something incredibly smart that could have sold them a bunch of books and turned off a ton of readers in the process.
January 13th, 2012 at 11:00 am
I’m not sure Secret Wars is quite the evergreen collection some may think. It’s a well-known story but it’s horribly dated in a lot of ways. It’s also pretty heavily steeped in then-current Marvel continuity (Rhodey as Iron Man, for example) that isn’t explained in the story.
January 13th, 2012 at 8:44 pm
@ Ben
Maybe they need to keep the copyright, either that or they don’t want to give DC’s newest edition even more money.