Tales of the Batman: Gene Colan Hardcover Review

Recently added a new batch of collected editions so now's a good time to get back to these production reviews.

First up is the clumsily titled "Tales of the Batman - Gene Colan Vol. 1." Based on the subsequent solicits it looks like DC is doing this as a series of creator spotlights. First up was Colan, with Engleheart and Newton following. No 2nd volume for any of these creators has been solicited to date, just a Volume 1 of each creator. The assumption is that there could be future volumes (otherwise why number these as #1s?) but I will believe this when I see the solicit. There was also one previous "Tales" release from 2007 featuring Tim Sale's stories that fell outside of his Absolute collections. That collection does not match the Colan design.

The price point for this hardcover is $39.99, for 288 pages of content (thats $.13 per page for those of you scoring at home). This is a non-over-sized volume, with no "deluxe" features like bookmarks or art-on-cover work. The 288 pages are parts of 14 different stories from Detective Comics and Batman. Notably Detective issue 520 is listed as being part of the collection on the dust jacket, but is not part of the collection (Colan was not part of the book), meanwhile Detective Comics #510 and 512 ARE included, but not listed on the dust jacket.

Tales of the Batman cover

The Cover
Cover design seems more like an interior title page versus the cover to a book. With this being the first volume of a multivolume set, I am not sure how they are going to create any cover-theme consistancy since so much of the title placement/size is based on the cover art chosen. Some sort of header branding that can carry thru to the rest of the volumes (nolan, etc). It certainly is an eye catching cover, and should pop on the shelves/displays.

The Spine
On the other side of the spectrum is the spine design, which seems to be an overdesigned/busy spine. The book line has a very cumbersome branding to try and fit on a narrow spine "Tales of the Batman" then subtitled for the individual creator spotlight. Adding the character image at top plus the DC branding at bottom fills the entire spine leaving no clean space. And while "Gene Colan" is a short name, they will need to resize the name as they start to add volumes with other creator names (Im looking at you Steve Engleheart!) Also the color mix, reds, yellows, blues (for Batman & the DC branding) is very striking, but also somewhat overbearing. So between the crowding, the color and the font, we have a very busy, garish spine design.


The Goods

One thing that DC does well, and often, is the cover die stamping. Sometimes it is something small & unique. Sometimes it is bold and dynamic like we have here where DC has stamped the line art of the title page from Batman. Unfortunately the best production part of this collection is hidden by the dust jacket 99% of the time. This particular image does a great job with the negative space letting Batman pop against the silver background complete with tag lines and credits.









Interiors
As far as the interior of the book, it is a mix of the good and the bad. DC is using a good paper quality, glossy but with a low shine with appropriate thickness for this type of archive at this price point. The book has page numbers, and a table of contents that nicely lists each issue, the story title along with the creative team.

The coloring on this book still pulls from the original scans with the over-saturation (which was necessary for the newspaper print on which the inks set) of color, which as always seems somewhat overdone. With the Simonson Thor omnibus setting the new standard in Bronze age recoloring/restoration, it is tough to go back to the old overdone color spectrum. While not horribly garish, the inking seems thick, and the colors a bit blown out.

The book has no book mark, which is not surprising for a book this short, but would be nice considering the mid-level price point of $40 for the book, and the relatively high cost/page price.

Summary
In the end unless you are a die heard Batman fan who has been waiting for more hardcovers from the 70s-80s era the price point vs page count sinks this book. Were this book oversized (at it's current price) or a $5-10 price drop, it would be a more compelling buy, despite some of its design shortfalls. Since it will be a while until the Showcases reach this era, and even longer (if at all) before the Archives do, this collection serves as the only option for a collector wishing to have any non-Neal Adams Batman work in a nice HC collection.

Final rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Captain Britain Omnibus vs Oversized HCs

One note from Marvel's pre-solicits for the month of June (shipping in June & later). They have solicited the second Captain Britain Hardcover: Siege of Camelot, priced at $39.99 for 376 pages. This comes on the heels of the May solicits for the first Captain Britain HC: Birth of a Legend, similarly $39.99 for 376 pages.

Now in 2009 Marvel released the Captain Britain Omnibus (688 pages for $99.99), so my curiosity is aroused. What made Marvel decide to solicit these two hardcovers as followups to the Omnibus, rather than release a second Omnibus volume?

Further inspection of the contents left me with more questions than answers. The first HC (solicited this month) collects work from the 1976 run of Captain Britain (portions of the first 39 issues) which double dips the Omnibus's reprint of portions of the first 14 issues. So as a result a Captain Britain collector would have to buy both books to have a complete collected run of the UK Captain Britain, if they had already bought the omnibus, and been waiting for a 2nd volume.

The 2nd trade, by comparison contains no duplicate material versus the omnibus, and is a nice addition to the Omnibus, especially since it is the same "oversized" dimensions. The problem with this is you are left with a gap in your collection, most notably the Captain Britain UK releases number 15-39.

It may be that Marvel is attempting to jettison the Britain Omnibus and have these collection of HCs become the "definitive" collection of Captain Britain's publication in the UK. Currently there is still a good amount of content in the Omnibus that has yet to be collected elsewhere: Issues 1-11 of The Daredevils, issues of Marvel Super-Heroes, and issues of the Mighty World of Marvel, all UK publications, though the overlap with the new HCs does take some of the luster off of the Omnibus.

UPDATE: Following some conversations with my UK comic-geek brothers it appears that the Captain Britain Omnibus reprints the 14 issues from the 1986 series, while the new HCs are currently reprinting the 1976 series that ran 39 issues. So buy away. No overlap, just think of the HCs as prequils to the Omnibus. Though it does re-raise the question: Why release back to back HCs when you could have put out an Omnibus for that line? Current economies may dissuade buyers from plunking down $100 on a big book, so maybe Marvel is hoping that if they spread the content between two books they can retain the majority of the potential buyers. Think of it as Omnibus on the installment plan.

All I ever need to know I learned from Previews.

With DC's preview of next months solicits we saw some more examples of DC's new "Omnibus" line.

So to add to the already solicited Silver Age Green Lantern (640 pages for $75) and Geoff Johns Flash Omnibus (448 pages for $75), we now have the planned releases of a Teen Titans Omnibus (464 pages for $75) and The Steve Ditko Omnibus (464 pages for $60)

So we have two modern omnibuses at 450ish pages for $75, and two silver age omnibuses for $75 and $60. So with the Ditko Omnibus for 80% of the price of a Lantern Omnibus you get 73% of the pages. Im not going to split pennies about the difference here, it's close enough for my taste.

What I think it does seem to inform is the difference in cost to DC when deciding to print Silver age comics (before Artists/Writers had contracts stipulating to a cut of future printing sales) versus Bronze and modern age comics when those payouts began to appear in contracts.

So how much is that payout? Well based on pure numbers from this small sample set I would guess $15. Now it could be less (I don't work for DC so I don't know their total production costs) or it could be more. Why more? Well with more modern comics there is often less overhead in producing a reprint since many/most pages exist as scans or proofs with the publisher, as opposed to some silver age content which has to be reworked from poorer scans of lesser source materiel (or even from a comic itself). No judgment here either way, just an observation.

I am glad to see DC getting into the "omnibus" style releases. Marvels success with this type of line over the last 5 year, proves that the comics community is willing to pay a premium for this type of "shelf porn". I think DC's first four planned collections show a nice diversity in approaches to the library which I hope will continue. Already we have had a Silver Age Omnibus starting with a "first appearance" and going forward, very reminiscent of Marvels usual approach to Omnibuses. They have also taken the "seminal work" approach doing a run of Geoff Johns Flash, though the fact that it only contains the first 15 issues of such a long run seems like a drop in the bucket. The Titan's Omnibus is in that same vein.

The last version of the Omnibus seems to be the creator-specific approach which they are taking with Ditko. When they have a high profile creator, but not enough content to justify an omnibus, creating this omnibus to capture various parts of the creator's portfolio can be very informative and entertaining when done well. A word of caution to this approach, it can become very disjointed and feel "slapped together" when all the work does not seem as equally important to informing the scope or development of the creator.

Whether you are interested in Silver, Bronze or Modern it seems like DC is moving to this Omnibus approach for its archive line, and I look forward to seeing what other runs and creators will get this oversized treatment.

Now go read some comics!

My Goals

Trade collections of comics are one of the steady, if not growing segments of the comic book industry, but there is little talk of the process going into, and the final result of collecting comics. There is plenty of talk of content, but little talk of the trade design, and that’s where this blog enters.


After staring at my shelves of trades and OGNs (original graphic novels) I've decided I have to many opinions about the way comics are collected and presented to not start a blog about it.


While there are many blogs and sites dedicated to reviewing the stories found in these trade paperbacks, my goal is to take a look at the various trade collections that are released by publishers both big and small, with a focus on the design decisions made.

The only time I intend to delve into content is when looking at the publishers decisions on what to collect, and what has yet to be collected.

Whether it’s looking at the Marvel Omnibus line, Darkhorse's Hell Boy books, or the spines of Vertigo's DMZ, my focus will be on the trade itself. Its design, its "shelf appeal" and the materials that went into producing it (page stock for example).

Down the line I hope to talk to some publishers about their decision making process for how books are designed and produced. Top Shelf, a strong medium sized publisher, is in my backyard, and I hope to sit down with them in the future to talk "shop".

So I hope to see people checking back in as I start to chronicle my thoughts on these collected editions of comics and bound original comic work.