Single issues or trades?

[Markness]

When it comes to comics, do you prefer single issues or trades? Personally, I will buy both but I honestly prefer trades. They are more durable (one of my singles got bent a while ago while I admittedly did something that wasn't smart since I was trying to assemble a long box and was looking at one I already had to figure out how to do it), portable, and have more bang for your buck nine times out of ten. I also honestly care more about reading, especially long story arcs, than simply collecting. I will buy singles if they aren't collected in a trade or if they are interesting enough for me to follow since I generally want to read something new every week but trades are still a bigger priority for me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Honestly, at this point and really for the last decade or so, the only real point of buying singles is for collection purposes. I do occasionally buy digital copies of singles if it's a series interesting enough for me to want to keep up with. Likewise, if the series never got any major trade releases and/or were long out of print, I'd get digital singles for those (Dennis O'Neil's run on The Question being a prime example).

However, in any other case there is simply no reason not to go for trades over single issues, especially if you're buying physical products.

[Markness]

Trades are also good if you are late to the party so to say. I also feel the same about manga.

[Avaitor]

I'll buy the occasional single issue of a series I'm interested in to see if it's worth investing into, and I'll usually go towards trades from there.

I do buy Avengers comics in order to collect them, though. I'm focusing primarily on the first run, and only buy issues sporadically, depending on the price of the comic and my budget. The oldest one I have is #33.

[Markness]

I have some issues of the original Avengers volume but nowhere near the issue number you have. I need to go back over my collection and see which one is the earliest. As for the second volume (Heroes Reborn), I have the trade of it and I have the first four issues of the third volume but I still bought the Avengers Assemble collection that has those four. I have since gotten up to the fourth of those collections; I've been lucky to get the 1st, 3rd, and 4th from comic shops that still carry old stuff while the 2nd I had to get through Half Price Books. I might have to do the same for the 5th volume and the two collections of the Geoff Johns run.

[Markness]

I had to buy the last five issues of X-Man since the trade that was going to collect them got cancelled. The bulk of this title is uncollected so it's one of the few I've had to hunt for single issues to read it all.

[Avaitor]

According to the owner of the local comic shop I've been going to for about 20 years now, Marvel trades seldom sell. Even for A-listers like Spider-Man, they'll seldom sell more than 2 copies, while the average DC trade will sell about 10 times that much. Apparently they're closer to standing ground on single issues, though.

Take that information however you please.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Sounds about right. Marvel's doing well enough with Star Wars trades, but even a Zatanna book is doing better than any trade starring a Marvel character. And DC has more books that are always going to sell decades after they originally came out like Watchmen.

[Markness]

According to the owner of the local comic shop I've been going to for about 20 years now, Marvel trades seldom sell. Even for A-listers like Spider-Man, they'll seldom sell more than 2 copies, while the average DC trade will sell about 10 times that much. Apparently they're closer to standing ground on single issues, though.

Take that information however you please.

Really only 2? Then why are some trades hard to find?

[Avaitor]

According to the owner of the local comic shop I've been going to for about 20 years now, Marvel trades seldom sell. Even for A-listers like Spider-Man, they'll seldom sell more than 2 copies, while the average DC trade will sell about 10 times that much. Apparently they're closer to standing ground on single issues, though.

Take that information however you please.

Really only 2? Then why are some trades hard to find?

I mean, it could be an exaggeration, and it is worth noting that according to this same source, it sounds like most comic shop owners currently have a salty relationship with Marvel.

But as to why their trades are so hard to find, it may just be an issue of supply and demand. If there isn't much of a demand for the trades, why supply them?

[Markness]

I have some trades I haven't read yet. Some are stored for later reading after "catching up" on other titles; I've read a trade of Geoff John's Teen Titans run and got the other two but I haven't finished reading Young Justice and The Titans so I want to read those two fully before I get back into Johns' Teen Titans run. Others I thought I would read but I might not after learning the run isn't well received (Chuck Austen's X-Men) or a newer and cheaper collection has come out such as Peter Milligan's X-Men run. I bought the Bizarre Love Triangle trade because it was cheap but the issues in it have been re-collected along with the ones in Golgotha as well as Wild Kingdom in a more economical trade collection. I bought the trades for Uncanny X-Men: The New Age and had to splurge on The End of Greys (35 bucks but that's the cheapest I've seen it go for a long time now) but that whole run has been re-collected in the X-Men Reload collections. I don't know if I'll go for those since I'm kind of broke currently.

Does anyone else do things like this?