The Direct Market “Uber Alles,” by way of David Lapham

Back in December for my “Image Previews Picks” for March, I mentioned that they were putting out a number of comics relating to David Lapham’s long-running, long-dormant-until-now crime comic “Stray Bullets.”  They consisted of a concluding issue (#41) for the ongoing series, the first part of a new eight-issue miniseries called “Killers,” and the one I was most interested in, the “Uber Alles” omnibus edition of the aforementioned ongoing series.  I picked up the first volume of the title years ago based on its strong reputation and liked it well enough.  Don’t ask me to explain why I never got around to picking up the subsequent volumes — it was laziness more than anything, really — but when this omnibus was announced I figured that this would be the perfect way to make amends for my procrastination.  At least, I thought it would be.

The collection is due out this week and I didn’t see it listed on Amazon anywhere.  After a little online searching, I found out that this omnibus is a one-time printing Direct Market exclusive.  So if you get your comics through your local comic shop, this is something you’re probably going to want to pick up as it’s a great value for your money — 1200 pages for $60 — and will likely only increase in value over the years.  As for me, I’ll see if there are any copies being offered at Wondercon next month, or maybe I’ll get REALLY lucky and find one at Comic-Con in July.  Barring that, it looks like if want to read the entire series I’ll just have to go out and get the collected editions.  Which, according to Amazon, is going to somewhat difficult and/or pricey depending on the edition.  So even if the “Uber Alles” edition does collect the entire original series as a one-time event, Lapham and Image would do well to get the rest of the series back into print so that everyone can appreciate it.