2000AD Tradewaiting

[Ancient Otter]

How many of you just buy the collected thrills instead of buying each prog & meg?

[Aonghus]

Instead of buying the prog?

I don't think I understand...

[flip-r mk2]

Heresy, you're supposed to buy the Prog and Meg then the trades.

filip

[IndigoPrime]

I do that with US comics, but only because of the guarantee of trades every six or so months. With 2000 AD, not only do I like the weekly 'fix', but it could be years before many of the stories are collected.

[Aonghus]

I do that with US comics, but only because of the guarantee of trades every six or so months. With 2000 AD, not only do I like the weekly 'fix', but it could be years before many of the stories are collected.

This. If only I could've been so succint!
The flipside of it is though, whenever I can afford a trade (and that's rare, and goes double for casefiles), productivity is gone for the week! The dripfeed nature of the prog means I only lose about 30 mins a week.

[Colin YNWA]

I try to do this with Meg stories for reasons discussed in the thread about why some of us don't buy both (space and money in summary). The thing is while lots of great Meg stuff is released the Dredd stories you only get sporadically and there's loads of stuff that doesn't seem to be coming. I'd love to see a collection of some of the more recent Anderson stuff, but I'd guess that's being saved for some possible future PSI files stuff?

[The Adventurer]

When I went on 'hiatus' between 2009 and 2010 I thought I'd do this. But... it didn't exactly work out. I think Zombo was the only trade I'd picked up of new material I'd missed during that period, but when I got it I was just about getting back into the Weekly with Prog 2011.

I did eventually pick up Nikolia Dante: Hero of the Revolution, Judge Dredd - Tour of Duty: The Backlash, and Cradlegrave, but that was after I was reading 2000 AD weekly again.

Plus now after the Winter 2000 AD Shop sale I've got all the singles from 2009-2010 filled in.

So yeah. Not the best experiment ever. Mostly due to how long it takes to accumulate enough material to put out a trade. I think I was mostly buying trades of material I'd already read in the Prog between 2004-2008 during my hiatus years (Kingdom, Stickleback, Shakara, Dante, Dredd, etc...)

Oh and picked up the Insurrection TP too, I think that might be the ONLY collection of Meg material that's come out since I stopped buying the Meg in 2008 (except maybe Anderson Psychic Crime Files)

[vark]

Like IndigoPrime, I found tradewaiting for 2000AD stuff too long and unsecured (Black Siddah, Dinosty). It's the mere reason I've subscibed months ago.

[Spaceghost]

I buy the prog, Meg and also selected trades of the stuff I really like.

I've got the trade collections of Shakara, Zombo, Cabs, Stickleback, Kingdom, Defoe all the latest Dredd books and I'm also collecting the Nikolai Dante books, despite having all of them in prog/Meg form.

That's on top of collecting all the various Case File format reprints. Rebellion get a lot of my money.

I just love being able to take a book off the shelf and read Tour of Duty or Defoe on the train. Can't do that with the prog (easily).

[klute]

I do that with US comics, but only because of the guarantee of trades every six or so months. With 2000 AD, not only do I like the weekly 'fix', but it could be years before many of the stories are collected.

Yeah i'm now looking at going the trade route with the US comics,eventually as much of my collection of single issues will be gone. in favour of collected editions.

[IndigoPrime]

I'd also argue there's often a density issue. 2000 AD can pack as much into six pages as a US comic gets you in a single issue. When I used to sub to some US comics, I'd fly through them, and it felt terribly lightweight and expensive. I'd probably make exceptions for Usagi Yojimbo and the Hellboy universe, but I'm nonetheless happy buying trades for those too.

[hippynumber1]

I must confess that I wait for the trades these days; I only buy the Meg (much as I enjoy it) for the floppies - I started buying again only after Extreme Editions were cancelled. Like most, I simply ran out of space. I'm also in the process of selling all my old American stuff where the story is easily replaced with a trade...

[SmallBlueThing]

I buy the prog and the Meg- then bag and board 'em, box them (or, er, stack them when I run out of the proper boxes- like now) and buy trades of all the stories I really like. In practice, this means anything and everything by Pat Mills, with selected others. Early black and white strips get first dibs at my cash because they tend to be the strips I want to reread without further damaging the actual progs.

Recent acquisitions from the 2000AD stable include Black Hawk and Harry 20. I also buy the Case Files as they come out, but I'm not overly bothered with The Restricted Files or The Anderson PSI Files. Similarly, the early Stront Agency Files sit on my shelf- but only one of the later trades. Actually, maybe two, I'd have to go check.

So basically, I pick and choose. I have no overwhelming desire to get everything, trade-wise-and certainly not different editions of the same books. Obviously, I have a lot of space in my house devoted to comics and trades (not to mention over 5000 books...) and I'm in the process of thinning it out. We need to downsize, and I can't lug these around forever- which is one of the reasons I've not yet followed up on the kind offers made by boarders recently to do swopsies to help me fill out my Spidey collection. I went up in my attic, as I said I would- and instead of the three longboxes I expected to find up there, I brought down seven. Suh-eh-vern. I have over twice as many US comics as I thought, and need to get rid. I remember as a kid, hearing that some celeb (Bob Monkhouse maybe) had 2000 consecutive issues of the Beano, and thinking "I like comics, but that sounds like too many- where would you put them?" I have FAR more issues of Tharg's stuff than that now, and that often is foremost in my mind when I trip over a box of comics while going to bed. I don't, basically, want to end up like Mr Trebus from A Life Of Grime.

With regard to non-Tharg NEW stuff. I stopped buying US floppies when the kids were born- but in the last year I've started again with Walking Dead, Swamp Thing, Night Force, Frankenstein, Wonder Woman and All-Star Western. While I still "trade up" Walking Deads, I won't be buying any of the others in trade form, and to be truthful, have enjoyed seeing a slowly growing pile of DCs on top the bookcase in the dining room. And yes, I know how this contradicts the third paragraph above, but somehow it's different. Don't ask.

SBT

[Large48]

So Mr SmallBlueTrebus I have a bad or stuff for you to pick up at Demoncon as well! 

[Frank]

I was determined to eschew The Prog and buy individual collected editions instead, but I miss the anticipation of the comic dropping through the letterbox and the seratonin hit of my weekly read.

During the long School Summer holidays, I used to read and re-read each issue of 2000ad with such intensity that some of my earliest progs have been worn away to grubby, staple-less rags. The launch of The Megazine coincided with my first job, and I pretended to clean out the stores every other Thursday so I could have a marathon reading session of both titles as soon as they arrived.

I'm looking forward to having the grind of my working week alleviated and delineated by the mounting expectation and rosy afterglow of 2000ad's (re)appearance in my life. I'll enjoy having a Summer of Chaos, but I wish I'd given in and rejoined at the start of Wagner's latest epic; that's one Trade I'll definitely still have to buy.