Marvel Collected Editions

[jjsheridan1001]

Has anyone else noticed IST doesn't ship as quickly as they used to? Usually I don't mind due to backlog, but I want my Infinity Gauntlet ASAP, so this time it's frustrating.

I started using IST because of the feedback of folks on this board (instead of Amazon, which I've used for years but got increasingly angry at having to return damaged books every week) and I've been "with them" for three months now. I've only had one order delayed what I thought was unreasonably long (this was the order, by the way, that contained the Stern Spidey omnibus, one of the most anticipated omnis of all time, IMO) and I emailed them and got a response identical to what Carbonel did. The tone of their responses to me, as well as the packaging excellence of their orders and their pricing has made me extremely happy.

I've had three shipments delayed since for a day or two and that's only because I decided to order other back stock books...so I consider those delays my fault. I will say sometimes they're not getting me my order until Friday rather than Tuesday...but for the pricing and quality I still find them the best out there.

[DangerousG]

You're gonna read DnA's GotG? Goooooooooooood

One does not simply read DnA's GOTG, you have to read the whole damn cosmic saga

Annihilation (reintroduction of Peter Quill and Drax)
Annihilation Conquest (GoTG forms)
War of Kings
Realm of Kings
Thanos Imperative

Probably around a 100 issues all together, but its soooo good.

[csista]

I started using IST because of the feedback of folks on this board (instead of Amazon, which I've used for years but got increasingly angry at having to return damaged books every week) and I've been "with them" for three months now. I've only had one order delayed what I thought was unreasonably long (this was the order, by the way, that contained the Stern Spidey omnibus, one of the most anticipated omnis of all time, IMO) and I emailed them and got a response identical to what Carbonel did. The tone of their responses to me, as well as the packaging excellence of their orders and their pricing has made me extremely happy.

I've had three shipments delayed since for a day or two and that's only because I decided to order other back stock books...so I consider those delays my fault. I will say sometimes they're not getting me my order until Friday rather than Tuesday...but for the pricing and quality I still find them the best out there.

I'm definitely sticking with them. I just noticed a change from order Tuesday, ship Wednesday, to now shipping as late as Friday, even when all books are new releases. This was more of a "Is it just me?" question.

My only real pet peeve is that the site isn't always accurate in regards to how "in stock" a book actually is. To me, in stock means there and ready to ship. Otherwise update your site 3-5 days or 5-7 days. But I've had that problem with TOW, CGN, and IST.

[gearsofcrabs]

Yeah my only problem with IST is that if you're ordering older books you're rolling the dice on whether they actually have it or not. That and the one time they didn't I didn't find out till I got my package without it saying it was coming some other time and had to email them asking if actually was or not in stock. They responded promptly and gave me a refund for the book quick though. Just didn't think that was the way I should've found out they didn't actually have the book though.

[Peter Parker]

Speaking of IST looks like the Infinity Gauntlet DM cover is sold out.

[krisis]

I don't want to rehash a Bendis conversation that could live in another thread, so I'll try to have it in terms of the collections of his I've read and my immediate reaction to keep it relevant.

Avengers Disassembled - "Decent for a hot mess of a live reboot that came out of nowhere for a fake superhero team that should have been cancelled in the 90s." I read this purely out of intrigue at what lead to House of M. As a dedicated X-Men fan I've always seen the Avengers as a sort of obligatory book Marvel published to draw JLA fans, so I figured this was as good as any of their stories could get

House of M - "That was okay," which is about as much as you'll get from me about any alt-U tale other than AoA.

Dark Avengers - "Holy $@#&!" This was my first serious Bendis exposure and I had never read a superhero book like it. All of the dialog and sniping didn't bother me much, because I figured that's how a bunch of catty villains would act if they were dressed up as superheroes and locked in Avengers Tower together. Also, Bendis clearly got Daken and Moonstone, both of whom I love.

At this point, I was thinking, "Screw all those haters - this guy is funny and he can make something out of nothing in just a few issues, even when he has crap to work with."

Spider-Woman - "Yeah, Bendis is awesome."

Secret Invasion & Seige - "The plot was good, and the guy can be forgiven if he can't write event books. Can anyone?"

With his X-Men run looming and due to this accursed thread I took the plunge and picked up the NA/MA OHCs around when the Omnibus was announced.

Secret War & New/Mighty Avengers - "Hmm. Bendis has some problems." As a non-fan of Avengers, I was straight-up delighted through the first two volumes. Then the Bendis of it all sank in. No one did anything for a reason. Everyone sounded the same. Whole arcs would go by and I couldn't quite tell you what the plot was. It was all pleasant enough, but it felt like I was trapped in a spin cycle. I felt like it improved slightly with the Heroic Age because the plot got bigger, but you could tell he cared less about the cast.

Avengers vs. X-Men - The less said the better.

By now I had grown wary of him - the awesomeness of Dark Avengers was seeming like a fluke attributed to playing with a set of characters who had never had to hold non-fight panel time for several issues in a row.

All-New/Uncanny X-Men - "This makes me hate comic books." I have come full circle to understand how Avengers fans felt back in 2005. Everyone speaks in the wrong voice and it takes issues and issues for anything to happen. We are in the Dark Ages of X-Men.

Age of Ultron - "So, he only doesn't suck at events when they're not in continuity - got it!"

Daredevil - "Ugh, Bendis." I know you all like it and it won all of the awards, and it was a great plot idea, but too many pages were just painful to read. I slogged through it dutifully.

Alias, Elektra, & Moon Knight - "Yep: Bendis." Now I understood his MO. These were all a delight to read to various degrees, but Moon Knight drove it home the best. It wasn't a Moon Knight series. It was a "generic hero with some of Moon Knight's history and also his costume" series, which is the only thing Bendis knows how to write - as supported by my entire experience to date and these three books specifically.

Congratulations - now you understand my feelings towards Bendis.

One does not simply read DnA's GOTG, you have to read the whole damn cosmic saga

Annihilation (reintroduction of Peter Quill and Drax)
Annihilation Conquest (GoTG forms)
War of Kings
Realm of Kings
Thanos Imperative

Probably around a 100 issues all together, but its soooo good.

I've got all of it (including the Vulcan/Starjammers stuff) except for DnA GotG. Eagerly awaiting the TPBs so I can dig in to the entire saga.

[DantonR]

Same with Hickman. Most people liked him on Fantastic Four, and now opinions are more divided on Avengers. Maybe some people think his style is not as suited to the Avengers as it was to Fantastic Four. (Avengers is a really difficult book to write and a lot of popular writers, like Geoff Johns and Gerry Conway and Walt Simonson, have disappointed fans when they were assigned to that book.) It's the same with Rick Remender; everyone loved him on Uncanny X-Force but opinions are very divided on his Uncanny Avengers and Captain America, but it doesn't mean people who don't like his current work are rejecting his good work of the past.

My impression has been that Remender's UA is generally well received (esp. after the first arc featuring the Red Skull which left many scratching their heads (although it seems with AXIS that that is coming full circle soon). His handling of the characters and the story has been very good.

His Cap run is ... different, and I'll probably reserve overall opinion until that run is complete (Remender, like Hickman it seems, also likes to play the long game and I think his work is best looked at as a greater than the sum of its parts type thing). Regardless, I am glad to see that he did something a little different with a character who, let's face it, is hard to "re-vision".

[victorxd1999]

I don't want to rehash a Bendis conversation that could live in another thread, so I'll try to have it in terms of the collections of his I've read and my immediate reaction to keep it relevant.

Avengers Disassembled - "Decent for a hot mess of a live reboot that came out of nowhere for a fake superhero team that should have been cancelled in the 90s." I read this purely out of intrigue at what lead to House of M. As a dedicated X-Men fan I've always seen the Avengers as a sort of obligatory book Marvel published to draw JLA fans, so I figured this was as good as any of their stories could get

House of M - "That was okay," which is about as much as you'll get from me about any alt-U tale other than AoA.

Dark Avengers - "Holy $@#&!" This was my first serious Bendis exposure and I had never read a superhero book like it. All of the dialog and sniping didn't bother me much, because I figured that's how a bunch of catty villains would act if they were dressed up as superheroes and locked in Avengers Tower together. Also, Bendis clearly got Daken and Moonstone, both of whom I love.

At this point, I was thinking, "Screw all those haters - this guy is funny and he can make something out of nothing in just a few issues, even when he has crap to work with."

Spider-Woman - "Yeah, Bendis is awesome."

Secret Invasion & Seige - "The plot was good, and the guy can be forgiven if he can't write event books. Can anyone?"

With his X-Men run looming and due to this accursed thread I took the plunge and picked up the NA/MA OHCs around when the Omnibus was announced.

Secret War & New/Mighty Avengers - "Hmm. Bendis has some problems." As a non-fan of Avengers, I was straight-up delighted through the first two volumes. Then the Bendis of it all sank in. No one did anything for a reason. Everyone sounded the same. Whole arcs would go by and I couldn't quite tell you what the plot was. It was all pleasant enough, but it felt like I was trapped in a spin cycle. I felt like it improved slightly with the Heroic Age because the plot got bigger, but you could tell he cared less about the cast.

Avengers vs. X-Men - The less said the better.

By now I had grown wary of him - the awesomeness of Dark Avengers was seeming like a fluke attributed to playing with a set of characters who had never had to hold non-fight panel time for several issues in a row.

All-New/Uncanny X-Men - "This makes me hate comic books." have come full circle to understand how Avengers fans felt back in 2005. Everyone speaks in the wrong voice and it takes issues and issues for anything to happen. We are in the Dark Ages of X-Men.

Age of Ultron - "So, he only doesn't suck at events when they're not in continuity - got it!"

Daredevil - "Ugh, Bendis." I know you all like it and it won all of the awards, and it was a great plot idea, but too many pages were just painful to read. I slogged through it dutifully.

Elektra & Moon Knight - "Yep: Bendis." Now I understood his MO. This was a delight to read, but it wasn't a Moon Knight series. It was a "generic hero with some of Moon Knight's history and also his costume" series, which is the only thing Bendis knows how to write - as supported by my entire experience to date.

Congratulations - now you understand my feelings towards Bendis.



I've got all of it (including the Vulcan/Starjammers stuff) except for DnA GotG. Eagerly awaiting the TPBs so I can dig in to the entire saga.

That might be unfair, since you have only read 1 of his most appraised works. I see you haven't read Ultimate Spider-Man, Alias and Powers, it's hard to get a good view on Bendis without having read those.

[krisis]

That might be unfair, since you have only read 1 of his most appraised works. I see you haven't read Ultimate Spider-Man, Alias and Powers, it's hard to get a good view on Bendis without having read those.

Forgot Alias - I read it earlier this year and reviewed it at length on the old board, and basically my reaction was essentially "Good because he's making it up from scratch, but I still have reservations."

If I need to to read two other books outside of 616-Continuity to have a good view on Bendis (which I am 0% interested in doing), I think it's safe to say my very fair view is "He's not good at 616 books."

[victorxd1999]

Forgot Alias - I read it earlier this year and reviewed it at length on the old board, and basically my reaction was essentially "Good because he's making it up from scratch, but I still have reservations."

If I need to to read two other books outside of 616-Continuity to have a good view on Bendis, I think it's safe to say my view is "He's not good at 616 books."

My view on Bendis is that he is not a bad writer, he just is good at his own thing. He finds it hard to capture different voices and then you get stuff like "his Moon knight is good, but it wasn't Moon knight". When he can't capture a voice he just turns it into another voice he can capture. He's also not very good at stories with too much characters. That's why his best stories are mostly stories with new/unfamiliar characters (of which he can create his own voice) and stories with 1 street level character main character he can focus on. That's why I find it very curious that he stays Marvel only, if his most of his best stories are stories with his own characters. Why doesn't he start more indie comics? That would be worthwhile I think

[DrGregatron]

I started using IST because of the feedback of folks on this board (instead of Amazon, which I've used for years but got increasingly angry at having to return damaged books every week) and I've been "with them" for three months now. I've only had one order delayed what I thought was unreasonably long (this was the order, by the way, that contained the Stern Spidey omnibus, one of the most anticipated omnis of all time, IMO) and I emailed them and got a response identical to what Carbonel did. The tone of their responses to me, as well as the packaging excellence of their orders and their pricing has made me extremely happy.

I've had three shipments delayed since for a day or two and that's only because I decided to order other back stock books...so I consider those delays my fault. I will say sometimes they're not getting me my order until Friday rather than Tuesday...but for the pricing and quality I still find them the best out there.

I still buy from IST, but boy have they become slow over the last several months. They often used to ship next day for me, but my last half dozen orders have been delayed between a few days to almost 2 weeks for one order. One of the books I ordered must not have been in stock and it took them some time to get it from Diamond. The last time I ordered books, I ordered from CGN because I suspected the books wouldn't be in stock at InStockTrades, and CGN can usually get things to my door in a week or less--that's because I think CGN usually stocks the items that say "in stock".

[Spirou]

Maybe I should put "welcome to the thread, sorry about your wallet" in the intro...

or something like "warning: poverty hazard!"

[bugrom]

Maybe I should put "welcome to the thread, sorry about your wallet" in the intro...

Seriously. Since I started reading this thread and the other collected edition threads a couple months ago, I have spent an uncomfortably large amount on omnibuses and other OHCs. Fortunately, this has coincided with me getting rid of some other stuff on ebay so basically my Paypal balance from that goes right to Instocktrades often these days. I am not complaining though.

[grahamgg]

Yeah my only problem with IST is that if you're ordering older books you're rolling the dice on whether they actually have it or not. That and the one time they didn't I didn't find out till I got my package without it saying it was coming some other time and had to email them asking if actually was or not in stock. They responded promptly and gave me a refund for the book quick though. Just didn't think that was the way I should've found out they didn't actually have the book though.

I think out of all the years I've been using IST/DCBS they were only out of stock on something I ordered once or twice and they were very quick to offer a solution (refund, alternate books, etc). They do have some fairly older books on their site though. I read somewhere they are an actual brick & mortar store which also just happens to have an online store/webpage. So if a customer comes in off the street and buys that 1997 Hulk Ghosts of the Past TP before you grab it online, it's just tough luck.

I don't want to rehash a Bendis conversation that could live in another thread, so I'll try to have it in terms of the collections of his I've read and my immediate reaction to keep it relevant...

First Bendis I ever read was Ultimate Spidey #1 and was immediately hooked. It probably helped matters that the core 616 Spidey books had completely been derailed by the Mackie/Byrne reboot for the previous year. USM was a complete breath of fresh air to the Spidey books. For a while there it was pretty much the only readable Spidey book IMO (Well there was Paul Jenkins' Peter Parker series but it was always playing 2nd fiddle to the dreck that was happening over in ASM). USM read & sounded so different from every other Spider book and most of all...it was GOOD.

After I enjoyed USM so much, I quickly picked up Powers and later read DD, Elektra, New Avengers, and Alias. Haven't really read much of his later stuff aside from Age of Ultron.

I saw a quote online somewhere once that I agree with, which said "Bendis basically has one voice for his characters ... they all sound the same". And when you think about it, it's basically true. For example, the poster went on to comment that Sam & Twitch is basically Powers set in the Spawn Universe. I haven't read S&T so I can't comment to that, but definitely noticed similarities in conversations at the Daily Bugle in USM (or DD) which read like PG-rated version of conversations from Powers.

I still buy from IST, but boy have they become slow over the last several months. They often used to ship next day for me, but my last half dozen orders have been delayed between a few days to almost 2 weeks for one order. One of the books I ordered must not have been in stock and it took them some time to get it from Diamond. The last time I ordered books, I ordered from CGN because I suspected the books wouldn't be in stock at InStockTrades, and CGN can usually get things to my door in a week or less--that's because I think CGN usually stocks the items that say "in stock".

I've tried to order a couple of books from CGN before where they came back and said they were out of stock or cancelled the order, or partially shipped it, then when I checked the website again the book was there but at a higher price b/c OOP. I get it. They're a business and want to make a profit.

[Phelpzy]

Hey can someone tell me if any pics of the two iron fist collections have been posted on here before before I dig page by page looking