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.