Standard sized
Deluxe
Omnibus
Absolute
"You don't ever quit. Not even to your last drop of blood. You got folks relyin' on you then you just can't afford to." Sean Noonan-Hitman #47
My Copy of Batman Inc just got delivered. Gorgeous book. Slight damage from speedyhens complete lack of protective packaging but they were £15 or so cheaper than amazon
Heres the table of contents, apologise for the glare but you should be able to make it out.
Issue#11 and the special get pushed to after the bonus content to keep the flow of the main story
Just ordered Absolute Batman Inc from IST. I'm very happy to have Final Crisis, Batman and Robin and now Inc in Absolute.
It was a shame they didn't finish Inc out in Deluxe though. I may sell off my Deluxe B&R and Inc part 1 at some stage although they do look good with Black Hand, RIP and Return of Bruce Wayne. Maybe I'll keep them and hope for a deluxe part 2 to have most of the run in that format.
Fronts
Backs
Dumb Typo I just noticed in the bonus content
About 36 pages of bonus content giving brief descriptions of the various heroes that show up during the run, cover breakdowns and the like. Theres no kind of introduction or interview with Grant though which is a huge shame as its the culmination of all his work on the character I'd of appreciated some sort of "exit interview"
That Batman Inc Absolute looks gorgeous!! Can't wait till amazon.de ships my copy, which will hopefully be next week.
So fellow DC readers. What series do we think will follow the suit of Superman Unchained and become the next series to get the Oversized treatment from the New 52? (Damien: Son of Batman was just a miniseries!) Personally I would think New 52: Future's End will get an Omnibus like 52 did, and I HOPE they do the same with Batman Eternal... But I don't know if they will. In terms of ongoing series, I would think Snyder's Batman is a shoe-in, as is Johns' Justice League. For my hopes, I would enjoy Higgins' Nightwing, Red Lanterns, Justice League Dark, Red Hood & The Outlaws and a couple others. If not Omnibus at least some form of OHC!
I think you can enjoy ABINC on his own but it's better if you've read the whole Morrison run before.
As victorxd1999 wrote Dark Victory and Long Halloween are better for stand alone reads. I really didn't like Hush and couldn't finish No mans Land with all the tie ins.
No, I really think starting with Inc would leave you confused and bewildered (it even did that to a lot of people who had already been following Morrison's Bat-saga!).
Morrison's work can (almost) all be collected in either very nice deluxe OHCs or Absolutes. If I were you I would start with the Black Glove Deluxe, then if you like that move on to RIP Deluxe. From there you can decide if you want to get Absolute B&R (though it sounds like it may be starting got go OOP?) or track down the 3 B&R deluxe OHCs (volume 2 is kind of hard to find for below cover price), and also deluxe Return of Bruce Wayne. That will catch you up to Batman Inc.
I'm not quite sure what your specifications are for high quality books, but if you want to get into current Batman definitely grab Snyder's N52 run. They're all in HC, none are OOP, and most agree it's one of the best Bat-runs in ... ever really. Less psychedelic than Morrison, less grim and gritty than Miller. The tone, in my opinion, falls in line with a slightly darker (in some areas, more than slightly) Batman: The Animated Series. The HCs aren't the highest quality of books from a production standpoint, but most agree they're higher quality than the Marvel Now standard trim HCs.
I disagree for the reason that it seems to me there's a significant distinction between the manner of collection of Johns' GL run and Morrison's Bat-run. While it's true that only the "major" arcs of the GL run are in Absolute, those arcs are not immediately contiguous. There are significant story gaps between Rebirth, SCW, and BN - gaps that wouldn't make a lot of sense collected as an Absolute. With the Bat-run, however, the first Absolute we got was B&R and the next one we got was Inc. The first issue collected in Inc immediately follows the final issue collected in B&R. They're contiguous. I don't think it's an unreasonable inference to draw that DC is considering collecting the entire run in Absolute, especially considering the remainder can pretty easily be collected in its entirety in two more Absolutes of similar size to the two already released. Not saying it's a sure thing, but I don't think the situation is directly analogous to the GL collection situation as you imply.
Dial H has already been announced for the Deluxe treatment.
Looking back at some of those wave one books that got cancelled. Demon Knights, I Vampire and Frankenstein were great and I'd upgrade my trades in a heart beat.
Now that Swamp Things ending, 2 thick deluxe/mini omnis collecting all of that would be amazing, one for Snyder one for Soule.
Id love for Azzarello & Chiangs Wonder Woman to get the omni/deluxe HC treatment.