Blackest Night Collected details revealed
So the details on how Blackest Night will be collected are out [CollectedEditions.com], and what do you know, there’s a bit of controversy. THE DC event of the Summer, Blackest Night, will be collected into 7 different trades, with Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps being collected outside of Blackest Night. Here is the breakdown…
Blackest Night
Blackest Night: Green Lantern
Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps
Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 1
Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 2
Blackest Night: Rise of the Black Lanterns
Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps Vol. 1
The general issue with this is that the story “Blackest Night” didn’t read broken up like this. To read the entire story as was intended there are issues of Green Lantern and GL Corps that you need to read between issues of Blackest Night.
Ready for some light ranting?
My issues with this; A) like everyone else I fail to understand how breaking the story up makes much sense. I know for myself and other people I talk comics with, who can’t collect and keep up with all the monthly stuff, breaking an event up like this can cause a lot of confusion. I’ve never understood DC’s unwillingness to publish events in volumes (Blackest Night Vol. 1, 2, 3, etc). Marvel does this with their Ultimate titles and it works beautifully. 52 did this and it’s what encouraged me the most to collect it, I didn’t have to worry about anything. Just buy Volumes 1-4. I dropped Blackest Night specifically because I’m reading Johns GL run on trade and this just complicated things. B) I think this is an obvious ploy to make more money (big surprise). Take a popular story and break it down into a confusing number of hardcovers telling no one what they can skip, forcing the unknowing to buy everything. And if you want these in paperback? By the time that happens the next event will get started and you’ll be behind and know the results of the event your wanting to read (which will probably be very little).
*sigh*
I only have a small margin to complain though (and I think a lot of you will relate). On my shelf at home is all the trades that lead up to Infinite Crisis and then most the stories that followed. I’m feeding the hands that bites me.
Thoughts?
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As the resident GL expert, this is quite astounding. For DC to put so much effort into a release of this type, BN better end up good enough for it to be worth the 7 different prices it will cost to have the whole collection. I am really BN, so I will most likely end up buying these. Hopefully they come with some cool bonus materials like covers, pencilled pages, etc. I would love to see BN in the 52 TPB format, with comments from creators and what-not.
Another thought, seeing as it’s 7 trades, they should give out more promo rings when you buy them. You should be able to choose your ring though.
I take your point that it’s just easier to buy volumes 1-4, but when those volumes come out months and months apart from one another, I find it frustrating not to get a full story (even when that story bleeds over into other titles). Sinestro Corps War tried to collect everything in multiple volumes, and I didn’t think it worked; I might’ve preferred to see a solo Green Lantern and solo Green Lantern Corps collection there; that’s what I think they’re trying to do with Blackest Night. We’ll see when it comes out, I guess.
I second the call for promo rings along with the collections!