Individual Issues or Graphic Novels

[mrtoontastic]

Comics are a beautiful medium, even if the industry is all over the place.

But if there's one thing that always bugged me, its keeping up with stories. If you're looking for a set story, you have to dive through thousands of issues and unrelated tales for the complete arc you're looking for. Some stories work great since they're singular ventures and won't divert from the main goal, while others just take too long or are all over the place. Hence why some stories are packaged as full graphic novels. You get the full story AND every issue is bundled into one. The only problem is that some issues are missing, especially when certain characters are more evolved in those side stories.

I dunno, it becomes a bit of a drag to keep up. And gets worse when there's stories you ENJOY, but the collections seem to never be widely available. For real, I tried to buy a collection of Donald Duck stories from the Carl Barks Fantagraphics days, but they were mostly sold out. And no individual issue was found in a local library or so. I could just try to read online, but... then what's the point, yo? At least with Webcomics, some creators are kind enough to separate arcs and stories/years into different chapters and stuff. Even here on Tapas. But now that poses a question... which one is better? Individual issues? or Graphic Novels?

I personally prefer the latter, even if not every story is viable as a graphic novel. But what about you? Which ones do you prefer and why?

[BarBarKetrab]

Graphic novels or volumes for me. It feels so satisfying holding a multi-hundred page book in your hands knowing that you plan on ploughing through the adventure inside. It also means that you are less likely to be left stuck on annoying cliffhangers; there's a concrete beginning and end.

As far as webcomics on this platform go, even if creators are including individual chapters/parts to put their work into, they will more than likely upload it a few pages at a time for more visibility. So in that regard, I don't think the comics on Tapas can be included in this question as much.

[mrtoontastic]

Graphic novels are great. Plus, it helps when some comic stories get left behind for years on years. TMNT Urban Legends finally concluded some time ago, completing the Image Comics era of the Ninja Turtles story before it was revitalized by Mirage and later IDW Comics.

[skyfarron]

I just wait for the comics to get bundled into a novel and buy that. Like Archie Comics did with Sonic.

[joannekwan]

I definitely prefer when things are collected into chunkier volumes (I own 3 chonky omnibi). The smallest I'll go is for those 120 or so paged comic volumes. I can't keep up with the 30 paged issues.

I am willing to buy small issues from indie creators though, since it can be an encouragement for them to keep going!

[Caro]

From my position as someone who makes physical comics for a living it can be such a pain in the ass to wait til you have 120+ pages of a comic before you can go to print. Issues are nice because you get more frequent, albeit generally smaller, chunks of income. So I’d personally like a nice combo of issues and then a nice chunky collection at a certain point. But not so chunky that a book becomes unwieldy.

As a reader, I’m not super into the issue format! I think I’d like it a little more if we used the manga magazine format. Floppies are just such a huge pain for me to keep around in my house. A nice 120-200-ish page threshold is my ideal. If i can’t read it on a bus I do not want it!!!

[mrtoontastic]

Was there an official bundle? Or did you find some .RAR file that had every comic ever made and download it? Because I did that. XD (that was a lot of gigs though...)

[skyfarron]

No, they call it Sonic Digest, like Archie Digest.

[cyborgmermaid]

Personally I prefer trade paperback graphic novels. It's the perfect size for travel and I don't have to worry about ripping them like single issues.

I only buy single issues if it's a series I want to collect with variant covers.

[Kaydreamer]

As a reader, I'll typically wait for a creator to bundle a collection of chapters into a graphic novel/trade paperback sized book. I like to sink my teeth into something when I read it, so it's much preferable for me.

That said, as a creator, I'll sort-of be doing both for now. I'll be doing a print run of my first chapter (my first will likely be about 38 to 42 pages, so bigger than an issue, but not as big as a trade) for selling cheaply at this year's pop culture convention in my city, then bundling it with subsequent chapters into a single book once I reach a particular point in the story.

I'll probably wind up going with graphic novel sized books, ultimately. But I'll keep printing that first issue too, as I can sell it cheaply at cons where someone may not want to drop $25 on a book they don't know if they'll like, but be okay with dropping $10 on a single chapter to see if it's for them or not.

[darthmongoose]

Single issues are incredibly expensive in the UK. For a while in Uni I was following just a few series: Runaways, Ultimate X-men, Ultimate Spider-man and Buffy. This cost me like £30 a month and I just ended up like... this is ridiculous. I'm paying that much for these low print quality floppy mags that take up loads of space, are full of adverts and then sometimes they only tell half the story and I need to buy issues of another series to find out what happened!

With Marvel comics and similar these days, I just buy the trades in digital format on Comixology or similar to read on my iPad. You get the advantage that they include continuation of a storyline that goes into another series in the trade and you can read uninterrupted by annoying american adverts about why you shouldn't do drugs, or how there's a new energy drink or something.

I read the latest releases of My Hero Academia on the shounen jump app though, because that's amazing value at £2 per month plus all the back issues of like... everything, and I follow a few Tapas premium comics that update in chunks of a similar length to a floppy, so it's not that I hate that format or wouldn't pay for it. Some comics really are better to read a chapter or two at a time rather than hunkering down to read a graphic novel for an hour or two. So my non-committal answer is.... I like both, but I need to feel like the content chunks suit the comic and I'm getting good value for my money.

[M.ComicFan]

I think I (much like a lot most of the people here so far) prefer graphic novels or volumes as opposed to single issues. As someone who's been trying to read more comic books within the last few years, I have found that more often than not the single issues I pick take place in the middle of a story arc, so I have little to no context as to what happened previously.

At least with graphic novels or trades, I can collect at least a portion of a story in one package. My only real problem is that some graphic novels can be a bit expensive, but I'd say that's to be expected depending on the story and the amount of content in the book.

[Iridium]

I like the idea of issues; it's what made me grow into comics when I was a child, and it's still what get's me hooked into it. Although there's the ordeal of algorithm when we talk about digital indie publishing, such as Tapas, I like the idea of leaving everything that's canon on a series on the same title, and give different seasonal covers to the chapters as a way to guide the newcomer reader. Graphic novels are amazing as well, I like them as special editions of certain sagas I follow. They need even more work to be done, but they are surely worth it to purchase. Not all stories fit a graphic novel format, though.

I want to print and run Menmar in physical media in the near future, as I was supposed to do a few months ago. In the meantime, I display it on Tapas on the way I envisioned, although my workload is forcing me to do it slower than I thought I would. x.x