I'm new to comics. Can someone explain the appeal of buying singles...

I'm new to comics. Can someone explain the appeal of buying singles? It seems less troublesome and cheaper to buy trades.

gutter loss my man

it's hell

...

You support the creators

There is no reason. Floppies are inefficient and on the way out. Let them die, don't sink your money into them, they're a more expensive, inferior product.

Tradewaiting is where it's at.

It's less of an appeal and more of a habit.

Also, if the floppies sell poorly, the book will get cancelled.

Commiting to a trades only model would mean putting a full six months work into a new book before seeing if it sells or not.

You honestly get to read the things on time, if at all. One of the big two companies has a trade release schedule of "wait three months after the story is over, if it's popular" and the other of the big two does "whenever I fucking feel like it"

Invincible has trades, collections, and super collections. It gets out of hand

It keeps you up to date on the story. It's like paying full price for a triple A video game on release day, even though you know you should wait a month for the first bug fix or 4-6 months for the price to go down.

It's an antiquated and inferior system propped up by monopolies making money off of it in America.

Fun fact: lots of books that are considered classics today were actually published in newspapers, chapter by chapter or in larger pieces. Then rich people really enjoying the story paid to have the story bound in tomes. Once people weren't fucked over by the industrial-revolution-era pay-gap the bound versions became the dominant version because everyone could afford to buy proper books. Now that even kids can afford to buy books it's bound to go this way with comics as well, unless the floppy-producers are capable of strangling the industry to keep its paycheck intact.

Problem with buying trades is that, if they're good/popular books, they'll inevitably release a hardcover collection, making your flimsy 5 issue-trades useless. What I do now is buy floppies and wait for hardcovers.

As for buying floppies, I do it for series I like and series I consider not worth buying a TPB for. Fuck TPBs in general.

Collections I guess
Plus letters pages, though it's a dead tradition

There is no reason.
Unless singles is sold at stores where they don't sell trades, i.e Airports or something.

Or you live in Europa, where the export is very weird. And its generally done in a horrible fashion compared to Donald Pocket versus the local magazines(both are completely different in content and size)

I guess it's the same as watching something or waiting for the entire season to be out OP

Does Diamond have a monopoly in trade publishing as well? That seems like something that would be much easier to get a different publisher/manufacturer in on.

It's how it has been for the most part how many view the feedback to their comics and supports the creators.
I mean trade sells are good too, but trade comes out maybe twice a year.
And most comic companies aren't gonna wait till trade sells for feedback on greenlighting something past miniseries.

>not buying digital

Shoggoth on the roof? is it really a Shoggoth though? I'm not sure where OP's pic came from

>5 issue-trades useless

Wat

How is it useless?

DnA Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, the part where they're on the scientology ship

Maybe not useless but it doesn't look as good on your shelf as a hardcover does.

Ideally, it would be because it allows a variety of both shorter stories and longer arcs to have equal merit.

But the industry insists on dragging everything out for four issues, so fuck it.

That's a fuckload of ducks.

One of the things that makes comic books comic books is the fact that they come out monthly. They're serialized stories. Like it or not, that's a tradition publishers want to keep.

>mfw reading an "imported" Spider-Man comic and trying to make sense of it when it's got three different stories in it, each one happening at a different time in Peter's life

You never had a full story, either. Because every time one story ended they'd make sure the other two stories were in the middle, forcing you to keep buying if you wanted to find out the ending to the other stories.

>want to keep

lmao, they have no choice

>"Imported" shounen Jump with 1 chapter per week and very small size, with some insane cherry picking in terms of what they translate
>Volumes are still sold month by month basis, per series
Why even fucking bother

I buy floppies if I want to support the creator/series. I usually wait for hardcovers but I enjoy the feel of a comic book n my hands.

I don't know, I download everything. I used to buy singles when I was a kid, I sold everything a few years ago except for Untold Tales of Spider-Man.

buying floppies is TRADITION

Singles make pretty cool wall art