If it wasn't clear before that the Collected Editions blog has the best commenters ever, Jeffrey Hardy Quah got his copy of the Batman RIP collection hot off the press and let us know that it contains the Batman story from DC Universe #0. Does this mean that the Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and other parts of DC Universe #0 might also be collected in their respective trades? If someone sees it, let us know!
As of today's DC Comics May 2009 solicitations, it seems the Final Crisis Companion's contents have changed to now include the Final Crisis #1 Director's Cut and Final Crisis Secret Files, and no longer reprint Final Crisis: Superman Beyond and Final Crisis: Submit (thanks, Bob Schoonover!).
At the same time, Dylan Palmer points out that the page count for the Final Crisis collection on Amazon has jumped from 240 pages to 352 pages. I don't know that I agree with Dylan that Batman: Last Rites will appear here, but maybe Superman Beyond and Submit instead?
If we get the Final Crisis collections we've been hoping for, that'll set a big precedent for crossover collections to come. Here's hoping!
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Thanks all - this blog wouldn't be here without you. More reviews coming soon!
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I forgot to mention, Last Rites (the final Morrison Batman stories) are included in R.I.P. So, yeah, for someone like me who hasn't read a single page of Final Crisis, it makes for a bizarre collection. Which I actually thought was rather fitting given the wonderfully demented R.I.P. storyline.
ReplyDeletere: the change in Final Crisis HC
ReplyDeleteThank GOD.
It's clear (after the whole thing came out) that the 12 issues that Morrison wrote (FC 1-7, Batman 62-683, Superman Beyond 1-2 and FC: Submit) are all meant as one big 12-issue series.
This is not perfect, but a step in the right direction. Smart move, DC. Also, I will no longer have to buy the Companion.
As someone on the "other side" of Batman: RIP now, Jeffrey:
ReplyDelete- Did you feel like the hardcover spoiled a large part of Final Crisis for you (no spoilers here, of course)?
- Is there anything in Batman RIP to explain Final Crisis?
- Are there annotations at the end, a la the Infinite Crisis and Sinestro Corps hardcovers?
- Is there an introduction?
- What's the deluxe size like, as opposed to a regular hardcover?
Inquiring minds want to know! Thanks.
1) Yes and no. It's hard to explain without spoiling but I'll try. There's a very short scene where Batman's investigating the death of a "being from a higher world", but no body is shown. It DOESN'T explain how Batman got into the situation he's in, but I'm thinking that it's not strictly necessary to know how he got to this point, the question is HOW he gets out of it. And even that is pretty vague. Like... all of R.I.P.
ReplyDelete2) No mention of Final Crisis whatsoever, other than in the author credits section. Which is probably the way to go, I think.
3) No Morrison notes like in Seven Soldiers, sadly. There's only a sketchbook section on Tony Daniels's art, though we do see some of Morrison's layout suggestions. But that's it.
4) Nope.
5) The format's the same size as Jeff Smith's Shazam!, i.e. it's smaller than an Absolute but bigger than a Marvel oversized HC. Much higher quality paper stock. But essentially it's just a bigger version of the regular HC, complete with the fake stitch-binding. (As in all of DC's hardcovers other than the Absolutes have that appearance of stitch binding, but if you look closely it's really glue holding the pages together.) Still, for the price of a regular HC it's worth it.
yeah, just got the deluxe RIP edition (was there a regular edition i missed somewhere?) and it's got the last rites story. which, as JHQ points out, makes for a bizarre collection.
ReplyDeleteas for final crisis, there seem to be no details in the last rites story, so we'll see. but the internet pretty much spoiled FC for me, not that it'll stop me from reading it.
DC went straight to deluxe for Batman RIP, Nova, which I'm actually in favor of. For the same price, it'd make a hardcover far more worth it for me if it was semi-oversized.
ReplyDeleteGreat answers, Jeffrey. Thanks for all the info.
Yeah, I like the deluxe as well, I'm just vaguely annoyed that it doesn't match my other 2 morrison batman books (batman and son, the black glove). It just looks like a bad job of collecting (by myself or DC) and annoys my sense of uniformity in trade dress....
ReplyDelete