Just received word that DC Comics will release Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory in hardcover format in 2010.
This should in truth come as no surprise given the current popularity of (A) hardcover collections and (B) Grant Morrison.
Bigger yet is the news that this will likely not be a four volume set like the Seven Soldiers of Victory paperbacks, but rather two oversized volumes collecting the thirty-part miniseries.
My question to you is: there was much controversy about the way DC originally collected Seven Soldiers (linearly, rather than by character story). So, this time around, would you like to see the collection ordered by character, or presented the same way as the paperbacks?
Gotta be same as printed schedule (and tpbs). I know people wanted the books by title, but it's not how Morrison intended it, so why mess with the format?
ReplyDeleteMostly chronological order is the way to go. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the stories (e.g. Mister Miracle?) didn't really have story points interact with any of the other stories until SS #1. I think you could move those four together (they're close together in the trades) without a huge change in the overall story.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the same as the trades.
ReplyDeleteI know Morrison originally intended for the individual SSoV series to be read independently of each other, but I think it's pretty clear that that particular plan went off the rails pretty quickly. I don't think it works quite as well if you changed the current reading order.
ReplyDeleteBob: Don't have my copy with me at the moment, but I'm pretty sure the third chapter of Mister Miracle had a cameo by Klarion and the kids racing through the streets in a taxi, and Jake Jordan chasing after Carla. Then again, it turns out by the end that everything was a dream (kinda), so unless I was seriously misreading the book I don't know how THAT works.
This makes me want to hawk-off my collections of Seven Soldiers. Part of me wants a big $80 omnibus too.
ReplyDeleteIt should be chronological order.
i'd like the order to be by series; what i'd really like is one volume collecting everything.
ReplyDeleteEach series can definitely be read on its own, as if they were the first four issues of seven new ongoing books. However, as an entire megaseries, they should be read (and, as such, collected) in publishing order--story bits weave in and out, and while it's not essential to read it that way, you get more out of the overall series by doing so.
ReplyDeleteThere may be a few concerns for those that can't remember exactly what happens from issue to issue, when there are issues of other titles in between--but ultimately, I feel that a reader will get more out of the book in its intended order than if they read it by series.
Makes me want to hawk my SSOV trades, too.
ReplyDeleteOne volume collecting the whole nine yards would be tough to hold in your lap; settle for two volumes?
Now, if they can get the JLA Classified story in there ...
Would prefer a single volume myself with the JLA Classified story included. I don't enjoy reading them in publication order and would definitely prefer to have them organised by series.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the Kirby Omnibuses (Omnibi?), printing them in their original publication order. I've been tempted by the SS trades, honestly. But if the collections were done as two Omnibuses, I'd be okay with that.
ReplyDeleteI can't recally where I read it, but someone re-read the whole series in publication order and found a lot of things really linked up.
There's a couple of nasty printing errors in the trades I really hope they fix for this.
ReplyDeleteThe trades ommit the titles of the individual stories from the page, despite them forming the ends of sentances begun by the caption boxes.
So, for example, you get pages that should have read -
"Can you imagine... FRANKENSTEIN IN FAIRYLAND!"
just reading -
"Can you imagine..."
There's also an error in the trades that carried through from the original comics. This is in Frankenstien #1's train crash scene, where a caption box saying "1955" in placed in the panel immediately before the one it belongs in, making the sequence of events very hard to follow.
I'm happy with whatever order they collect the minis in, and I'll decide whether to ditch my trades for these based on whether on not they fix these little glitches.
I have wondered about that train crash/1955 page -- thanks for clarifying that!
ReplyDelete