I’ve settled into a rhythm of picking up my pull every five weeks from my local comic shop, Level Up Entertainment in Mays Landing, New Jersey. While I’m there, I tend to browse the little impulse-buy rack next to the register to see if anything catches my eye. Most times, no, but this time, yes.
It was a copy of N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell’s Far Sector, one of the new line of $9.99 “DC Compact Comics” trades that have begun appearing in comic shops, bookstores and elsewhere since June. I hadn’t read the 12-issue Green Lantern series when it came out, but the person I turn to when it comes to most things DC, my CXF Interview Podcast co-host Matt Lazorwitz, swears by it, so I was excited to find an affordable version of it.
An affordable version of a critically lauded comics story, available in one volume.
CRAZY, RIGHT?
According to a tweet from Big Bang Comics in Dublin, “They just keep selling and selling and selling.”
They just keep selling and selling and selling… pic.twitter.com/4V9ggYiI4E
— Big Bang Comics (@TheBigBang_) August 9, 2024
“We have had to reorder them a bunch,” another shop owner, Anthony Marques of Dewey’s Comic City in Madison, New Jersey, confirmed to CXF.
With stories like Far Sector, All-Star Superman and Watchmen retailing for about the price of two individual monthly floppies, DC’s inflation-busting Compact Comics may be the best way yet to give the comics curious a solid place to start that will actually get them to continue wanting to read and collect.
It also has us taking a serious look at the Marvelous Competition’s collections program and wondering if there might be a better way.
I started buying Marvel’s Essential paperbacks when I was in college in the late 1990s. At $14.99 each, they were a great way to read all the backstory I never had before, and I didn’t care that it was in black and white. I still have a ton of them. I’ve read a bunch of the Spider-Man and X-Men ones with my 13-year-old son. We’re up to the Brood Saga!
But in the early 2010s, Marvel phased out the Essentials for its Epic Collections, full-color compilations of fewer issues for, as of this writing, $44.99 a pop. And while some of those have collected major stories, they are printed out of publication order and tend to prioritize rounding up less important arcs of major Marvel series. Less Frank Miller Daredevil, more D.G. Chichester. Less Walt Simonson Thor, more Tom DeFalco. Less Alan Davis Excalibur, more Ben Raab.
(PS: Speaking of The Raab, my copy of Excalibur Epic Collection Vol. 9: You Are Cordially Invited, which I bought just a couple months ago, already has pages falling out of it.)
Don’t worry, if you want the good stuff, you can save up $100 to $150 for a Marvel omnibus that will crush your legs and bend your bookshelf. Because that’s how much books should cost.
LOLJK no. Books should cost $9.99, something DC’s known since it got into the young adult and middle grade graphic novel game in 2018. It’s why my 7-year-old daughter has a shelf full of Teen Titans Go! graphic novels. They tell a complete story, they’re fun and they’re reasonably priced. The Compact Comics line just extends that same model to comics for older readers.
And it’s a good time for DC to do that, too. The publisher is about to go through yet another linewide relaunch in October with All In, and on the adaptation side, James Gunn’s DC Studios movies will begin launching with next summer’s Superman. If someone is curious about Jason Aaron’s incoming run on Absolute Superman or leaves the Superman movie wanting to read some adventures of the Man of Steel, BAM, here’s a $10 version of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman. All of this shows care, coordination and curation.
(Shoutout to the other publishers doing this too, by the way. Image will publish a digest edition of the first six issues of Saga for $9.99 next month.)
Now, let’s say someone left Deadpool & Wolverine wanting to read some Deadpool and/or Wolverine but doesn’t know where to start.
Well, there’s a new Wolverine #1 coming out, but that’s not until September, by which point you’ll be in school and probably too busy to figure out where you can buy comics. If you went to the comic shop the Wednesday after the movie came out, you could buy Hellverine #3, a comic that will make no sense without knowing that last year Wolverine and Ghost Rider made a magic-science baby that possessed Logan’s dead son; a one-shot that posited what if Donald Duck became Wolverine; or an X-Force #1 that includes Deadpool but is more about Forge and Sage. Or you could see what Wolverine or Deadpool Epic Collections your shop has, which, again, will set you back $45 a piece.
Or, you could sign up for Marvel Unlimited for $69 a year. Because you need another subscription service in which you pay too much for content you don’t own and use at a rate that may not merit its return on investment.
All of this is part and parcel of that mighty Marvel problem: The publisher floods the market with product but somehow simultaneously makes that product inaccessible to all but the most dedicated collectors.
Now, imagine for a moment a world where Marvel copies DC’s Compact Comics concept. Call them Mighty Mini Marvels. Not the smaller Mighty Marvel Masterworks volumes of old comics that Marvel’s been publishing for a few years. Not the original graphic novels it farms out to other publishers because it can’t be bothered publishing a line of young-reader-friendly content in-house. But digest-size, affordable compilations of … well, maybe not evergreen stories, because it doesn’t have a lot of those … but the classic stories that have served as the basis for many of its movies and TV shows. “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” “The Night Gwen Stacy Died.” “The Winter Soldier.” The original Beta Ray Bill story. “Born Again.” The first 12 issues of G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel. Whatever a good Iron Man story is. Something a normbo who wanders into Barnes & Noble after binging some Marvel content on Disney+ could pick up, take home, read at a good clip and return looking for another one.
Better yet, imagine $9.99 House of X/Powers of X collections being sold and passed around in schools and talked about with the same reverent tones as X-Men ‘97 and “Dark Phoenix.”
Again, Marvel, we ask: Ya like money, don’tcha?
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
