Frustrations of a Comic Book Buyer

I'm currently reading JLA: Another Nail, the follow-up to Alan Davis' JLA: The Nail from about 5 or 6 years ago. I absolutely loved The Nail and was very excited last year when it was announced Davis was going to create a sequel.

Both stories are 3-issue mini-series. I bought all three issues of the original The Nail and the first issue of Another Nail came out about two weeks ago - which I bought, read, and enjoyed a great deal.

The first series was eventually collected in a trade paperback collection - but I never gave it much thought. I had the original individual issues in my collection. When Another Nail was announced I contemplated whether to buy the individual issues or wait for the inevitable collection. The benefits of waiting for the collected edition would be that I would have the complete story all at once (no waiting 30 days for the next installment), but more importantly the collected editions are usually cheaper then buying each issue individually. The savings aren't huge, but as my comic budget becomes tighter and tighter, it's something I pay more attention to.

In the end, I decided for the individual issues because 1) it would nicely balance how I bought and colleted the first series, and 2) I could read the series as it came out. I wouldn't be waiting months or maybe a year or two after the series came out to read it in collected form. DC Comics, the publisher of this series, tends to be uneven in how they decide which stories get collected and how soon after their initial print as individual stories they are re-published as a trade paperback. Because I was so eager to read the series, I didn't feel like gambling on DC's unpredictable trade collection policies, even though it could save me money in the end.

Then today I read on the Pulse:

* DCU titles scheduled to arrive in stores in December:

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: ANOTHER NAIL TP
Writer: Alan Davis
Artists: Davis & Mark Farmer
$12.95 US/$19.95 CAN, 160 pages

$12.95 for the entire collected series, available this December. Issue three of Another Nail will come out in July or August - so my wait would have only been around six months. Not too bad.

This is what frustrates me as well. Even with the 10% discount I get on all comics I buy at Graham Cracker Comics, I'll still pay $16.07 for all three issues of Another Nail. I could have gotten that same 10% discount on the trade collection of the story - $11.66 - if I had waited until December. That's $4.40. That could buy me another comic or two.

Arghhhh.

But who knew DC would turn on this so soon and who knew that they would price it so favorably? I certainly didn't. It's just another frustration of being a comic book buyer.