DC Relaunch: You Want Paperback!

In my far-from-comprehensive and unscientific poll that ran here over the past week, half of respondents said they'd like to see DC release collections of the New 52 relaunch books solely in paperback.

Gosh, I think you people are going to be disappointed.

Given that all of DC's major releases prior to the post-Flashpoint relaunch have been hardcover -- Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Justice League, the latest Wonder Woman and Green Arrow books, and so on -- I cannot imagine that DC would release their new big name titles in paperback.

If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if all fifty-two titles emerge first in hardcover -- Action Comics, definitely, but also All-Star Western and Voodoo -- such to show consistency across the whole line and, of course, maximize profits.

Just as DC began collecting nearly every "One Year Later" title after Infinite Crisis (for one volume, at least), I wouldn't be surprised by a similar "step up" for the New 52. That is, DC used "One Year Later" to begin collecting all of their titles in paperback, even ones that weren't being collected before, and now that they're collecting nearly everything, I wouldn't be surprised if the New 52 titles represented another step up -- to DC now collecting all their titles in first run hardcover.

I just can't believe DC is going to release the New 52 collections inconsistently, given the push for new reader accessibility -- that we would see some paperback and some hardcover, or some hardcover and some deluxe hardcover. At the same time, commenter abu george makes a good point that not collecting some of these books deluxe -- David Finch's second take on The Dark Knight to go along with the deluxe first collection, for instance, or Batwoman -- would be a disappointment.

It probably doesn't make sense for DC to collect Voodoo deluxe (though I did like Sami Basri's art on Power Girl, this review of Voodoo notwithstanding), but it wouldn't be a shock if we saw some deluxe volumes either preceeding or following the main release -- and that's if DC doesn't adopt some sort of routine of collecting six issue blocks separately, and then combining two six-issue trades into twelve-issue omnibuses, for instance.

Twenty-three percent of poll respondents, by the way, wanted DC to release a mix of hardcovers and paperbacks as a title warranted (by whether it's a better-known title like Superman or a lesser-known title like Resurrection Man, I meant); 13% wanted deluxe hardcovers entirely; and just 5% wanted all hardcovers. I'm in those latter two categories.

Right now we're expecting the first DC New 52 collections in May 2012, but otherwise there's not much more information at the moment. Let's open this to the floor -- how do you hope DC collects the New 52?