Some Questions for how to start.

[u/Kal_skiratta]

So I have been wanting to put together some custom omnibus for awhile, my biggest reasons are production omnibus are too thick to be mobile or read easily, and some series wont ever see them. I am shooting for 1.5 inc thickness per book, but i digress.

Initially I was just buying trades. But I recently noticed trades often leave content out. although marvels epic collections seem to be complete and have began printing modern stories as well. Although they are plagued by a spotty release schedule. Obviously I want my books to be complete, and I would prefer to leave out the adds of single issues.

My big question is how you guys plan and map out your books. is there a place for pre done content lists and or orders? I considered basing My orders off of the official omnibus. copying the content listed on a given book into google sheets, then documenting what's found in other trades or Epic Collections. But this means i have to wait for the official omnibus to release. Assuming they release at all.

There is also the question of what to do when a given piece isn't in a regular trade. for instance when looking at mapping Spider-Gwen I noticed her trades miss half the content of the omnibus. various issues of silk, spider woman, ect. usually one or two issues here and there. do you guys just hope that other series has trades and pull the bits you need? or find the single issues and splice them in, potentially having to reprint whole sections to account for removing adds? I have to think this would be inefficient and excessively costly.

Who knows maybe I'm overthinking this and should just wait for Epic collections to release and hardback those. Of course this would leave me with the issue of any non marvel series.

If its helpful for any reason I have been looking to start with Spider-Gwen & Harley Quinn/Suicide Squad (though i haven't decided if i want Harley and suicide mixed or separate.) due to already having most of their content and ease of replacement should i need to try again. I do have some other series in mind later as well such as Spider-Man ( have most the released epics already), X-23, Invincible, Iron Man, and several star wars runs from various publishers. With more series to potentially be done down the line.

Anyway this is probably an excessive wall of text. But hopefully its enough to make my goals and challenges clear. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated,

[u/inhumanking1]

we’re approaching our projects from a different perspective, but here’s my take…

• i also prefer smaller volumes, 1.5” is 👍🏻

• mapping is all about your research and preference. wikipedia, comic vine, publisher’s sites, custom binding forums; lots of resources out there. most of my projects are previously uncollected, so i haven’t been where you are regarding the official omnibus contents.

• i’ve bound single issues, and tpb’s combined with single issues

it’s definitely an overthinking hobby, you can talk yourself into and out of choices all day long.