Let's Kill the Prestige Format
Let's Kill the Prestige Format
Feb 13When Young Matt first got going in the realm of collecting ye olde comicke bookes, playing with formats was all the rage.
Remember the “New Format”? Slightly better paper, slightly higher price tag? Wasn’t there a “Newsstand Format” too, which was basically “Same Old Crappy Comic Book Format”? And of course, WAY back in the day, the Baxter Format, whatever that means.
Part of me misses the format fun, especially since today’s comics seem to arrive with haphazard formats that have nothing to do with anything. One month, you get glossy paper and a so-so cover; the next month, it’s matted paper and a cardstock cover.
One thing I do not miss–one thing I think the Big Two especially need to stake through the heart–is the Prestige Format.
You know of what I speak. Heavy stock cover, high-end paper, square bound spine, but not so many pages–like 48 or so. And a hefty price tag to go with its name.
Back in the day, the Prestige Format made sense. Trade paperbacks were the exception, not the rule. Comics needed a format to tell a more evolved story with longer chapters. It became–dare I say?–a more ADULT format, at first. Then it just became an excuse to sell crap at a high price.
Today, paying $5.99 for just one chapter in a longer story, and a short chapter at that, is a RIP-OFF and exploitation. Plain and simple. For $6.99, I can get a Marvel digest with four complete issues. For $7.99, I can get a bigger digest. Add just four more dollars–$9.99–and you’re in the range of a low-end trade paperback, or if you shop online, a $14.99 price-point trade at a discounted price.
And then, when the prestige books are collected, how do you price that? Is it like $19.99 for a four-issue series? I guess that’s not too bad…but who would actually bother to buy the “floppies” (which actually don’t flop all that much, thanks to the heavy stock cover) when they could just wait for the trade?
The Prestige Format: Lacks the value of a trade, with a higher price tag than your average monthly book. SUCKY.
I don’t recall a newstand format, just newstand edition, which meant, “same old crappy comic, but with a UPC mark so supermarkets could scan them.” The irony being, few grocery and convinence stores still stock single issue comics.
I’m not sure I’m on the Perfect Bound format is a rip-off train just yet. I think it still exists as the niche format where stories of a certain art level, but only two – four issues go (and hence, aren’t quite enough for a trade paperback.)
The only, but perhaps best example, that comes to mind is JSA: The Liberty File, which was two issues. Then three years later, they followed up with a second two issue series, The Unholy Three. And once that was done, THEN they had enough, that they put all four together into one TPB.
I’m not a big fan of when it gets used to sell us four to 12 issues of something (I’m looking at you Frank Miller – I didn’t need to read the new Dark Knight that badly), but there are a lot of stories out there that are two issue, but deserve more than the basic format – Superboy’s Legion comes to mind, but most likely because A)I still need the second issue and B) at a mere two issues, it’s not getting collected anywhere else, so I’m hooped.
I’d argue that these two-to-four issue prestige series should instead start being published as one-off graphic novels, in some kind of trade paperback-like format, at a price point that reflects the value but doesn’t put it into the trade range. Maybe $9.99?
but then we get into the price thing as being too much for someone to spend on, say, a Howard Chaykin Guy Gardner story or something.
Is that what set this off with you? The Guy Gardner book? Because I’m right there with you. That was a waste of a perfectly good perfect bound print run. And my money. Bleh.
What actually set me off was the Jeff Smith Shazam book, and how I want to read it, but feel like a mook for paying $5.99 an issue.
the Guy Gardner book? I got that in a dollar bin at a con a few weeks ago. Haven’t read it yet, but I’d be stunned if Chaykin drawing and writing Guy Gardner isn’t worth two dollars.
TWO DOLLARS!
Yeah, ok – two bucks’ll do it. I paid cover. Dammit. Now, the Shazam, I’m not as bad on, but that’s one that I could totally see them selling collected, easy.
I think however there’s a business dude in the mix somewhere, and that department is pushing the sell-it-to-the-freaks-first-TPB-later-for-the-straights agenda.
Somedays, it sucks to be a freak.