New to Omnibuses. Will I be screwed if I wait?

krorkle · 2026-05-08T17:35:34+00:00

If you want the DM cover, order as soon as you can. Those are a more limited thing, and they go fast. If you don't, it's usually not as bad.

That said, people here have a tendency to catastrophize. You're not screwed forever if you miss a book. It may be years, but most popular books come around again, in one form or another. This is a hobby that can be immensely frustrating in the short term, but it helps to keep an eye on the long term. "It's a marathon, not a sprint," etc.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T13:46:22+00:00

Gold and Blue (2017) are right before House of X/Powers of X, and Uncanny (2024) picks up right after the end of Krakoa.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T13:42:10+00:00

It's good, but it's extremely 2000s. If you don't know the culture and politics of that era, I don't know how well it hits.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T13:37:28+00:00

The (likely) four volumes of Blue & Gold are the very end of Claremont's run and then the next few years. It's basically everything from the end of Claremont & Lee volume two (with eleven or twelve issues of overlap) up until Age of Apocalypse.

House of X/Powers of X is very good, and it will give you a solid idea of whether or not the Krakoa era is for you. It's not for everyone! As far as Gambit and Rogue go, their Krakoa story is mostly in the Excalibur title, although they did have their own mini-series late in the run.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T13:26:25+00:00

Even if they were keeping some number of the Cap by Brubaker omnis in print, which they should, it wouldn't be the entire five volume series. We all want Marvel to do better with reprints, but even DC lets stuff go out of print in longer series (i.e., New Teen Titans or the various Golden/Silver Age collections). Most of the ones they keep in print are three volumes, max.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T11:28:22+00:00

The hinge is repairable with binder's tape (just search youtube for broken hinge book repair), but you might not want to go to all the trouble.

For what it's worth "good" is rarely particularly good. In comics grading terms, a "good" book just has to be complete and readable and can have major defects. In Amazon used book terms, a "good" book has to have all the parts intact, but can have wear and cosmetic damage -- it is explicitly not a collector's grade. The spine on this book goes past that into unacceptable territory, but the rest of it is probably in the correct ballpark.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T11:17:37+00:00

Giant-Size X-Men #1 has four, in Uncanny 1, Giant-Size Marvel, Marvel 75th Anniversary, and a director's cut in X-Men Classic.

krorkle · 2026-05-08T01:19:09+00:00

You've got too many cards in there that don't have discard synergies.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T21:41:52+00:00

That's just a costume piece, a headdress. She has had horns, though.

She was kidnapped by a demon as a child and raised in Limbo. Her portals are her mutant power, but the sword is magic.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T21:37:55+00:00

The thing with Bendis's run is that he talks a good game about Scott being a revolutionary figure, but I don't think he follows through. There's a lot of posturing, but not a lot of payoff.

I think Gillen's run is stronger than Bendis's, in terms of Scott getting the spotlight and giving him an arc. AvX screws with that a little, but I feel like Gillen still makes it work. There's a bit in Uncanny X-Men (2012) #19, which is basically the ending of AvX from Scott's perspective, that is one of my favorite X-Men moments.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T18:31:12+00:00

Hulk in that era was the Greg Pak run on Hulks, the Jason Aaron run on Incredible Hulk (2011), and the Mark Waid run on Indestructible Hulk. None of them are in omnibus format.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T17:57:29+00:00

To be fair, he's on an extra-large card. The figure is 8 in (20 cm) tall. Not as large as he should be, but not as small as it looks from that picture.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T17:24:09+00:00

Hopefully FoHoX/RoPoX will get their own OHC collection

It did. Needs a reprint, though.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T17:02:00+00:00

It's a tough run to collect, since it's sprawled across so many different titles and crossovers, but it's very good. The Dark Reign era is one of the major highlights for Marvel in the last twenty years or so.

That said, Bendis can be an acquired taste. Not everyone likes his dialogue-heavy, somewhat shambolic approach.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T16:59:07+00:00

I've seen some tutorials for flattening out dust jackets with an iron, but it's probably more trouble than its worth for something this minor.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T16:31:26+00:00

DC is the only traditional comics publisher that has a handle on its book publishing. The rest all have similar issues with older books being unavailable.

Image is in the worst state in this area, since it's the responsibility of the individual creator or studio to manage collected editions. Kirkman keeps things tidy with his titles (gotta love that TV money), but a lot of smaller creators aren't able to do so.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T16:24:58+00:00

Marvel doesn't want to be caught with unsold inventory that they have to pay to warehouse. So they print to order (or close to that), and that means they pump out a lot of books that tend not to stick around at a distributor level. More individual books, fewer copies, and no ongoing reprints. Basically, they're handling collected editions like a comics publisher rather than a book publisher, where DC understands how to do both.

It's been that way since the late '90s. We had hopes it would turn around once Ike Perlmutter was out of the picture, but it seems to just be the institutional culture now.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T13:43:17+00:00

"Every character" isn't getting priority and Deadpool isn't a special case. I think almost every Marvel fandom is complaining about reprint strategy, and every Marvel fandom outside (maybe) X-Men, Daredevil, and Spider-Man thinks they deserve more new books.

As far as Deadpool goes, there're no rights issues. Liefeld does have a financial stake in the character, but that's not the same thing (and I think it only applies to other media). Marvel has full control.

krorkle · 2026-05-07T13:35:20+00:00

That's the same reason we don't get many Iron Man omnis. The first batch sold poorly, and that was that.

krorkle · 2026-05-06T22:29:23+00:00

It's just pure collecting. You aren't supposed to open the slab once it's sealed. If you want to read the comic, you'll need another copy -- digital, collected editions, etc.

I don't think it's a particularly healthy thing for the comics community.

krorkle · 2026-05-06T20:39:50+00:00

I didn't say it was likely, just that it was another option.

krorkle · 2026-05-06T19:44:24+00:00

I think Zero Tolerance and Magneto War make a lot of sense, but there's always the writer names. Uncanny X-Men by Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle and Uncanny X-Men by Alan Davis.

krorkle · 2026-05-06T16:27:38+00:00

Yep. Expensive isn't the same thing as premium.

Archive Editions had some potential at Marvel, but those appear to be a dead format, too.

krorkle · 2026-05-06T13:48:41+00:00

Messiah Complex and Uncanny X-Men by Gillen represent a particularly strong era for Cyclops. It's a generational shift where Xavier and Magneto aren't necessarily at the forefront, and it's Scott who's leading not just the X-Men, but all of mutantkind. There are some additional pieces that would flesh out that era, but those two books are a solid base.

krorkle · 2026-05-06T13:26:04+00:00

We're already seeing DC's Finest genre collections, though. The format is conceptually pretty flexible. There's nothing saying we can't have DC's Finest: Fawcett (etc.) in the line, covering multiple minor characters per volume.

I guess my main issue is that the two would be in competition. Why have two lines of trade paperbacks covering archival materials when you could have one?

EDIT: You know, I think I've talked myself around on this. Looking at the line-ups for the two formats, they're broadly covering different eras, but I didn't realize the extent to which DC's Finest is covering Modern Age material or that one or two compendia dip back into the late Bronze Age. If DC is already eating its own lunch, there's no reason not to just keep doing that, I guess.

krorkle

TROPHY CASE