I've long been intrigued by Alan Moore's interpretation of Rob Liefeld's Superman-pastiche Supreme. From everything I've heard, it's basically a non-ironic love letter to the Silver/Bronze Age versions of Superman. After a lot of hemming and hawing, I've decided to undertake the purchasing of Alan Moore's Supreme.
There's just one problem: What is up with the collected editions??
My understanding is that there are two collections, STORY OF THE YEAR and THE RETURN, that hold (most of?) the entirety of Alan Moore's run.
Yet I've heard nothing but bad things about the production value of these two Supreme TPBs. Poor paper quality, ink comes off certain pages. Real horrorshow stuff from a collector's perspective. Also, I've heard the art itself is wildly inconsistent from great to bad.
Are there other better editions I'm not aware of? Or a new edition coming out in the foreseeable future? Who is the publisher of Supreme (seen conflicting info)? The online prices for the TPBs also vary wildly.
Should I just pony up and try to hunt down the individual issues (my current LCS doesn't carry either tpb nor the issues), even though that may cost more and will definitely be harder to acquire? How many individual issues of Alan Moore's SUPREME are there in total? How much money would this endeavor potentially cost me?