Standard sized
Deluxe
Omnibus
Absolute
For Knightfall, absolutely. It includes the Knightquest: The Crusade storyline in the new trades, which the old ones omitted. This is the storyline that has Azrael as Batman. Originally the trades went from Azrael becoming Batman straight to Bruce coming back healed to take back the mantle. Unfortunately the new trades leave out Knightquest: The Search, which shows how Bruce's back is healed, but still, the new trades are a definite improvement. They also include Prodigal, the storyline where Dick Grayson takes up the mantle for a period.
No Man's Land the new trades are more complete, but many of the "new" issues included are issues of Azrael, which aren't wholly necessary. I did upgrade my trades, but I can't say that the new issues added a large amount, but they don't hurt either.
For Murderer/Fugitive, I think it's a worthwhile upgrade, but YMMV. The original trades edited many issues to stick to just the Murderer/Fugitive storyline, which made it very readable without the extra subplots, but obviously some folks (like me) would prefer the unedited issues. The new editions contain the full issues, which include those unrelated subplots, and so there are some cliffhangers that are left dangling because they're continued in issues of Nightwing, Robin etc. that are unrelated to Murderer/Fugitive. The new trades also include some issues not originally in the old trades. Many of the issues don't add much (like the Robin issues), but there are some Brubaker-penned Batman issues that are pretty important (and just good comics to boot!) that were strangely omitted from the old trades (namely, Batman 601-602, and 604.)
I remember reading Vol 3 (my first time reading the Knightfall event) and wondering how the players had gotten to their current place in the story. It was a pretty bad choice not to include the Search. That said, I would hardly say the books are worthless. I enjoyed them quite a bit and was able to follow the plot just fine.
I'm going to have to disagree. As I recall, it was fairly well-written, and it also introduced the Hood (it might have been his first appearance), who ended up becoming a fairly major player in the whole Batman Inc. thing under Morrison, so it would be good for readers to be able to catch up on that character. The arc also continued the dangling plot regarding Jack Drake.
boom! Sold! Plus I do collect Bat-family titles such as Robin, Nightwing, BoP, Catwoman so it'll be nice to have the full issues.
And I already have the Knightfall (waited forever for that one!) and NML reprints.
They're definitely a big improvement (if only for the Prodigal reprint) but I agree that it's stupid for DC to make basically the ultimate Knightfall collection and not include it (likewise with the NML reprint not including a Road to NML trade and one for Aftershock). I guess they're planning an Omnibus to include it
It wasn't great but it's wasn't bad either and I didn't mind the whole Shondra thing. Plus I remember some interesting stuff with Alfred and I really enjoyed the Alan Grant stuff in SotB.
Plus iirc you need to read some stuff to make sense of what happened to the characters if you were to skip it.
Last edited by Drakul; 06-05-2014 at 09:28 PM.
"This cannot be...Is... Is it an omen?!"
I kind of wish DC would just bite the bullet and put out a bunch of golden age Batman in huge Omnibus collections. If nothing else, I think a big 1000 page book of just every Joker appearance from 1940 on would be really cool to have. I see they are putting out one for the 75th anniversary, but it is like a third of that size and probably is about the same as the Joker stories they have done before.
I’ve been thinking of picking up Absolute Blackest Night, but what with the Green Lantern Geoff Johns Omnibus Vol. 1 and Brightest Day Omnibus on their way (both in my sights), what do you all think of the chances of DC releasing in the not so distant future a Blackest Night Omnibus or even more likely a Green Lantern Geoff Johns Omnibus Vol. 2 including the Blackest Night issues? The latter seems a very high probability.