History Main / WritingForTheTrade

* Dark Horse's entire StarWars line for the year 2011 consisted entirely of 5-issue and 6-issue arcs. By the contrast, arcs from the 2000s had no such constraint and varied all the way between 2-issue and 6-issue pretty evenly, with a health mix of odd standalones.

Once upon a time, ComicBooks were just floppy pamphlets that were easily forgotten and thrown away. But in the 1990s, when American comic books achieved a level of popularity that they had not managed for fifty years, the viability of collected editions of comics -- known as trade paperbacks ([=TPBs=]) or trade hardbacks -- increased dramatically.

By the early-to-mid 00s, virtually every halfway-popular comic book published by DCComics or MarvelComics -- the "big two" companies in the industry -- would get a shot at getting collected in a TPB. At around the same time, a fad for {{Decompressed Comic}}s had developed that saw writers experimenting with the idea of taking more time than had been used previously to tell a story in order to give it a more cinematic structure.

* Then there's the arguable king of this trope -- Creator/BrianMichaelBendis. The so-called "story arcs" in ''The Mighty Avengers'' are so obviously padded that you could skip every third issue and not miss a single narrative beat. And this isn't even [[{{Powers}} the most egregious example in Bendis' bibliography]].

** ComicBook/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Season 8 is an example that must be pointed out: It is a single story broken up in smaller arcs that all follow each other. Every single arc is done by a different author and consist of 4 or 5 issue. One TPB = 5 issue. In case of an arc with 4 issue, the first (or fifth) one is a one-shot done by JossWhedon himself. Due to pacing issues, the series is a lot better in trade, as its goal of emulating the show's format is easier to obtain if you don't have to wait a month (or sometimes more) between issues.

*** Maybe GrantMorrison in general.
* WarrenEllis [[http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=13272 explicitly declared]] that he considered that "The graphic novel or album (or other more suitable nomenclature yet to be coined) is the optimised form of 'comics.'" Fortunately, he's pretty good at it.

** The ''{{BPRD}}'' series kinda fell into this starting with the Plague of Frogs miniseries, though. They recently put the massive story arc it spawned on hold for the ''1946'' story, which makes up a single volume of the trade.

* {{Bakuman}} features this trope InUniverse, given that it's a story about the manga industry. The protagonists' long-term story arc in their final manga is both a blessing and a curse, since there's no real way to swap out elements that the audience doesn't like.

** ''TheUltimates'', on the other hand, came in 13-part arcs, and so was Writing For The Hardcover. Read in that format, it was arguably among MarkMillar's finest work.

* This is an accusation frequently aimed at the Marvel [[UltimateMarvel Ultimate Universe]]. Many of the series (including the ''ComicBook/UltimateSpiderMan'', ''[[UltimateFantasticFour FantasticFour]]'' and ''[[UltimateXMen X-Men]]'' series) are mostly comprised of six-part stories.

* This occurs, oddly enough, with ''judicial decisions''. In countries using TheCommonLaw, some appellate cases have precedential value--that is to say, they are followed and considered law by the court issuing it and by courts below in the hierarchy. Not ''every'' case is precedent, since the general run of cases can be decided on principles of settled law; appeals judges generally dispose of these in short, terse opinions, only a paragraph or even a sentence long (e.g. "This case is purely settled law; see ''So-and-so v. Such-and-such'', etc. Decision of lower court affirmed."). These decisions are not formally published; copies are filed with the parties' lawyers and the record office of the jurisdiction, but they are not intended to be general information. Cases which bring up new points of law, however, are precedent, and so are published in "reporters"; furthermore, if the point at hand is particularly important, the case may be gathered by a law professor for use in a "casebook", which is the usual sort of textbook for law students (particularly in the US but also elsewhere in the common-law world). Thus you get every now and then a judge who appears to be "writing for publication" or "writing for the casebooks": taking what would ordinarily be an unpublished decision, or a very run of the mill published one, and jazzing it up a bit so that it might be considered worthy of publication. If you want to get particularly extreme, you can include a relatively complete survey of the area of law the case at hand falls under, which is usually completely useless--and very annoying to the parties to the dispute, as it has little impact on them--but is very attractive to law professors writing casebooks, since it relieves them of the burden of writing such a survey themselves. The upshot of this is that this trope may well be OlderThanRadio: the famous New York case of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Post Pierson v. Post]]'', decided in 1805, creates an elaborate philosophical argument out of two hunters' dispute about a dead fox, possibly with the intention of displaying the judges' erudition and to get it published in something other than a law reporter. (It worked; ''Pierson'' is usually one of the first cases American law students read in Property.)

* GeoffJohns eventually stopped working for Marvel because he was tired of writing Avengers storylines in six-issue format, however his more recent work for DC is sliding in this direction, notably ''{{Flashpoint}}'' and the ''[[GreenLantern War of the Green Lanterns]]'' storyline.

** Note that while Ellis prefers to write for the trade, he's flexible enough that he doesn't have to. ''GlobalFrequency'', ''SecretAvengers'', and ''{{Fell}}'' are all Done In One, and are generally considered solid reads.

*** This is a bit of a JustifiedTrope in the case of the Ultimate books though, since they were specifically created as newbie-friendly alternatives to the [[ContinuityLockOut continuity-laden]] mainstream books. They were specifically designed so that casual readers could pick up a trade paperback at a book store and then get into the series.

** ''TheUltimates'', on the other hand, came in 13-part arcs, and so was Writing For The Hardcover. Read in that format, it was arguably MarkMillar's finest work.

* David Herbert's ''[[http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=1534 Warriors of the Night]]'' makes a lot more sense in one reading that going by individual chapters. Thankfully, ''[[http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=3429 Gemini Storm]]'' seems to avert this.

* This occurs, oddly enough, with ''judicial decisions''. In countries using TheCommonLaw, some appellate cases have precedential value--that is to say, they are followed and considered law by the court issuing it and by courts below in the hierarchy. Not ''every'' case is precedent, since the general run of cases can be decided on principles of settled law; appeals judges generally dispose of these in short, terse opinions, only a paragraph or even a sentence long (e.g. "This case is purely settled law; see ''So-and-so v. Such-and-such'', etc. Decision of lower court affirmed."). These decisions are not formally published; copies are filed with the parties' lawyers and the record office of the jurisdiction, but they are not intended to be general information. Cases which bring up new points of law, however, are precedent, and so are published in "reporters"; furthermore, if the point at hand is particularly important, the case may be gathered by a law professor for use in a "casebook", which is the usual sort of textbook for law students (particularly in the US but also elsewhere in the common-law world). Thus you get every now and then a judge who appears to be "writing for publication" or "writing for the casebooks": taking what would ordinarily be an unpublished decision, or a very run of the mill published one, and jazzing it up a bit so that it might be considered worthy of publication. If you want to get particularly extreme, you can include a relatively complete survey of the area of law the case at hand falls under, which is usually completely useless--and very annoying to the parties to the dispute, as it has little impact on them--but is very attractive to law professors writing casebooks, since it relieves them of the burden of writing such a survey themselves. The upshot of this is that this trope may well be OlderThanRadio: the famous New York case of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Post Pierson v. Post]]'', decided in 1805, creates an elaborate philosophical argument out of two hunters' dispute about a dead fox, possibly with the intention of displaying the judges' erudition and to get it published in something other than a law reporter. (It worked.)

* This occurs, oddly enough, with ''judicial decisions''. In countries using TheCommonLaw, some appellate cases have precedential value--that is to say, they are followed and considered law by the court issuing it and by courts below in the hierarchy. Not ''every'' case is precedent, since the general run of cases can be decided on principles of settled law; appeals judges generally dispose of these in short, terse opinions, only a paragraph or even a sentence long (e.g. "This case is purely settled law; see ''So-and-so v. Such-and-such'', etc. Decision of lower court affirmed."). These decisions are not formally published; copies are filed with the parties' lawyers and the record office of the jurisdiction, but they are not intended to be general information. Cases which bring up new points of law, however, are precedent, and so are published in "reporters"; furthermore, if the point at hand is particularly important, the case may be gathered by a law professor for use in a "casebook", which is the usual sort of textbook for law students (particularly in the US but also elsewhere in the common-law world). Thus you get every now and then a judge who appears to be "writing for publication" or "writing for the casebooks": taking what would ordinarily be an unpublished decision, or a very run of the mill published one, and jazzing it up a bit so that it might be considered worthy of publication. If you want to get particularly extreme, you can include a relatively complete survey of the area of law the case at hand falls under, which is usually completely useless--and very annoying to the parties to the dispute, as it has little impact on them--but is very attractive to law professors writing casebooks, since it relieves them of the burden of writing such a survey themselves. The upshot of this is that this trope may well be OlderThanRadio: the famous New York case of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Post Pierson v. Post]]'', decided in 1805, creates an elaborate philosophical argument out of two hunters' dispute about a dead fox, possibly with the intention of displaying the judges' erudition and to get it published in something other than a law reporter.

* ''FanFic/{{The 10 Doctors}}'' makes a lot more sense when you read it all at once instead of one strip at a time.

* It's quite obvious that Creator/MasashiKishimoto, creator of Manga/{{Naruto}} is writing his storylines for collection in volume form later on, most noticeably in the Fourth Great Shinobi War Arc. Volumes are 10 chapters. So the first part of the war? 20 chapters for two volumes. Then the main character finds out about the war, and spends 10 chapters running towards it so that it can be collected in Volume 57. Then he spends 11 chapters finding random guys, which is collected in Volume 58. Then, after some major revelations, he spends 10 chapters fighting Tobi, the masked [[TheDragon dragon]] to [[BigBad Madara Uchiha]]. But due to Kishimoto not padding out the previous story segment enough, two chapters of this fight are at the end of Volume 59 and the next eight are in Volume 60. Then after Kishi writing too much, we get the inconsistent Volumes 61 and 62. But then Volume 63 is a ten chapter long story segment about Naruto learning the incredibly obvious identity of Tobi. And then Naruto fighting Tobi and [[spoiler:the Ten Tails]] after the reveal takes ten chapters, even though Naruto clearly can't win until the story progresses. And then the story cuts to [[spoiler:Naruto's rival Sasuke talking with a zombie wood guy]], which manages to be stretched out to ten chapters so it can be in another volume. After that, Volume 66 is another ten chapter long fight which is basically padding because [[spoiler:the story can't progress until Tobi or Madara absorbs the Ten Tails, but they wait ten chapters so Kishi can have a volume of it.]] And then, after countless chapters of waiting, [[spoiler:Tobi finally gets the Ten Tails, and now he just needs to cast a spell and the freaking plot will finally progress. Because this is, you know, the final battle. But how long does it take him to cast the spell? You guessed it, ten chapters. The rest of the volume is about him angsting about how a girl he barely knew died seventeen years ago.]]

** Of particular note is ''FinalCrisis'', which was incomprehensible when it was monthly issues and separate tie-ins but is absolutely spectacular in its collected form, especially when a copy of Morrison's run on ''{{Batman}}'' and (to a lesser extent) ''Seven Soldiers'' is available as well.
*** Hell, maybe we should just say GrantMorrison in general.

* ''TheTenDoctors'' makes a lot more sense when you read it all at once instead of one strip at a time.