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So many great runs have come and gone. Some return in the form of trades, but not all of them. Some stay buried in vaults and back issue bins when a trade would be so beneficial. 

I have only recently started reading trade paperbacks with certain titles. There are single issues that I don’t own, and don’t have time to search for, so a trade is the only way I can read the stories. It seems like such a great way to read comics and not have to worry about bags and boards. If every great comic story could be in trade form, reading comics would be great. But there is a problem, not all comic stories are traded. Which leads me to the question, where is the trade?

It is very common to see recently released comics published in trade paper back form. As soon as a story arc is over, the whole story is released and collected in a trade. This has become such a common practice that there are readers out there who don’t read single issues anymore, they will only read trades. Like I mentioned earlier, this is only a recent trend. In the past only popular books got traded. Now, the only comics that consistently get traded are ones in which the story arc has ended, and comics that were popular more than ten years ago.

In many cases, books that were popular ten years ago are still traded today; look at V for Vendetta or Sandman. They were released years ago, yet I can still find them easily at a book store or comic shop.  What about other popular stories? Where is the trade paperback of Jim Lee’s run on X-men?  Where can I find the trade for DC’s Starman? It was a great series from the 90’s and I’ve picked up rumors that they will release a trade for that series.

Taking a publisher’s standpoint I can understand why they might be hesitant to print books that no one is going buy. However, another viewpoint is that publishers seem to always pick the wrong comics to release in trade. If fans keep asking for the same trade to be released and that trade never sees the light day, something else must have been released. Something that the fans did not ask for, something that fans did not want, something that stays on the shelf for a long time. It is as if publishers are picking the wrong comics to trade and seeing poor sales, which prevent them from producing trades of books people want to buy. It is a cycle which publishers can not escape.

Although not entirely. Fans have learned who at respective publishers to talk to in order to find out which series will get trade treatments. In some cases fans have been able to strongly hint at what should be traded. While the final decision may rest with the publishers, fans can help publishers make those decisions. Fans need to start asking, “Where is the trade?”