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{{trope}}
== Comic books ==
* Any ''[[Miracleman
* Due to Disney's infamous lawsuit, ''Air Pirates Funnies'', a 1970s underground comix series unauthorized by Disney which depicted Disney characters in sexually-explicit situations, is completely out of print. Original copies are valuable, although the series has made appearances on the internet.
* [[Alan Moore]]'s Marvel Pastiche series ''[[Nineteen Sixty Three|1963]]''. Also Alan Moore's few-but-canonically-significant ''[[
* ''[[Suicide Squad]]'', a popular late-1980s series which had super-villains being sent on black-ops missions in exchange for a full pardon for their crimes, remains uncollected and plans for a black-and-white Showcase Presents reprint were scuttled by issues involving royalty rates for DC Comics published from 1976-96. These royalty rates also have screwed other Showcase titles such as Jonah Hex (Volume 2 can't be released because the issues that would be collected would contain issues published in this timeframe) and scuttled plans for Showcase volumes collecting "Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew" and "Who's Who in the DC Universe".
** More specifically, DC royalty rates from this time period were for a fixed amount rather than a percentage of the cover price. Showcase Presents reprints a lot of issues at a low cover price, and the fixed amounts would make it unprofitable, so DC has to renegotiate everything.
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* ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (Comic Book)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' fans have long suffered due to politics involving the comic's most famous writer-turned-head of DC Comics Paul Levitz. Levitz, known for vetoing the collection of stories whose writers and artists are out of favor with DC Comics for various reasons, has long refused to collect his ''Legion'' run in TPB format, going so far as even stopping the popular and commercially-successful LOSH Hardcover Archive series due to it having reached the point where his first issues on the book were published, just so that he could use the lack of his books released to justify his corrupt policies of who gets their work collected. This has had a detrimental effect upon the ''Legion'' franchise as, save for the Great Darkness Saga (which was out of print for over a decade), the only way to buy the Legion was to pay $50 a volume for the DC Archives, which while being a comprehensive collection of all Legion stories, consists mainly of the Adventure Comics era, which are at best a mixed bag qualitywise. The Legion's 1980s run, where Levitz took over the franchise and made it into a hit series, remained uncollected and unseen until two years ago when Levitz (to tie into the return of the Pre-Zero Hour Legion) released two volumes collecting the first 13 issues of Legion V3, ironically even as "The Great Darkness Saga" has once again fallen out of print.
** The post-Levitz ''Legion'' also suffers this and then some. The controversial V4 run by Keith Giffen and the Bierbaums remains uncollected. The 1994 reboot had its first eight issues and a later storyline involving a retread of the Great Darkness Saga collected, but nothing else. Part of this was due to artist Oliver Coipel, who drew four and half years of the reboot leaving DC to go work for Marvel, leading to Levitz blacklisting him and refusing to collect any of the ''Legion'' stories he drew in TPB. Also, when the last 1994 ''Legion'' reboot story (a crossover special with the 2002 ''Teen Titans'' relaunch) finally see the light of day as part of a ''Teen Titans'' TPB, the collection '''omitted''' the final pages of the story, where the Legion rally together as their world is destroyed and they are cast outside of the known universe to rot for all time. To add insult to injury, the critically-panned 2004 reboot has, save for a single issue, been completely collected with the last year of the book seeing print not just in softcover but also '''hardcover'''.
* An infamous case is ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Spider-Man]]'' suffers this as well — Marvel has done a lousy job collecting and keeping in print most of the character's defining storylines. While both Essential Spider-Man and Essential Spider-Man have now reached Roger Stern and Peter David's legendary runs (and the first third of David Micheline's legendary run on Amazing Spider-Man released as an omnibus), good luck if you are wanting to find most of Spidey's stuff like DeMatteis and Gerry Conway's Spectacular Spider-Man or Tom DeFalco's Amazing Spider-Man.
* The bulk of [[Bill Mantlo]]'s work as a comic creator remain uncollected. While Marvel has recently announced two oversized [[TP Bs]] collecting the first 40 issues of his Hulk run and most of his Spider-Man stuff is available in the Essential line, his Micronauts and Rom work remains in legal limbo hell while his Alpha Flight run (featuring early pre-fame artwork from Mike Mignola and Jim Lee) is still not collected.
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*** Thunderbolts, Generation X, and X-Man are now being collected and while the 90s series has yet to be collected, all of the Guardians of the Galaxy material from the various anthology comics Marvel originally published them in have finally been collected.
** DC has its own 1990s stuff that has yet to be collected, be it obscure cult favorites (''Major Bummer''; ''Darkstars''; ''Young Heroes In Love'') to major books that are a no-brainer for collecting (the 1990s ''Robin'' series; the Kyle Rayner ''Green Lantern'' run of Ron Marz; ''L.E.G.I.O.N.''; Mark Waid's ''Flash'' run; Peter David's ''Aquaman'' run). While DC has released "Best Of" volumes of the early Rayner ''Green Lantern'' stories, their attempt to do a comprehensive collecting of Kyle's ''Green Lantern'' run failed to sell enough to justify further volumes. And the ''Robin'' thing is even more insulting, given that ''Nightwing'' and ''Birds of Prey'' (other Batman spin-offs) have received numerous TPBs over the years collecting the bulk of those two series.
** ''[[Young Justice (
* Stormwatch Team Achilles and Wildcats V3.0 only had the first year's worth of stories collected, as both comics were critical darlings with poor sales, leading to them being put down and replaced with more traditional versions of the concepts that have been largely panned by fans of the "Eye of the Storm" books.
** Wildcats 3.0, at least, is finally being collected in full in two large trade paperbacks - just in time for Wildstorm's shuttering.
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* ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|New Teen Titans]]'' suffers this — vague, often butchered TPBs have been released of random stories (with the only common theme being that they are drawn by George Perez), while the only way to read the stories in chronological order is the uber-expensive "Archive" Hardcovers, with DC recently announcing that the Hardcover collecting will stop now that they've reached the point where the earliest issue number TPB would be the next volume.
* The ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' UK comic stories featuring Death's Head cannot be reprinted in the US, since Marvel owns the character. Luckily, prior to IDW getting the UDS reprint rights, they were collected in the UK via Titan (who distributes Marvel's trade paperbacks in England) with Titan scoring global distribution rights, meaning that they could be grey-market imported to the States.
** The situation vis-a-vis Death's Head may have been resolved, as an old [[
* ''G.I. Joe'' for years suffered this, especially after Marvel attempted to reprint the books only to stop after reaching #50. Luckily, IDW has picked up the ball and is now reprinting the entire series.
* Matt Howarth included several real people as characters in his various Bugtown comic book series. He asked their permission to do so, but did not anticipate any future reprint market. So Howarth feels the permission only covered the original publication of the books and he would need new assent to republish the books in collected form. As he has been unable to contact several of the people involved, some of whom have since passed away, these series have never been collected.
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* ''[[Spawn]]'' issues 9 and 10 have a history of coming in and out of limbo in reprint volumes. #9, held up due to the legal battles with Neil Gaiman, the co-author of the issue who claims partial ownership of the (continuity-important) he introduced, and #10 because it was a ''[[Cerebus]]'' [[Crossover]] issue that Dave Sim has not authorized for reprints.
** This seems to be resolved, as both issues were included in the oversized Spawn Origins Collection: Book 1 hardcover book, with a letter by Dave Sim explaining the story behind the making and reprinting troubles of issue #10 included as a forward to that issue.
* If you want to collect the comic stories that ran in ''[[
** ''[[The Legend of the Chaos God]]'', a five part [[Cross Through]] story which is widely regarded as one of the greatest stories ever printed in the magazine, has ''never'' been reprinted. The only way to read it is to buy all five of the original issues online, or find page scans on the internet.
* [[Archie Comics]] seems to rarely reprint stuff involving their (Non-Pureheart) superhero output: They themselves put out three trade paperbacks in the early 2000s on certain characters.
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* The pulp style comic series ''[[wikipedia:Starblazer|Starblazer]] books, despite some incredibly good stories and a small but very loyal fandom is doomed to obscurity by the refusal to reprint any stories even as a collection. The old books themselves are getting increasingly hard to come by as time takes its toll.
* ''[[Elf Quest]]'', while an excellent series, hasn't been reprinted since 2003, its quarter-centennial, and the only full-ish reprints--the Donning/Starblaze 20th anniversary Readers Collections--are getting harder and harder to find as time goes on. On the plus side, all of it--and even never-printed material from aborted series--is available on the official website.
* The issues of ''[[
* Unlike its popular [[Sonic
* Entire companies suffer from this trope. If you like First Comics in the 80s, only ''[[American Flagg]]'' has seen a reprint: books like ''Jon Sable Freelance, Nexus, Badger, Grimjack, Dynamo Joe, and Mars'' languish in obscurity. A lot of the output of companies like Malibu, Eclipse, and Comico are similar. For more obscure companies, like Neal Adams's Continuity Comics, not even graphic novels exist.
** Actually, most of the First Comics books mentioned has been reprinted in some form. The exception is ''[[Dynamo Joe]]''.
* Marvel's current policy is to not maintain any inventory. Once they print a trade or hardcover and send it out you'd better hope it doesn't sell out because unless it's a really popular series its not going to get a second printing. This means that there are trades just two years old that are already out-of-print. Some of them are trades released to replace older out-of-print collections, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.
* None of the volumes of ''[[Albedo
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* While ''[[
* [[Dick Tracy]] has few reprints available and in the case of the Max Collins era strips (which were critically acclaimed) few have ever been reprinted, save the various sequences collected in the Anniversary editions. Fantagraphics is releasing ''The Complete Chester Gould Dick Tracy'' archive editions however, and ''The Collins Case Files'' are currently on its third volume.
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