Omnibus, Absolute, Deluxe, and HC Thread 19 19

[D2]

Just picked this up

[bronze_rules]

4 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Did Santa bring anyone some pretty reading material today? Between the wife, my folks, and the in-laws, I did pretty well!

Man, these Swamp Thing Absolutes are lovely. That mossy flocking material on the covers is such a nice touch.

Also tickled to finally have the X-Men Children of the Atom box set in hand. It's pretty sharp!

 

s

i

That's a great haul! Had my eye on the X-MEN set, but I have too many x-men collections to justify it.

As for myself, I took advantage of Kindle sale and picked up most of the masterworks digitally. Hard to resist 1 to 2 dollars ea. It's like quarter bin prices. Weird experience reading on Oasis. It's really tiny but light. I also have IPAD which works great.

[ashsaytr]

i like that House of Mystery!

[letsgrumble]

On 12/25/2020 at 11:02 PM, F For Fake said:

That X-Men Children of the Atom boxed set just made my 2021 must-haves hot list.

[bronze_rules]

4 hours ago, letsgrumble said:

That X-Men Children of the Atom boxed set just made my 2021 must-haves hot list.

Good luck finding it.Esp for decent price.

It sold out very fast, and came back for a short while. Don't know if they'll make any more. I had a hard time resisting, but there's only a few issues that haven't been collected already in some form or another. It is a beautiful set though.

[F For Fake]

On 12/26/2020 at 3:29 AM, bronze_rules said:

That's a great haul! Had my eye on the X-MEN set, but I have too many x-men collections to justify it.

As for myself, I took advantage of Kindle sale and picked up most of the masterworks digitally. Hard to resist 1 to 2 dollars ea. It's like quarter bin prices. Weird experience reading on Oasis. It's really tiny but light. I also have IPAD which works great.

This should be my final go-round on the classic X-Men stuff. I used to have the omni's of X-Men 1 & 2, sold them way back when. Now that I have this set, I won't be buying the omnis again, whenever they get around to reissuing them. What I like about this set is that it's supposed to be the definitive collection, organizing every single appearance of the X-Men characters. I've since read that there may be an issue of Marvel Team Up that is missing, but otherwise this is supposed to have everything, all in order, so I'm excited about that. In fact, the "Lost Years" volume is probably going to be the first I'll read, as I've read the regular X-Men stories several times by this point.

[F For Fake]

20 hours ago, letsgrumble said:

That X-Men Children of the Atom boxed set just made my 2021 must-haves hot list.

It really is pretty sharp, I gotta say!

[F For Fake]

16 hours ago, bronze_rules said:

Good luck finding it.Esp for decent price.

It sold out very fast, and came back for a short while. Don't know if they'll make any more. I had a hard time resisting, but there's only a few issues that haven't been collected already in some form or another. It is a beautiful set though.

Yeah, once I missed it back in the spring, I assumed that was that. Then one day back in the fall I saw a random posting on MMW that it was back in stock. It lasted for two or three weeks, which was surprising.

[srezvan]

That X-Men box set is incredible. Current prices are around $600 on eBay. We need to make a pact that if the box set is available again at a more reasonable price, we'll post the availability here. That would be greatly appreciated!

[F For Fake]

1 hour ago, srezvan said:

That X-Men box set is incredible. Current prices are around $600 on eBay. We need to make a pact that if the box set is available again at a more reasonable price, we'll post the availability here. That would be greatly appreciated!

Sure thing! I'm pretty sure I posted the last time it came back up for sale, but didn't get a response. Of course, there's a lot going on here, on any given day, so I don't expect people to stop the presses when I post. ha But I will keep doing my best to keep everyone informed of deals I run across!

[Ken Aldred]

On 12/26/2020 at 8:29 AM, bronze_rules said:

As for myself, I took advantage of Kindle sale and picked up most of the masterworks digitally. Hard to resist 1 to 2 dollars ea. It's like quarter bin prices. Weird experience reading on Oasis. It's really tiny but light. I also have IPAD which works great.

Digital works best on a larger size tablet such as the iPad Pro.

The Masterworks sale on Kindle / Comixology was much better than last year's, which seemed more limited and had a lot of Atlas era material for 69p / $1 rather than classic Silver Age.  

This year I was lucky and got most of my Image Comics reading wants list filled in by way of two Humble Bundles, after buying my priority material in cheap Comixology sales.  Some duplicates, but I found around 80 / 90 and 60 / 70 quality trade paperbacks in the bundles, 140 digital books for a total of £50, which wouldn't even buy me an open return train ticket to London for a comic convention.  

Hope everyone here had a great Christmas, and best for the New Year.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Ken Aldred

[bronze_rules]

12 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

Digital works best on a larger size tablet such as the iPad Pro.

The Masterworks sale on Kindle / Comixology was much better than last year's, which seemed more limited and had a lot of Atlas era material for 69p / $1 rather than classic Silver Age.  

This year I was lucky and got most of my Image Comics reading wants list filled in by way of two Humble Bundles, after buying my priority material in cheap Comixology sales.  Some duplicates, but I found around 80 / 90 and 60 / 70 quality trade paperbacks in the bundles, 140 digital books for a total of £50, which wouldn't even buy me an open return train ticket to London for a comic convention.  

Hope everyone here had a great Christmas, and best for the New Year.

I've been using 128G IPadPro. Have a lot of issues with memory limits, sorting, apps etc.. but working around it. The masterworks files are incredibly large for 'books' (like .5 to 2G each!, like video).I'm glad I held off until now.  What's interesting is it looks even better on a 4k laptop or monitor, but the limit there is the horizontal view.

I also picked up an oasis for Christmas, but didn't realize how tiny it was. I can step through black and white panels that way. I like that all the apps can step panel by panel, making the images pretty much original art sized (or bigger).

Likewise to all on the Christmas New Year wishes.

Edited December 29, 2020 by bronze_rules

[bronze_rules]

15 hours ago, F For Fake said:

This should be my final go-round on the classic X-Men stuff. I used to have the omni's of X-Men 1 & 2, sold them way back when. Now that I have this set, I won't be buying the omnis again, whenever they get around to reissuing them. What I like about this set is that it's supposed to be the definitive collection, organizing every single appearance of the X-Men characters. I've since read that there may be an issue of Marvel Team Up that is missing, but otherwise this is supposed to have everything, all in order, so I'm excited about that. In fact, the "Lost Years" volume is probably going to be the first I'll read, as I've read the regular X-Men stories several times by this point.

Think that is bad, they are already talking about a super remastered FF 2 omnibus. Wouldn't be surprised to see X-Men follow.  When does it end???

Edited December 29, 2020 by bronze_rules

[F For Fake]

12 hours ago, bronze_rules said:

Think that is bad, they are already talking about a super remastered FF 2 omnibus. Wouldn't be surprised to see X-Men follow.  When does it end???

Ha, they have our number and they know it! I can't imagine that they do amazing sales on these collections, but they can practically guarantee that they can prey upon the nostalgia and completist-fetishism of 1500 or so nerds several times a year, so they'll keep releasing, rereleasing, and re-rereleasing! But I'm done with a lot of this stuff. Pretty much the only reprints I buy these days are the ones that I foolishly sold in the past. They got me twice, they won't get me again!

(Fast forward a few months/years, and I will of course have rebought all of this stuff again, because I'm a weak, weak man.)

[F For Fake]

13 hours ago, bronze_rules said:

Think that is bad, they are already talking about a super remastered FF 2 omnibus. Wouldn't be surprised to see X-Men follow.  When does it end???

But seriously, when discussing remasters, it gets to a point where I can't really tell a difference, you know? I know that there are hardcore folks out there who can tell if a single line is out of register, but I'm not that picky. I dislike glued spines on big books, and gutter loss, so upgrading binding can be a selling point that I'll fall for. But by and large, as long as the stories are all there, and I can read 'em, I'm satisfied.

[piper]

15 minutes ago, F For Fake said:

Ha, they have our number and they know it! I can't imagine that they do amazing sales on these collections, but they can practically guarantee that they can prey upon the nostalgia and completist-fetishism of 1500 or so nerds several times a year, so they'll keep releasing, rereleasing, and re-rereleasing! But I'm done with a lot of this stuff. Pretty much the only reprints I buy these days are the ones that I foolishly sold in the past. They got me twice, they won't get me again!

(Fast forward a few months/years, and I will of course have rebought all of this stuff again, because I'm a weak, weak man.)

I’m glad they are reprinting these because this side of the hobby is new to me. Most of my singles are long gone and those that I still have are encased in plastic (CGC) and frankly worth too much to casually read.

I just wish the Marvel Spines had a consistent look. I plan to get FFV2 to 4 and suspect they will have a different spine to my V1.

[piper]

Recent pickups...

[F For Fake]

29 minutes ago, piper said:

I’m glad they are reprinting these because this side of the hobby is new to me. Most of my singles are long gone and those that I still have are encased in plastic (CGC) and frankly worth too much to casually read.

I just wish the Marvel Spines had a consistent look. I plan to get FFV2 to 4 and suspect they will have a different spine to my V1.

You make a good point, about being new to the hobby. You're definitely not alone, as we've seen a groundswell of interest in collected editions in recent years. Some are readers who are new to the formats altogether, and others are flippers who finally caught on to our little corner of the hobby. Either way, it means sales, and that's good. If people keep buying, the companies will hopefully keep printing. I have omnis and hc's now of books I never thought we'd see in a million years, so it would definitely seem that a rising tide lifts all boats. 

I'm also with you 100% on the spines. It drives me bonkers how DC switched trade dress mid-way through runs, particularly on the Bronze House of Secrets/Mystery spines. Ugh. At the end of the day I'm just glad to have the books, but I don't understand changing horses midstream like that. Owners of earlier volumes will likely prefer to keep the same trade dress to all of the volumes, and prospective new readers are more likely to start buying the series with the first volume anyway. Who are they hoping to attract by changing it up on the second/third/etc volume? Drives me nuts.

[bronze_rules]

4 hours ago, F For Fake said:

But seriously, when discussing remasters, it gets to a point where I can't really tell a difference, you know? I know that there are hardcore folks out there who can tell if a single line is out of register, but I'm not that picky. I dislike glued spines on big books, and gutter loss, so upgrading binding can be a selling point that I'll fall for. But by and large, as long as the stories are all there, and I can read 'em, I'm satisfied.

Yeah, over on the mmw board, you'll hear all the whining about minutia. That silver surfer omni had panels out of place and people were livid. Doesn't bother me as I have several other copies - and not worth the hassle of return, but that's just me. Happy to get a discount on 'damaged' goods, that is like new to me.

[piper]

One of the nice things about collected editions is that I’ve been reading titles that I never would have thought to collect.

I’ve been enjoying some 1970’s Marvel Horror recently. On that note, any thoughts on Man Thing? I may have accidentally read a story about the character in MTU but can’t say I know much about the character other than it introduces Howard the Duck? Is it worth the purchase of the Omnibus reprint coming out soon?