>>56966
>Yes, it is. The series is called "Detective Comics" Just like the series One Piece is called "One Piece".
No, the series called "One Piece" is distributed in a magazine called Shonen Jump. The series called "Batman" was distributed in a magazine called Detective Comics. Then it was successful so it got a spinoff, but the original continued. But the point remains that Detective Comics is analogous to Shonen Jump, not to One Piece.
>No, they don't. In fact, none of the comic companies have released a single collection where it's just "one series" for the past, almost, fifteen to twenty years.
Really? They stopped making the Marvel Masterworks and Essential Collections fifteen to twenty years ago? And DC stopped publishing the Archive Editions and Showcase Presents collections? Damn. Time flies. And I never even knew. I only ever bought them used anyway. But they were how I liked to collect physical comics. But they were still far too expensive to buy new.
>First, I don't care. Second, that's their problem for writing these series like that in the first place. And also isn't an issue exclusive to comics.
If you have any interest in actually reading a story in the clearly intended way, then you should care. And that would be the reason to collect these reprints, so that you can actually read the physical books. I also have autism for viewing series in release order, but for the big comic characters who have three or four books going on at the same time, each telling their own multi-part arcs that are supposed to be in the same continuity, that sucks. It's not the way they're actually supposed to be read. It's a quirk of how they're published.
When else does this happen, outside of comics? Manga very rarely has a series that is published in multiple magazines at the same time. TV shows never have this level of crossover, except for recent attempts at adapting DC and Marvel (particularly DC with those CW shows and the DCAU), and those hardly count since they're adapting the stuff we're talking about. Vidya doesn't do it since episodic games thankfully aren't the norm, and crossovers aren't very common (especially in any story important fashion).
>So they exclude the reprinted stories, and ONLY the reprinted stories. Where's the issue?
That's what they do. But what you're suggesting isn't just to exclude the stories in Superman magazine that were originally reprints, but to also exclude the stories that were originally published in Action Comics, World's Finest, and all the other Superman magazines. You'd be missing many stories/chapters, including ones that the stories original to Superman magazine would expect you to know, since effectively they are really all one series. As early as 1940, Robin was introduced in Detective Comics #38, and then that same month, Batman #1 included stories with Robin, that expected you to know him from Detective Comics. Batman #1 also introduced Joker and Catwoman, and then later Batman stories published in Detective Comics expect you to know them, because really all the Batman comics being published were part of a single series, even if published in different magazines.
>I want to read the 881 issues of Detective Comics, in order, without interruption, from when the series started in 1937 to when it ended in 2011.
You think I'm missing your point, but you're missing mine. Due to Batman becoming an essential part of Detective Comics, eventually taking over the entire thing, you can't just collect Detective Comics and expect to know what's going on, since the Batman stories in Detective Comics are less than half of Batman stories in continuity. Or rather, perhaps it would make more sense to call them chapters in this context. Collecting only Detective Comics wouldn't make sense for this reason. You could, but before long you'd be getting only every second (then third) chapter of a story. You can see these problems for yourself if you try to read Marvel Masterworks or Essential collections of any characters with multiple series. Before long, chapters in Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Comics start referring to things the Human Torch did in his spinoff series, because really those Human Torch series are the same series, just with chapters published in different magazines. And that's a mild example. It gets much worse with the Avengers, and then worse than that with Spider-Man, once he gets popular enough to star in three series at once.
So okay, you can collect just Detective, or Action, but you're gonna be left confused before too long, if you actually try to read them.
Also, Detective Comics didn't end in 2011, it merely restarted its numbering. They started calling it "Volume 2," but there was no difference, at least no more than after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And later they reverted to the original numbering, so now they're back at Volume 1. You're clearly a casual. And that's okay, I'm happy to teach you the basics and help you find the things you'd like to read and enjoy, but don't act so confident when you don't know what you're talking about.
>No, they don't.
They do up to the points that the collection series get cancelled. I have every Spider-Man story up to the early '80s in the form of the Essential reprints. I have every '60s Fantastic Four story the same way. But the problem is the series are so long, and the audience so niche, and the companies too stupid to make the product cheap and well distributed enough, that the whole series is rarely finished. They do them in order but eventually it becomes unprofitable because nobody is buying Spider-Man Vol 15 without also buying Spider-Man Vol 14. Each volume gets diminishing returns. Of course I think this could be improved by the companies involved, but it's not that only "Greatest Hits" are published.
>No, it was a comic series.
Comics have traditionally been published in magazines. Detective Comics is a magazine to this day. Inside that magazine, there used to be multiple features, different stories all bundled together in one book. Some of these stories were popular enough to get sequels and become series. Some of these series included Slam Bradley, Speed Saunders, and eventually Batman. But Batman was so popular that eventually he took over the entire magazine. His feature became longer and longer, so there was less space in every issue for other features. Eventually his series was the only feature.
And if this was the extent of it, it would be somewhat easy to understand. Journey Into Mystery got taken over by Thor in the same way, and they just changed the name of the magazine to Thor. But before Batman took over all of Detective, he also got a spinoff, called Batman. So Batman's series was so popular it was now published across two different books. Actually three, because there was also World's Finest, which was half Superman and half Batman (and eventually, in the '50s, they started crossing over and eventually it became a series about them teaming up). But the point remains that "Batman" is the series, Detective Comics is the magazine it was originally published in, and eventually one of three magazines that it was published across.
Of course there were also newspaper comics, but those were a separate continuity, and have been collected. Since they are far fewer overall (though there are still tons of them), they've been reprinted in collections that are much simpler to understand.
>Monty Python and SNL
Good analogy, sort of. These days SNL does upload just collections of a series of sketches. You can go and find official uploads of every Wayne's World or Celebrity Jeopardy or whatever. But I get your point. Did they ever actually release physical editions of every season of SNL? I doubt it. I think that makes the season collections much more analogous to Marvel's Essential collections.
If SNL had spinoff series that had continuity with their recurring sketches, and the original sketches continued at the same time as the spinoff series, but those spinoff series were released in separate collections, that would be much more annoying. In fact, even in that "Every Wayne's World Ever" video on the official SNL Youtube channel, it is a bit annoying that the later sketches reference the movie, but the movie isn't included. Of course that's a movie so it's slightly understandable. And it's not as bad as just a second weekly show that has half the adventures of Wayne and Garth but was just left out anyway.
>So all the stuff that came before Batman, and outside of Batman, is "not important" at all whatsoever and is material that isn't worth being read by absolutely anyone on this fucking planet or any other for that matter?
When did I say that? I even said it would be cool to collect it, but it might be more practical to leave out the Batman stories, because there are simply so many of them, and eventually they become the entire series, and they're already collected since they're much less niche, and fit better in a different format (which includes the spinoff Batman series). It would also be cool and perhaps even more practical to release at least a volume or two of every Slam Bradley story, since that's much more doable. He's a somewhat known character so people might buy it. Maybe. But unfortunately I'm sure DC management figures that not enough people would buy the fourth or fifth volumes of Detective Comics collected editions, since the Batman stories are the only ones that more than a very niche audience wants to read. Do I want to? Yes. I have. But I also unfortunately understand that very few people agree with me.
But of course this is moving the goalposts slightly. The point remains that Detective Comics is analogous to Shonen Jump, not to One Piece, and you're not mad that they don't publish collections of every Shonen Jump ever.