2000 AD Online Forum

I'm halfway through Fantagraphics' boxed set collection of Humbug, and I'm thinking, between Dark Horse's Herbie archives and DC's Starman omnibus series (volume three out this week!) and Kirby collections and the forthcoming Complete Playboy Gahan Wilson collection coming in October, I am totally willing to shell out lots of money for really nice, thick hardcover collections of my favorite comics.

Rogue Trooper barely, barely qualifies as a favorite comic, and I don't see any particular need to downgrade from the nice glossy paper of the existing editions for a phonebook.  But if Rebellion could see their way into putting together a series of 300-page hardbacks on nice paper, with the omitted "apocrypha" stories from the Extreme Edition (like the Alan Moore one-shots and Cinnabar), then I would definitely upgrade for those.

What do you say, Rebellion?  How about trying some companion volumes to Thrill-Power Overload of that size, price and shape?

Throw in Pete Milligan's The fanatics & Stevie's with you.

Did anyone else purchase Titan's Tank Girl hardcover from last year? Beautifully packaged & old-skool prog sized to boot -- I'd love for Rebellion to utilise the same format.

No Rogue phonebooks? Bollocks to that, the phonebooks are great, nothing wrong with the print or the paper, and great value for money. More phonebooks! Phonebooks for everything! As many phonebooks as possible.

I think they should do them as cheaply as possible. Whether Rogue trooper was all that good or not (I say not...), reprinting them all in massive cheap volumes allows one to re-evaluate them. My older brother wasn't a great comics reader, but he loved Rogue trooper and Slaine (!). I wonder if he'd have the patience to made through 240-odd pages of it?

There are always going to be certain characters which appeal to non-comics readers more than they appeal to comics readers. Like the X-Men, for example. So many times when I've gone into Forbidden Planet I've overheard "Look - X-Men comics, like in the film; I want to get some of those." Gullible twats. So many times when I've been introduced to somebody and they've discovered I'm a 2000ad reader, they've said "I've never been a regular reader," or "I used to read my brother's copy", before adding "Is Slaine/Rogue Trooper still in it? He was always my favourite character."

Also it only makes sense to reprint Rogue Trooper (cheaply), otherwise you're failing to capitalize on a potential market among fans of the console games based on the character.

QuoteAlso it only makes sense to reprint Rogue Trooper (cheaply), otherwise you're failing to capitalize on a potential market among fans of the console games based on the character.

Is true. My son loved the game, and the look of awe on his face when I showed him that there was a comic of it too was priceless.

Well, Titan's hardbacks are a little too thin for the job at hand, gorgeous though they may be.  The Starman books are more like what I have in mind - 300 or so pages on very nice paper.  You've got to increase the page count to make them viable, when we all bought 160-page Rogue collections just three years ago.  "Phonebooking" them doesn't make sense to me as a consumer - why do I need to pay $30 just to get the first two Rogue books AGAIN under one set of covers?  The package needs to be a lot more durable than a phonebook.

Art, I'd like for Marvel Comics to release Essentials of everything, too.  But I also want them to continue releasing Masterworks.  Rebellion hasn't started.  I'm not paying for Rogue Trooper again unless I get it in a nice, durable format with a dustjacket and sewn binding.

I like the phonebooks too.  Is this not a discussion about presentation over content?  Personally I love the Dredd phonebooks because I get a shit load of fantastic comics to read and at a price I can afford to fork out for at least a couple of times a year.

So for me to get the content is more important than the format.  Just not such a collector I guess more of a reader

Hardbacks: Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phonebooks: YaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaY!

Regular collections: YaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaY!

Well, I can see I'm outvoted here.  Shame, because Thrill-Power Overload certainly showed that Rebellion can produce wonderful hardbacks, and I'd love to see classic stories in that format.

I imagine that the reason Rebellion dropped the hardback line was that sales of them generally weren't that high, specifically in relation to the sales of the non-hardback collections, and that it therefore was more financially viable to produce softbacks. (purely my thoughts on the subject).

True, but the hardbacks Rebellion produced (and still do - there's a Volgan War hardback due in a couple of months) are not what I'm talking about.  I didn't buy those either.

Compare "Family" or the original "Red Seas" book to the current batch of Jack Kirby omnibus books from DC.

I see where you're coming from GG - I think I too might be drawn to an all-singing all-(disco)-dancing Rogue Trooper 'Masterwork' rather than another Casefile, if I already owned the slimmer collections.  As I don't, cheap Casefiles would still be the way to go for me.  I would however like to see the 'better' stories getting the deluxe treatment - a HC Halo Jones with sketches, notes, covers and an intro from Gibson would sorely tempt me, as would a large shiny Nemesis Books I-IV with mountains of Millsiana, including letters from fans and disgruntled memos from IPC.

As far as I can see the original Rebellion HCs weren't really an attempt to create 'archival' reprints of old material for the Tooth fan, they were more an attempt to put brand new material into something like the European BD mass market, get them onto the shelves of your local hypermarché along side Metabarons and XIII, that sort of thing.  Nice idea, but nil points for value.  Thick swanky volumes of the type GG refers to are a different matter.

I personally don't buy hardback collections cos I buy to read rather than collect and admire so Softbacks mean more story for my money. In terms of Rogue in particular I bought the collections that are out there now and only really got excited about the CF style books cos I thought they might be 'complete' and so go beyond the Finley-Day stories but as that is apparently not the case I shan't be buying. Unless I'm wrong about that?

 Phoneboks in general though are fantastic and I hope they keep on coming.Great value for money and  a real boon to those of us late to the party tryung to catch up.

I will buy Rogue Trooper phone books only if they contain material that isn't in the current collections. So far I've been obsessively completist about Rebellion's whole line of 2000AD books. I only started collecting in 2007 but I was dedicated enough to slowly but surely buy (and read) all of the stuff I'd missed so far as well as all the new releases. As a result I now have over 130 volumes sitting on my shelves (only 2 of which are likely to stay there and not be reread again - a pretty remarkable hit rate!).

Buying the same material in a different format, though, when I already have it in one consistent format is probably where I draw the line, and choose to spend the money on something I don't already have instead.

On the other hand, if Rebellion were to start collecting the all the Judge Dredd stories from the Megazine, either as part of the case files series or as a separate series of phone books (The Meg Files?) - now THAT I would buy.

Nothing officially confirmed yet, but the word is that the Case Files will include the Meg stuff as well.

As for luxury hardbacks - no thanks! If money and space were no object, then yeah, great - but otherwise I'm more than happy with the scaled-down softback format we've got right now. I actually wish I'd waited for the TPO paperback, and bought that instead of the nice yet unwieldy hardback.

Quote from: "radiator"Nothing officially confirmed yet, but the word is that the Case Files will include the Meg stuff as well.

Something I'd like to talk about further but a Rogue Trooper thread probably isn't the place for it, so I'll go start a new one.

I'm in the NO camp with you Grant! A story like Dredd can justify the "complete" treatment, and some strips (Robusters, Ace Trucking, Nemesis) are perfect for single volumes or short series, but frankly if you take the entire run of Rogue I think there's too much dross in there. It's definitely a strip that needs to have the best picks cherry-picked and other bits quietly forgotten.

Then again, I kind of lost interest as soon as he found the Traitor General, perking up only slightly with the arrival of Venus Bluegenes.

How would the Meg stuff fit in, continuity wise? Would they slot in one Meg episode for every 4 prog reprints? No, I've just re-read that and it sounds ridiculous. But seriously, how would it work?

Quote from: "dandontdare"...frankly if you take the entire run of Rogue I think there's too much dross in there. It's definitely a strip that needs to have the best picks cherry-picked and other bits quietly forgotten...

If it does turn out to be 'complete' and goes beyond what's already been reprinted I probably would end up buying it (though possibly just from where the current reprints left off). There may be a lot of dross in there but I'm kinda a sucker for completeness.

Quote from: "mygrimmbrother"How would the Meg stuff fit in, continuity wise? Would they slot in one Meg episode for every 4 prog reprints? No, I've just re-read that and it sounds ridiculous. But seriously, how would it work?

See the other thread for discussion of that!

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=25371 (http://www.2000adonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=25371)

Just wanted to chip in on the side of the phonebooks as I really do love them.

But, for best of both worlds why not put out phonebooks of ALL of it for people like me who kinda enjoy even the bad stuff (Dredd vs the Killer Car anyone?) for nostalgia value as much as anything, and then a prestige collection of the cream of Rogue Trooper for those who would prefer that?
Of course I am speaking as someone who read Trooper back in the day but currently has none of the trades so a nice volume 1 to sit on the shelf with my Dredds and Stronts and Nemesis etc would be a must buy for me.

Quote from: "bluemeanie"Dredd vs the Killer Car anyone?

Yes! Seriously, what's not to love about this (//http://yfrog.com/6d2000adprog055p18judgedrj)?

Affordable, all inclusive phonebook style reprints forever!

You know, I think there may actually be more than one killer car story.

Quote from: "Art"You know, I think there may actually be more than one killer car story.

Well Elvis the killer car already appears on Case Files #1.

Ah yeah I know, the point I was making is (or more accurately agreeing on with bluemeanie), I would hate for these reprints to start leaving out stories just because some people might consider them stupid or embarrassing or not very good, just in case anyone was thinking of doing that.

Hence, all inclusive phonebook style reprints forever you see. That's why I said that.

If Rebellion are going to do this then is there any chance they can reprint the ropey "Old Rogue" stuff ("The Hit") as well as Cinnabar?  To ignore these stories would be the equivalent of buying a band's greatest hits and finding several best-selling singles missing or remixed because the band don't like them anymore.  If the reader is buying it, chances are they'll know roughly what they're getting.

Although, as I typed that I thought "If I were Rebellion I wouldn't be reprinting stuff that a large proportion of my readership consider incredibly sub-standard".  This is so hard.  Thankfully I don't have to make the decisions, I can just pontificate drunkenly from my sofa.