As I’ve said many times, we really are living in the golden age of comics collected editions.

That doesn’t mean collected editions just came out, however. I recall seeing ads for them in comics I was reading in the 90s, and I always knew they existed. Omnibuses- huge, oversized books containing 20-30 issues- definitely didn’t exist, nor did many hardcovers or comprehensive softcovers, either. Trades were usually just reserved for “greatest hits” stories that would sell over and over again, and emerged during the sprouting of the comic book store. “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” “Watchmen,” or “The Death of Superman” spring to mind. Quality wasn’t what it is today, either, with many trade paperbacks being little more 100 pages and containing pages whose texture was closer to newspaper.

While I generally have preferred collecting the individual issues from that era, I recently came across a copy of the Superman/Doosmday: Hunter/Prey trade from 1997, and was blown away by how good the quality of the book was! The paper was thick, glossy stock, there was a new cover, a lengthy introduction by Dan Jurgens and extras galore. I was so impressed that I sold off my original issues, and have spent the better part of 2023 hunting down other Superman trades from that era. Hunter/Prey was the first, followed by “Panic in the Sky,” “Time and Time Again,” and several others.

The quality is not the same on all of them, but each book makes sure to include something extra not found in the floppies. For one, all the books have introductions from someone on the creative team, which is not always the case today. Tracking down these old Superman collections has been a ton of fun and I have enjoyed going back and reading recollections about a great era in the character’s publishing history.

DC Comics today is greatly lagging compared to the quality of Marvel’s collected editions, in my opinion, despite sitting on a wealth of material that is a greater library than Marvel’s by a good 20 years. Too often today, collected editions of older material don’t have any extras, have poor reproduction values, omit relevant material, and many other flaws, unfortunately. I was pleasantly surprised that earlier generations of DC creators didn’t always have such a low standard of the material they were putting out, and indeed celebrated seminal works this way.

If you’re a big fan of this era like me, these trades are great ways to learn more about the stories and are wonderful collector’s items. If you see one in your LCS, grab it! You won’t be disappointed.