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Books I ordered arrived today; baby!Loki, yay! (Baby!Loki is awesome; I highly recommend the new Journey into Mystery series. Highly.) And, luckily, it turns out I guessed right about what books I wanted, so double yay!
It kind of annoys me that there was guesswork involved, though, I have to say.
I mean, I'm a nerd. I read a lot, and I like to re-read things. I enjoy comics, but since I like to have nice copies of things, and I don't like to buy things twice, I usually prefer to wait until the trade/graphic novel version of something comes out, rather than pick up the monthly comic books. I hang out almost exclusively with other nerds, many of whom do follow quite a few of the monthly releases.
If I think to myself, "I want to own a nice hardcover copy of baby!Loki's adventures, as begun in Thor #617 and continuing in Journey into Mystery #622 onwards", it should not take me an hour of research across multiple websites to decide which books contain those issues, and at the end of said research, I should not feel only mostly sure that I've ordered the right books.
-_-
Would it be so hard, Marvel and DC, to maintain some kind of list of what issues are in what trade edition, that one could reference? For that matter, given that a lot of your characters move freely through books, why is it that I cannot go to your site and say, "I want to read about Iron Man!" and obtain from you a list of the graphic novels he appears in in chronological order?
Because I have to say, given how much work it is for me, who follows comics, to figure out what I need to buy to get the stories I'm interested in, I have to expect that any casual or returning reader has a non-zero chance of giving up and wandering off.
(I suspect this would also be a good way to increase their sales to women by lots, since ladies are way more likely, I think, to be invested in character arcs. Put together a list of, say, all graphic novels in which Magneto figures heavily, arrange them in a sensible order so people can follow the story contained therein, and Magneto fangirls will buy them.
In conclusion: baby!Loki is awesome. Anyone who ever wanted to see a redemption story wherein Loki decided evil had gotten too predictable, so why not kill himself and be reborn as an adorable 8-year-old version of himself that wasn't burdened by all his issues: Marvel has what you want.
It kind of annoys me that there was guesswork involved, though, I have to say.
I mean, I'm a nerd. I read a lot, and I like to re-read things. I enjoy comics, but since I like to have nice copies of things, and I don't like to buy things twice, I usually prefer to wait until the trade/graphic novel version of something comes out, rather than pick up the monthly comic books. I hang out almost exclusively with other nerds, many of whom do follow quite a few of the monthly releases.
If I think to myself, "I want to own a nice hardcover copy of baby!Loki's adventures, as begun in Thor #617 and continuing in Journey into Mystery #622 onwards", it should not take me an hour of research across multiple websites to decide which books contain those issues, and at the end of said research, I should not feel only mostly sure that I've ordered the right books.
-_-
Would it be so hard, Marvel and DC, to maintain some kind of list of what issues are in what trade edition, that one could reference? For that matter, given that a lot of your characters move freely through books, why is it that I cannot go to your site and say, "I want to read about Iron Man!" and obtain from you a list of the graphic novels he appears in in chronological order?
Because I have to say, given how much work it is for me, who follows comics, to figure out what I need to buy to get the stories I'm interested in, I have to expect that any casual or returning reader has a non-zero chance of giving up and wandering off.
(I suspect this would also be a good way to increase their sales to women by lots, since ladies are way more likely, I think, to be invested in character arcs. Put together a list of, say, all graphic novels in which Magneto figures heavily, arrange them in a sensible order so people can follow the story contained therein, and Magneto fangirls will buy them.
In conclusion: baby!Loki is awesome. Anyone who ever wanted to see a redemption story wherein Loki decided evil had gotten too predictable, so why not kill himself and be reborn as an adorable 8-year-old version of himself that wasn't burdened by all his issues: Marvel has what you want.
